Brian McGee and Krum perform “First Kiss”

Brian McGee and Kevin “Krum” Rumley perform “First Kiss” in downtown Asheville.
Shortly before the release of his album The Taking or The Leaving, alt-country and Americana artist Brian McGee spent the the better part of a day busking song from the recording in front of the Iron sculpture in downtown Asheville, NC. He was joined midway through the set by drummer Kevin “Krum” Rumley, whose unique talents include the ability to seamlessly keep time while puffing away on a cigarette.

This was one of the earliest of the Busk Break recordings, and as such the camera work is a little on the rough side. (And it would be until I started using a monopod in early 2012.) I’d also forgotten, as would happen several times in coming years, to turn on my wonderful Zoom H4n audio recorder for the first song. As a result, the music you are hearing is from the Kodak zi8 camcorder. It’s not bad, though, and I actually prefer this version of the song to the one that McGee later released on his album.

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Steve Shanafelt

Steve Shanafelt used to think he was a writer. Lots of other people thought he was a very good one, and they paid him to write everything from news articles to erotic comic books. Then, a few years ago, he started to realize that writing was just one very tiny piece of the puzzle. He started recording podcasts, producing field recordings of busking musicians, making short video series and learning how to make websites. Along the way, he learned lots of ways not to manage businesses and how to promote those businesses online. Now, people pay him surprisingly large sums of money to show them some of the things he's picked up.