Supa Lowery Brothers

Supa Lowery Brothers

It's 2pm on a Tuesday and the Supa Lowery Brothers are on the move again. They had set up in a courtyard between 3rd and 4th St. on Market next to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but shortly into their first number a security guard had come up and told them they can't play there.

As a trio featuring Chris and Wes Lowery with Mekiso Young (appologies, I've lost my notes so I don't know if I spelled his name right) on guitar they face slightly bigger challenges than the average street performers. They are amplified, which is its own hassle, they need more space, and setting up and tearing down is more involved processes.


But even after this first set back, they're undeterred. They settle on the future storefront for Diesel clothing on the three-way corner of Ellis, Stockton, and Market. Across the street world famous Bucketman has taken a break from his own street performance in front of Old Navy and the Supa Lowery Brothers are ready to try again.

Originally from Philadelphia, they have come up from LA to promote their band to a San Francisco audience. Between trumpet solos Christopher holds up CDs for sale to passers by.

The Supa Lowery Brothers are my first official street performer encounter. I had intended to interview a saxophone player I would see just about every day and had even arranged to meet him that afternoon, but he's nowhere to be found. Instead, I found this jazz fusion trio hastily setting up their PA system and asked if I could record them.

After quickly re-assembling themselves on the three-way corner, they begin playing again. It turns out to be a good location. The Apple store is just across the corner, and people congregate in front of them waiting to cross one of the three streets.

I've borrowed a Canon DSLR from a friend to photograph the performers and while I take my pictures spectators stop for a few minutes and move on, some dance including one man who remained even after I left. I didn't see anyone buy the CDs that Chris held up, but they remained upbeat regardless.

For them, the tell me, it's all about getting their name out there. They could try and hustle up a club gig which they would have to pay for out of pocket and promote and then play to the people who come in, but they've chosen to take their sound to the street, exposing their music to the lunch crowd in San Francisco's Financial District.

This is the first interview I cut a long time ago on Audacity, which is a good audio editor but I wasn't all that adept at using it editing audio documentaries. It's something I never got the hang of and eventually slowed me to a crawl in the editing process. It's also one of the interviews I stacked at the last half of the track instead of all the way through spread out. The few people who have heard these interviews didn't like that (it is a little jarring when the interview suddenly comes in), so later interviews change that.

I recommend headphones for two reasons, first is so that you can make sure you hear it all. The second reason is atmospheric. This isn't just a music performance, but a street music performance and the sounds of the San Francisco mid-afternoon are just as much a part of it as anything else. So put on a good pair of headphones and let this take you to a bright spring afternoon in San Francisco with the Supa Lowery Brothers. Enjoy.

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The Art of Busking

So, for four years I lived on Treasure Island in San Francisco.

What that means is whenever I traveled into The City using public transportation, my starting point was the Transbay Terminal at 1st and Mission in the Financial District, a block away from Market and one of the higher foot traffic areas of San Francisco.

During a gig working on an independent film my van was in the shop and I had to take BART to the locations (luckily it was filmed entirely on the peninsula) and every morning on the way out and every evening on the way back, I would pass a variety of amazing performers playing on the street for tips.

I've been fascinated by street performance for years. My first film for documentary class, long since lost, was a short called Free where I profiled and recorded street performers on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, California. Unfortunately, being who I am, I waited too long to get the footage I needed and was forced to film on a rainy day, limiting my choices.

But I saw so many amazing things being performed in the streets. A cello duo, martial arts and dance demonstrations, contact jugglers, guitarists, saxophonists, all performed on street corners while people went about their day. Some people stop, some don't. Some are good, some are just awful. But to me, it was always interesting.

There's a story that has been around the internet for a while now about violin virtuoso Joshua Bell performing in a D.C. subway where the commuters just pass him by. I won't really summarize the article here again, it's been summarized a lot and surely most of you have already seen it, but the idea is to recognize beauty around you.

In a way, that's what I was hoping to do with this project I started back in 2008. I wanted to bring to the forefront what I felt was an essential background to the cities that I loved so much, San Francisco and Santa Cruz. So, grabbing my audio gear I drug myself out and tried to find street performers who I could interview and present here on the internet, give people a chance to get to know these people, recognize them for the value they are to our urban experience.

I won't go into the 'what happened' or list of excuses why the project never got finished or off the ground, just to say that it didn't. And I've been disappointed about that for a while now. But after helping my brother cut a series of videos about his backyard R/C track I thought I might be able to use iMovie to cut the interviews I had managed to get and finally share them as a sort of omage to what could have been my Grand Street Performer Project.

So, over the next couple of days I'll slowly post the various interviews I've managed to cut and share them with you. Even though it is not as 'grand' as I had intended, hopefully it will allow a few people who read them to take a second glance at the performer they pass on the street and appreciate the color and texture they bring to our day.

Enjoy.

The Project into the Future

So...when I said "back in a few" it depended on what "a few" meant.

Here's the problem with the initial project: I dropped my hard drive that the project was being stored on and I haven't been able to get it fixed. I was told it would cost twice as much as a new one just to get it opened, but I'm sure I can find a tiny enough screwdriver for less than $200.

However...I have this illness where I think of ideas I want to explore and then getting lost in how to do them and more importantly, what to do with them.

Well, I have this stillborn blog here where I got almost 80 days into a project and while my readership was meager, it felt good just to %*(&^$ do it.

In a sense, my own hang ups about how to go about distributing my project ideas have been their own albatrosses, keeping me sitting on ideas and sometimes even material because it won't be 'pro' or whatever weird criteria I might have come up with.

Well, the truth is, none of this stuff is going to make me rich or a household name or end up having someone from a documentary channel call me up. There is no point waiting by the phone for Ira Glass to find me interesting.

But, dammit, this is the internet. I have the power to be irrelevant publicly. And ten people a day accidentally can stumble upon my work. Which, while meager, is more than would if these things stay in my head or on my hard drive.

So, here is the divide: There are some random project ideas, like me summarizing my collection of The Shadow radio programs that are really nothing more than me boring strangers about things I like. That's regular blog stuff, that stays on The Sandwich Machine. While that project sounds a lot like what I do here, it makes sense in my head to separate the two. If for some reason you have an opinion on that I'll probably just do whatever you tell me to do because I'll consider you my only reader.

There are other projects in which I actually did something, or interviewed someone doing something, or the like. They are creative endeavors in some way. These projects will now be hosted, as I am able to complete them, here on the Albatross. Should I get a screwdriver to fix my stupid hard drive, the original project will also take place, but perhaps not on the daily grind. We'll see.

So...welcome to the New Project:Albatross. Feel free to wander about the old Project:Albatross. Feel free to thumbs me up or tweet me or whatever method you use to tell other strangers about things you enjoyed.