Day 10: Make Music Harvard Square!

Today, me and my brother Andy (as the band Mimic the French, myspace.com/mimicthefrench) played in Harvard Square in the street festival Make Music Harvard Square. The festival is modeled on the Fete de la Musique which originated in France, and this is the third year it has been organized here (though the last two years were under a different name, Make Music Cambridge), and the third year we have participated. Our music was far louder and more raucous than my busking typically is, and Andy was using our homemade, buckets and pans drumset, which got some stares. We were given about $20 by passers by, $5 from a woman who insisted on paying us for the demo CDs we were giving out free.

We had a great time, and I think we got some people to listen to music they might not normally gravitate towards - the middle age women who stopped to listen probably are not huge fans of My Chemical Romance or Avenged Sevenfold.

Day 9: It's a beautiful rain...

Yesterday, I played in front of Au Bon Pain for about two and a half hours. It was a perfect day - overcast, warm but not too hot, and mostly dry. I say mostly, because around 4:45 (just over 2 hours after I started playing), it started drizzling. I continued to play, as I was having quite a bit of fun, and there wasn't too much rain, but after a while, it got heavier, and I stopped after finishing a version of Bush's "Alien" (which includes the line I used for the title). I met several other musicians who stopped to say hello, but overall, had very few of my "interesting moments."

I made about $30, which was a pretty good sum, given the soggy weather at the end. In any case, I look forward to playing more as school wraps up.

Day 8: Harvard graduation and shirtless men

I'm a bit late (more than a week) on this one - I've been very busy writing some end-of-semester papers and recording a set of demos.

Last week, I played in the Pit during one part of Harvard's graduation ceremonies. The money wasn't great, and I got a terrible sunburn, but I had lots of fun. I played, for the first time in public, my version of the song "Falling Slowly," from the movie "Once," and, though I forgot the second verse momentarily, I got a generally positive reaction from passers-by. The song has a very high note in the chorus, which I can only hit if I shift to more of a scream, but I made it work.

A crazy, shirtless guy came by just after I started playing and got in my face, trying to get me to sing and play louder, despite the fact that I was playing an original song that has to be quiet to get the full effect. He then proceeded (once I had gotten a little louder than I would have liked) to encourage people to give me money, and later sang with me on a cover of "Use Somebody," by Kings of Leon.

Overall, it was a good time, but I need to use more sunscreen.