Busk Break is an ongoing field recording series documenting live performances by busking musicians and other street performers.
Sparrow performs “Walt’s Waltz”
Accordion-playing busker Sparrow performs in front of the Woolworth Walk on Halloween weekend in 2010.I met Sparrow the weekend of the first MoogFest in downtown Asheville. Even on an average weekend, the city could be mistaken for a costume party that had somehow spilled out onto the streets, but add Halloween weekend and a major, national-level electronic music festival to the mix, and the experience began to border on the hallucinatory. While most people would be overwhelmed, for a performer like Sparrow, it was another day at work. After all, she’s already circus performer, and her band of the time, The Sugarfoot Seranaders, were practically a sideshow unto themselves.
In other words, she was in her element. Here, she performs her original tune “Walt’s Waltz” near the Woolworth Walk.
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.
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