Busk Break is an ongoing field recording series documenting live performances by busking musicians and other street performers.
The Gypsy Swingers perform “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me”
Sean Mabe, Wendi Loomis and Mario Piccolo playing as The Gypsy Swingers.In most other cities, you’d never see musicians like clarinet player Wendi Loomis and guitarists Mario Piccolo and Sean Mabe busking for tips. You’d only see them performing in night clubs and upscale bars as the evening’s featured entertainment. And, as the Gypsy Swingers (or, in a slightly different arrangement as the Red Hot Sugar Babies), that’s generally how you’d encounter them as well. But the lure of playing for tips in the height of Asheville’s tourist season brings even the professionals out for a piece of the busking action.
Here, the trio performs “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me,” a jazzy, bluesy classic written nearly a century ago.
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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