| It
was our Spring ritual for almost a decade, starting when I retired
in 2010. My close friend and long-time picking pal Ed Britt and
I would wait for the first warm, clear day over 60 degrees, and
drive into Harvard Square, always early in the morning, to grab
our favorite spot along Brattle Street. We would plug our banjos
into our portable amps, set up our tip jar, and entertain the
folks on their way to work. We would stay through lunch time,
and leave around 1 pm, turning our coveted spot over to some other
performer. All morning we played one fiddle or banjo tune after
another, never repeating a tune, Ed playing the old-time clawhammer
style and me three-finger picking. When we first began our busking,
passers-by would often ask us if we had a CD for sale, so over
the following winter I put one together from various recordings
we had made playing in my living room over the previous decade.
In the fall of 2014, we made some new recordings, in order to
put together a second CD. It was never finished. Sometime near
the end of 2015, I noticed Ed was having trouble remembering tunes,
and in general was showing signs of confusion. By the end of the
summer of 2016, Ed would be diagnosed with Alzheimers. We continued
to busk with our friend John Maguire until July of 2018, when
the side effects of Ed’s illness finally forced us to stop. On
February 18, 2021, it finally took his last breath from him. The
tunes below, in MP3 format, are from our original CD and from
those 2014 sessions, for the CD that never made it to Brattle
Street. Ed and I also made and posted about eighty videos on YouTube,
which you can find by going to my YouTube
channel, interspersed among my solo videos. In the last thirty
or so, we are joined by John Maguire. |
