Today was also my first day in over 5 years busking with my Martin Cowboy IV (number 26 of only 250 made). My Avalon is in need of a service and I probably shouldn’t have been out playing it winter and summer and the beautiful spruce top and rosewood are sensitive to weather, temperature and humidity variation whereas, apart from being a very ‘cheerful’ looking guitar and sounding pretty good,(very good right now), is also made of some space age plastic and has a neck that’s laminated and very stable.
It’s been sleeping in it’s faux bearskin lined case since my Avalon Legacy arrived in December ’09 and when I decided to bring it back into service and took it out I was surprised at how good it sounded even though there were cobwebs AND a spider’s egg sack visible through the sound-hole - the strings even sounded bright and so I didn’t need to change them - or so I thought.
There’s a lane between the main street and the Tesco shopping centre which is narrow and has very little traffic but quite a good footfall. About half the shops on the street are closed down and so it was easy to find a semi sheltered spot to play and the acoustic was good. The strings, not so. Halfway through my third song, ‘PING’ went my first string - I never break strings and so had no spare but resolved to replace them all when back to base where I had a couple of new sets - done now - and continued with the five remaining strings rather than packing up to go and buy a replacement.
There was a steady trickle of coins and the Martin was sounding good enough. I’d been playing for an hour and a half when a boy of about 6 stopped and listened. He was on his own though I’d seen him pass from the opposite direction a short while before with family but he was now alone and listening while waiting for them to catch up. While listening, he started carefully looking through a fistful of football cards - the sort that came with a little piece of bubble gum when I was a kid - he carefully selected a few, held them up for my approval and so I nodded and he then carefully placed them down in my guitar case. His mother then passed and called, ‘Come on Dylan’ and, as I finished the song, I thanked him and asked if they were ‘Swaps’ as I didn’t want to take cards he only had one of. ‘Yes’ - thanks Dylan, it’s people like you who make busking such a pleasure.
A friend who is learning ukelele arrived and looked after my things so I ran around and got a new string to play for another hour with some uke accompaniment and finished as I usually do with my single form last year, A Warm Hand (to Hold), the last line of which is aptly, ‘That’s all there is….’ and on that very line, my D- string pinged. You my hear or get a download here
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