What shall I play next?

Favourite pitches #1: halfway across this footbridge leading from the carpark to the shops and cafés. Lots of passers-by, not much road noise. Also used by other musicians, homeless beggars, Big Issue sellers, so I usually only play here at quiet times. If it's a market day, recorded music from a nearby stall can make it unfeasible. 

It's beautifully simple, but there's a process. Before leaving the van, I tune the guitar with my electronic tuner. Later adjustments I can do by ear, but I do like to start off knowing that my E really is an E. It stops me imagining that the songs all seem too low today, or too high. 

A classical guitar with two unclassical aspects: a strap and a capo. (The wide-neck capo, which cost £40, is my pride and joy.) I'm highly dependent on the capo, my vocal range being so limited; often a song is only singable in one key.

And of course a hat (ground-baited with a few coins), and a bottle of water. 

That's it. No amplification and no means of taking electronic payment (these are matters of principle). 

The audiences are lovely. They're local. Elderly people, young people, children who beg a coin from mum or dad so they can put it in the hat. Sometimes people are too generous (in my view), and I've had to learn not to reject this generosity. The whole thing's about respectful human relationships, outside the withering frameworks of commerce and institution. Often, of course, I earn next to nothing, and that feels fine too. I'm singing because I enjoy it. 

I'm always learning a new song, and others have gone rusty through not being played, but here's a list of what I think I could play today without needing to rehearse; a longer list than I expected! 

I'll take a glass

Sweet sixteen

Two songs Laura found on YouTube,  performed by Finbar Furey. The latter one dates back to the 1890s. Both of them strong and nostalgic, making an instant emotional connection.

La mer

The great song by Charles Trenet that he wrote on a demob train at the end of WW2, celebrating the unglamorous Mediterranean coast near his birthplace of Narbonne; and for his nation the half-forgotten possibility, at last, of something called leisure. For some reason I decided at an early stage to switch the rhythm to triple time. (My French accent is atrocious, but it doesn't matter.)

Singing in the rain

For obvious reasons, a handy song to have in a busker's repertoire. Just four chords, and loads of fun to play.

The weight

Robbie Robertson's 1960s classic of mundane hanging around and getting tangled up in complications, that somehow takes on a biblical resonance and encapsulates a new youth culture.  Lots of opportunity for neat little guitar fills. You'd think the chorus wouldn't work with just a single voice, but I enjoy trying.

A matter of time

Evangeline

Two songs I've lived with for forty years, since Los Lobos released their first album. Both in different ways songs about leaving home, the experience of Mexicans seeking a better life in the USA. I feel I do pretty well emulating the band's arrangement of Matter of Time, but the awesome guitar introduction to Evangeline still eludes me. 

Joanne

The Michael Nesmith classic, from Magnetic South; challenging falsetto bits, a bouncy rhythm and irresistible melody.

Grandpa (tell me 'bout the good old days)

Another song Laura put me on to, bringing back distant memories of the Judds. A song whose sweetness contains irony, doubt and anger.

Our last summer

The Abba song about a Paris romance in flower power days. I always (mentally) take a deep breath before starting it; it's all action, with no pauses for thought. Of course it's not unusual for me to make a mistake, in this and all the other songs, but that doesn't matter much when you're busking, when people are mostly just hearing snatches. The emphasis is on keeping going and communicating a feeling, and playing as loud as you can without it falling apart. It's a completely different skillset from the expressive dynamics and subtleties of playing in a quiet room.

Thanks for the memory

I discovered this on a CD by one of my heroes, Mildred Bailey. Fantastic swing era number; it's a lot of fun trying to emulate a swing band on an acoustic guitar. 

Georgia on my mind

This was on the Mildred Bailey CD too; it's from her I learnt the introductory verse, which Ray Charles and The Band didn't use. I rarely have the feeling that my British passers-by recognize this song or feel strongly about it, but I do.

Get set for the blues

Another jazzy song that steps from seventh to seventh. I heard it many years ago on Julie London's About the Blues, and I've loved it ever since.

Baby I'm feeling it now

Cloud

Lay all your cards on the table

Waltz 1

Waltz 2

Three songs composed by me, and two guitar pieces that have no titles. Waltz 1 really needs Laura's harmonica. 

Please help me I'm falling

I've been playing this song so long that I can't really remember how it came about. I knew Don Gibson's version, but that was in prehistory. I think I must have been reminded of it in more recent years by hearing it on a cheap country compilation during dull commutes. 

Den första gång jag såg dig

Så länge skutan kan gå

Dansen på Sunnanö

Sjösala vals

Sol vind och vatten

Fryksdalsdans nr 2

Five Swedish songs of various ages, and a schottische to get the fingers working. (On cold days I know it's time to stop playing when I can no longer manage the chord shape of C.) No-one in England has shown any recognition of these songs, but in Stockholm they did.

Calle Schewen's Waltz

Another Swedish song (by Evert Taube, like three of the previous) -- for some reason I tend to sing this one in my own English translation.

Who knows where the time goes

Sandy Denny's song, with a lovely easy progression based on the E shape, and added guitar twiddles that vainly seek to replicate Richard Thompson. As you've already seen, I often seem to be attracted to songs associated with women singers. I think detaching the singer from the song and its protagonist, as folk singers have always done, opens up many creative possibilities. There's something appealing, too, about applying my very limited vocal skills to songs sung by amazing vocal stylists like Sandy. (The song I'm learning at the moment is Al Green's Sha La La.)

I want to see the bright lights tonight

This is another one with a woman protagonist: a Richard Thompson song originally sung by Linda. 

Streets of Forbes

Australian folk ballad, the only real story song in my repertoire. It seemed appropriate to have a bare bones accompaniment using only the middle four strings, the right hand never shifting position. 

Hickory wind

You're still on my mind

You don't miss your water

Three songs I discovered half a century ago on the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The lovely melody of Gram Parsons' Hickory Wind, his song about growing up too fast, is astonishingly founded on  the most basic of three-chord tricks. You're still on my mind is a George Jones swing country blues about trying to treat heartache with alcohol. You don't miss your water is William Bell's song, originally from 1961. 

I won't let you down

An obscure song these days, wriitten by the great Albert Lee; it appeared on the final album by Heads Hands and Feet in 1973. A sweet song about love and memory with an extended coda of joyous guitar at the end.

Wide open road

The W. Australian classic by the Triffids; basically the same chord progression throughout, but you can be very inventive with it.

Atlantic City

Bruce Springsteen's song about drifting into crime, again mostly over a constantly repeated chord progression. 

You wear it well

The Rod Stewart hit, a song that's strong enough to flourish even without his voice.

Warwick Avenue

One of many fantastic songs on Duffy's first album. Like a lot of others here, I learnt the chords from online sources. Some of the online chords don't seem to quite match the complex original arrangement, but it's close enough.

(Working out the chords was so much harder in pre Internet days. Nowadays you can at least start with what others have made of it.)

Always on my mind

As sung by Elvis Presley, but my version comes mostly via Willie Nelson.

Celluloid heroes

By Ray Davies: a wonderful hymn to Hollywood's golden age as seen from Muswell Hill, though it feels rather different from the songs of the Kinks' greatest years. 

The water

Johnny Flynn's song, originally a duet, about dying: the river of life debouching into the sea of eternity.

The mayor of Simpleton

By XTC; their warm-hearted hymn to being a dimbo; great fun to play on an acoustic guitar. My tribute to my Swindon years. We often used to take a walk over the fields to the big council estate where, I later learnt, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding both grew up.

Favourite pitches #2: beside what is now just a pollard stump, but last year was a fine clean-limbed lime tree. (The council were worried about the hollow at the base.) Plenty of people going past on this riverside walk. Well away from the noise of motor traffic. Sometimes I get drowned out by birdsong; not so much the constant low-register chatter of the rooks, as the piercing jubilations of the wrens.