‘Uncategorized’ Category
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Tuning Up, 2018
0April 15, 2018 by admin
The weather forecast for Friday promised a beautiful day with temps in the 70’s, so Thursday night I got down my tenor uke and tuned up. The hum in my low-G string reminded me that I should have put a new one on last busking season. It takes a few days for a string to settle in, but there was no help for it; I spent my first day of busking retuning after every song.
Central Park at W. 72nd St. still had a wintry feel. The trees had not yet leafed out, although the spring flowers were starting to show: yellow and white daffodils, pale violet myrtle, blue chionodoxera, and scattered red and white tulips from some prior year’s planting. Behind the benches, a single 2-foot tall yellow fritillaria bloomed in the sun. Forsythia has started to show here, while deeper in the park it is already in full glory.
In my haste to start busking, I left my water bottle at home, but was happy to find the water fountains had been turned on. Snowdrops burst through the undergrowth around Strawberry Fields, where Randy, the dobro player, now played early Beetles on his guitar. It was nice to see a friend.
Making my way down the path, past hellebore galore, patches of violets and fat magnolia buds 3 inches tall, I heard the 5-piece jazz combo across the road from Daniel Webster. The dog roses were leafing out; pale impatiens hugged the ground. More magnolias, these in full sun, were clothed in blossoms.
Bethesda Fountain, center stage, beckoned. “Welcome back, sir,” said the hot dog man when I bought a bottle of water.
“Hey, you’re back,” said Carole, greeting me as I sat by the fountain and set up my solar-powered hula dolls. Carole, with camera, is a regular at the fountain, which is how I got to know her. “The place is hopping today. You’ll do great.”
Tuning up — always tuning — I chatted with a young couple from Cherry Hill. Soon they were on their feet, paper leis around their necks, doing the hula to “The Hukilau Song.” She gave me a dollar; he gave me two.
I started my set, as usual, with “Making Love Ukulele Style,” and moved through my play list, successfully remembering, for the most part, all the chords and lyrics. Two young women stopped to listen.
“Have you got time for a hula today?”
No, they didn’t, until I picked up a lei and dangled it in front of them. One of the girls came forward to dance, the other followed. The follower lived in the city; her friend was visiting from Austin. They dropped a buck and change.
A man who had been sitting at the fountain to my right gave me $2, as did an English couple walking by. A large group of teenagers from the UK spread out on the benches to my right. After a few tunes they came up to me, singly or in pairs, some to dance, some to investigate my solar-powered hula dolls, each making a little donation before returning to the group.
Two little girls shyly approached, their mom proudly watching.
“Would you like to hula?” They nodded, and I put a lei around their necks. The older girl, who was about 5, quickly got the hang of it, then began choreographing her little sister. By the time I started the second verse of “The Hukilau Song,” the girls were moving in unison, step to the right, step to the left, arms waving, fingers aflutter. Their mom, who was also English, gave me a fiver.
As well as I remembered chords and lyrics, I couldn’t remember my playlist. There were songs, I was sure, I hadn’t played yet, but what? After more than an hour, as I looked around at the lake, the sky, the pennants in the wind and the azaleas lining the path to the boathouse, I saw the willows on the shore, leaves turning from yellow to green. Of course, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” which begins, “Evening shades are creeping, willow trees are weeping…”
A family from Belarus danced the hula. A couple from Queens, soon to be married, did too. During my final number, “Little Grass Shack,” a sixty-something couple from western Canada stopped to chat. He tossed 2 singles in my case, bringing the day’s take to $27.32, a hefty sum marking an auspicious start to the season.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Little Grass Shack, Making Love Ukulele Style, The Hukilau Song, Tiptoe through the Tulips
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The Season Winds Down
0October 26, 2017 by admin
The wood anemone score: 0-0. So much for that.
Most of the water plants have been removed from Bethesda Fountain. Here and there, sunken tubs of water lilies remained, their greenish-yellow leaves floating on the surface. At the southern end, 2 plants still sported white flowers.
The park was cool, the rolling gray clouds threatening. More than 30 minutes went by before my first dollar. Two men bundled against the weather stopped to listen. One of them, it seems, owned 5 ukuleles, yet he would not take my uke to show me what he could do.
Chatting about the kind of music he played, he mentioned that he and his teacher were working on “Five Foot Two.” I sang Dean Martin’s “Making Love Ukulele Style,” as an example of my repertoire of ukulele novelty songs.
“And you have a good voice too,” he said
Two 20-something women walked by. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
With a little encouragement, one of them, from New York, put on a lei. The other, from England, would have been content to take video, but her friend put a lei on her and pulled her into the dance. They swayed to “The Hukilau Song,” laughing while they passed the camera between them. The New Yorker gave me a buck. The Englishwoman gave me two, saying, “That was fun.”
Toward the end of my set, a woman off the bench gave me a buck, wrapping up a $5 day.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Five Foot Two, Making Love Ukulele Style, The Hukilau Song
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October 19th and Still Busking
0October 22, 2017 by admin
“Has this group got time for a hula dance today?” I addressed the tour guide, a jolly, elderly man, who, after years of leading his group past me, stopped. The group stopped too, in an arc around me as if awaiting a short lecture about a statue. “Where’s everybody from?”
“All over.”
“Brazil,” shouted a 30-ish woman. She shook her head “no” when I offered her a lei. “I don’t know how.”
“All the Brazilian women say that, then they come up here and dance beautifully, and so will you.”
As she danced, beautifully, the tour guide put a quarter in my case, but no one stepped forward to follow his example, except the Brazilian woman. After her dance, she gave me a quarter too.
A couple of English women with bicycles witnessed this scene. They had been sitting near me at the fountain when I set up. Tossing a dollar in my case, they pedaled off.
Three kids from North Carolina walked up from the benches with a dollar and change. They danced to the “The Hukilau Song,” then ran giggling back to their parents. The eldest, a girl of about 11, came back for a second dance, this time to “Little Grass Shack.”
A bride and photo crew set up near me. In addition to the photographer, there was an assistant to carry the cameras and tripod, a lighting grip with screens and tripods of his own, and a dresser to arrange the train of the bridal gown, and to fluff the bride’s hair. The absence of a groom led me to believe the bride was not a bride at all, but a model.
A 20-something man walked by with his friend. “A ukulele and a bride. Only in New York,” he said, laying a dollar in my case.
A petite woman in her late 30s watched me play. I invited her to dance to “The Hukilau Song.” She told me she was from Hawaii, and that she had danced to the hukilau with me about 5 years ago. As we moved through the second verse, her delicate hands formed the silver moon under which kanes and wahinis sang their love songs.
A man ran up and took her hand, spun her around. She looked surprised, and uncomfortable. He let her go to put a dollar in my case. “Do you know him?”
“No,” she said, “Yuck.”
“Let’s dance another one,” he said. He was 50-ish, with a trimmed beard and a porkpie hat.
“Aloha,” the woman said to me, returning my lei and moving quickly away.
The man, Alexander (“My secret service name is also Alexander”), hung around for a while, listing for me the times and locations of the best free swing dancing in the city. He chased after women, grabbing their arms and trying to pull them over to me for a dance. Finally, I said, “I do a solo act. I need you to move away.”
“No, no,” he said. “I’m helping you.”
“You’re not. I’ve been doing this a long time, believe me, you’re not helping.”
“I bow to your experience,” he said. He moved some distance away; I resumed my act. When I next looked in his direction, he was gone.
A woman wanted a picture. I put a lei around her neck. She gave me a dollar. A thin elderly man, with a bemused smile on his face, watched me for a while, then he gave me a dollar. At last, with a few more minutes left in my set, a young couple from Baltimore, now living on 125th St., wanted a picture to send to her father, a ukulele buff.
With $8.51 in my pocket, I exited the park. There can’t be very many busking days left this year.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
