Oct. 05, 2010 - Issue #781: Fall Style
Prevue
Street songs
Vancouver busker takes his music to the open road
The Vancouver songwriter is filming a tour documentary featuring him busking his way across Western Canada » BODHI JONES
Recently voted Best Busker by The Georgia Straight, Bodhi Jones is on tour in support of his uplifting, optimistic and elegant new album Where Does the Time Go?
The full-time working busker managed to pay the bills and save his cash to put out his first studio album—10 songs of wondrous pop elegy and "therapeutic" songs that helped him through the day-to-day trials of a street performer.
"I guess it's pretty autobiographical, looking back on childhood and what's come and gone," he explains from a pay phone, Vancouver's downtown din in the background. "I think I write music that's therapeutic, a lot of times just speaking to myself that it's going to be all right. I think it's more therapy for myself—'You can do it, man! Stick with it, it will be OK'—just to keep moving along."
As it stands, this therapy is paying off in quality songwriting, and indeed, carving out a living for yourself one passerby at a time means learning to write convincing songs that hook listeners in the time it takes to walk by.
"I busk about four days a week and make pretty good money at it. I think [of busking] how I write—more built-in pop songs, sometimes to a fault. It might be a deep heartfelt song that I like, but people won't connect to it easily," he explains of his album's songs. "So I write songs that are easier for people to connect. And that's why I have only 10 songs on the EP. I'm hoping to get away from busking—that's why I'm trying to tour. [Busking] can be hard on your self esteem sometimes: you can sell 20 CDs a day, but there's still 10 000 people that walk by. It can be tough sometimes."
A nice touch for his tour across Canada will be the busking he'll do in each small town he visits. "We'll be making a documentary of it, me playing every little town," Jones enthuses. "You can bet I'll be doing one in front of that statue of Wayne Gretzky holding the cup." V
Wed, Oct 13 (7 pm)
Bodhi Jones
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