Abby The Spoon Lady and Jimbo Lockhart perform “Old Joe Clark”

Abby the Spoon Lady and Jimbo Lockhart
Abby the Spoon Lady and Jimbo Lockhart
Busk Break favorite Abby The Spoon Lady performs the classic tune “Old Joe Clark” with Jimbo Lockhart on the streets of Asheville, NC, in 2012.

For those of you who love Abby’s music, we’ll be posting more from this session, including some unseen tunes, in future posts. Continue reading Abby The Spoon Lady and Jimbo Lockhart perform “Old Joe Clark”

Busk Break: The Asheville Waits Band covers “Jockey Full of Bourbon”

The Asheville Waits Band in early 2012.
The Asheville Waits Band in early 2012.
Vocalist/guitarist Mark Conti and bassist Christian Ferri — both members of the Asheville Waits Band (a Tom Waits cover band) — perform “Singapore” from the album Rain Dogs in front of the Iron sculpture.

 

This video was originally recorded on a very windy day in early January, 2012.

 

 

Continue reading Busk Break: The Asheville Waits Band covers “Jockey Full of Bourbon”

Busk Break: The Asheville Waits Band covers “Singapore”

BUSK-AshevilleWaitsBandVocalist/guitarist Mark Conti and bassist Christian Ferri — both members of the Asheville Waits Band (a Tom Waits cover band) — perform “Singapore” from the album Rain Dogs in front of the Iron sculpture.

 

This video was originally recorded on a very windy day in early January, 2012.

 

 

Continue reading Busk Break: The Asheville Waits Band covers “Singapore”

The Slaughter Brothers Band perform their untitled, bluegrass-inspired tune

The Slaughter Brothers Band
The Slaughter Brothers Band perform at Pack Square.
By their own admission, the Slaughter Brothers have been playing in Asheville for the last few months largely because they were “stranded” here after playing a birthday party. But they don’t seem too bummed about where fate has landed them, and now they’re in town “doing their thing.”

Raised in Dayton, Ohio, and professionally based in New Orleans for the last several years, the brothers are joined by local drummer Daniel Hensley on this unnamed tune inspired by “Asheville’s bluegrass music.” Continue reading The Slaughter Brothers Band perform their untitled, bluegrass-inspired tune

PJ Bond and Lauren Baker

PJ Bond and Lauren Baker
PJ Bond and Lauren Baker perform in front of Kim’s Wigs in summer 2010.
Last week, we featured a song by then-local singer-songwriter PJ Bond from the pre-video days of Busk Break. This week, we’re adding the second tune from that recording in July of 2010, as Bond was joined in front of Kim’s Wigs by his friend Lauren Baker.

Baker is probably best known as the musical saw player from local “absurdist, gypsy, folk, funk, punk” band Sirius.B. (To be fair, like most members of that band, she’s a multi-instrumentalist, but the musical saw thing tends to stick out.) Continue reading PJ Bond and Lauren Baker

Natchez On Fire play “The Crawdad Song”

Natchez On Fire
Natchez On Fire in Asheville, 2011.
A great band can turn even the most cliche of tunes into a memorable moment of music. Here, New Orleans-based buskers Natchez On Fire play their version of the extremely familiar traditional folk tune “The Crawdad” song, and manage to keep things interesting. Continue reading Natchez On Fire play “The Crawdad Song”

PJ Bond performs “You Know The Drill”

PJ Bond
PJ Bond performs in front of Kim’s Wigs in 2010.
On a warm July night in 2010, singer-songwriter PJ Bond stood in front of a wig store and played his heart out. This was in the early days of the Busk Break project, and it set the tone for the rest the performances that summer.

Bond had only been living in town for a year or so, but his brother, Pancho Romero Bond, was already established as the frontman of local “absurdist, gypsy, folk, funk, punk” band Sirius.B. Although not nearly the same level of showman as his brother, I’d argue that PJ Bond is clearly the better songwriter. But PJ never really found his niche in novelty-act living Asheville, and his time as a busker didn’t last long. Continue reading PJ Bond performs “You Know The Drill”

Natchez On Fire perform “The YoYo Song”

Natchez On Fire
Natchez On Fire playing in Asheville, NC.
Way back in May of 2011, Busk Break caught a few songs from New Orleans-based buskers Natchez On Fire during their brief visit to Asheville. One of those songs, their version of the classic “Crawdad Song,” was released at the time, but this song never made it out of the archive. Now, for the first time ever, we present Natchez On Fire’s “The Yo-Yo Song”! Continue reading Natchez On Fire perform “The YoYo Song”

Aaron Basskin performs “What To Do”

Busk-AaronBasskin-2
Aaron Basskin performing in Asheville, NC.
Recorded in the same session as his cover of “If I Only Had a Brain”, local busker Aaron Basskin performs his original tune “What To Do” in front of the Iron sculpture on downtown Asheville, NC.

Most of the time, the buskers I meet aren’t aware of the Busk Break project, but as it turns out, Basskin was. He’d seen one of the several videos documenting local jazz band and busking scene favorite Big Nasty, and was highly impressed.

“Those guys are so cool,” he explained with a smile. Although Basskin was mostly playing covers, it wasn’t too hard to talk him into playing an original for his second contribution to the Busk Break series. Continue reading Aaron Basskin performs “What To Do”

Aaron Basskin covers “If I Only Had a Brain”

Aaron Basskin
Busker Aaron Baskin performing in Asheville.
Local busker Aaron Basskin performs his version of a song almost everyone in the English-speaking world can at least hum along to: “If I Only Had a Brain” by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, written for the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz. Continue reading Aaron Basskin covers “If I Only Had a Brain”