Bike ‘n Busk

Pedaling to busk.

There hasn’t been much busking talk here lately for the simple reason that I haven’t been busking at all. This is the quiet time for big event busks. Hockey is finished for the season (at least as far as the Oiler’s are concerned) and football won’t start for a while yet. Furthermore, there haven’t been many concerts that fall on days that I am free to play.

Last night , I was able to busk the incoming crowd of the Johnny Reid concert. A lot of the time I don’t really know who the hell the performers are these days and I have to look them up on the internet to decide if the concert is worth showing up for. Wikipedia told me he was a country music singer with several Canadian hit songs. Hmm.  It didn’t sound promising. If he’d had international hits I’d be certain of a big crowd. On the other hand, Albertans love their country music. A quick trip to Ticketmaster lad me to believe that the show was almost sold out. Yay!

Ticketmaster, you deceived me.

Although the crowd was smallish they liked our music and were fairly generous. This busk finally proved a theory that I have been forming for some time now. The Edmonton country music crowd likes tunes in major keys in 4/4 time. Marches and reels? Yes. Strathspeys? Somewhat. Minor keys, jigs, slip jigs?  Not so much. Waltzes? Sure, but I only know one.

I rode the Raleigh 20 to the event. My idea was that it is small and I’d be able to take inside with me and not have it take up a lot of room. This worked like a charm. Although I plan to swap out the strange delrin headset bushing, on this occasion I was glad of the stiff steering as it compensated for the weight of the instrument case I was carrying. It was a pleasure to take the little bike out for a jaunt but I still need to tune it up a bit. One of the pedals fell apart on the way home. That’s alright though, because those original Raleigh ball bearingless pedals are awful and I was planning on replacing them, anyway. I’ll be writing more about that soon.