Spent Saturday busking outside the station with an acoustic version of songs that are usually screamed rather than sung, which is a strange and humbling experience I’d recommend to any musician who thinks they’ve got a handle on how their material actually lands. Turns out a song about eviction notices plays very differently to a commuter clutching a coffee than it does to forty sweaty people in a basement at 11pm.
Made about thirty quid in two hours, which by London busking standards is respectable, and had one genuinely lovely conversation with an older bloke who stopped, listened to a full song, and told me he used to play the same venues I play now, back when they cost considerably less to hire and considerably fewer of them had closed down entirely.
What I overheard while packing up
Two commuters near me were discussing, at some volume, a story about Apple apparently unveiling their first foldable CEO, and I genuinely couldn’t tell for a solid thirty seconds whether they were talking about an actual product or something they’d read that morning that had briefly broken their sense of what’s real. When I looked it up on my break, I laughed loud enough that a pigeon startled off the bin next to me. Sometimes the best material of the week isn’t even mine.
I’ve started keeping a small mental list of headlines that made me laugh on a given week, purely because they’re often better constructed than half the jokes I try to write myself, and there’s no shame in admitting that. Good writing is good writing, whichever direction it comes from.
The commuters who actually stopped
Most people walk past a busker, understandably, they’ve got trains to catch and lives to be getting on with. The ones who do stop tend to fall into two categories: people who clearly used to be in a band themselves, recognisable by the specific nostalgic sadness in how they watch you play, and teenagers who film thirty seconds on their phone and vanish before the song’s even finished. Both are, in their own way, a form of connection I’ve come to genuinely value, even the thirty-second phone ones. At least they stopped.
Why I keep doing this despite the thirty quid
It’s not really about the money, obviously, thirty quid barely covers the Tube fare there and back plus a sandwich. It’s about playing to people who didn’t choose to be your audience and haven’t already decided to like you before you’ve opened your mouth. It’s the most honest test a song gets, more honest than any basement gig where everyone’s already on your side before the first chord.
Packing up my guitar as the evening rush properly kicked off, watching hundreds of people stream past who’d never think twice about the bloke who used to play these same spots decades ago, I felt something close to what I think this city actually is underneath everything else: a place that keeps moving whether you’re playing to it or not, and occasionally, if you’re lucky, stops just long enough to listen.
The older busker’s advice, kept
Before he wandered off, the older bloke who used to play the same spots gave me one piece of advice I’ve been turning over ever since: “Play the sad ones slower here than you would in a venue. People are already moving fast enough around you. Give them a reason to actually slow down for thirty seconds.” I tried it on the last song of the set, dropped the tempo right down, and watched three separate people actually stop walking entirely rather than just glancing over. He’s clearly done this a lot longer than I have.
I’ve written his advice down properly now, in the actual notebook rather than just my head, filed next to a half-formed lyric about the station itself that I think might turn into something once I’ve sat with it a bit longer. Some of the best writing advice I’ve had this year came from a stranger by a bin, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence so much as exactly how this city tends to work when it’s being generous.
The thirty quid, itemised
For the record, since I keep a rough tally purely out of habit: eleven pound coins, four fifty-pence pieces, a scattering of silver, and one genuinely baffling euro coin from someone who either didn’t notice or didn’t care. It covered the Tube there and back, a meal deal, and about a third of this month’s guitar string budget, which by the strange economics of busking counts as a solidly successful afternoon.
I’ll be back outside that same station next weekend, weather allowing, playing the sad ones slower, exactly as instructed by a stranger who clearly knew more about this than I did.
A small addition to the plan
I’ve decided to bring a proper notebook next time rather than relying on my phone for lyric fragments, purely because typing one-handed while holding a guitar has never once produced anything legible, and I’d rather lose thirty seconds of busking time scribbling something down than lose the actual line entirely to a half-typed note full of autocorrect nonsense. Small logistics, but the kind that actually make a difference over a full afternoon outside a station.
