James and I have done a number of gigs with an organization here in Philly - the Community Cultural Exchange. Their recent engagement is to bring back live music and buskers on South Street which is pretty cool. Tonight he and I took our turn on the famous Village-esque street of Philadelphia.
We plopped ourselves down at 6th and South - across from a fire department (where a former student of mine works or used to work) - and got ourselves set up. After a couple moments of discussion we got to work.
Wouldn't you know it? The middle of the FIRST verse of our SECOND song - TWANG! I felt the B string go. Fortunately I know the area moderately well. So after I muddled through the rest of the song, I told James what happened and then darted off towards Bluebond Guitars at 4th and South.
Rounded the corner to see what I was most afraid of - the metal gate was down indicating they were clearly closed. Turned around and huffed my way back to the pawn shop at 8th and South. Same damned gates.
ARGH.
At this point I'd run the options I knew of. I ducked inside a used CD/record store figuring if they didn't sell strings then maybe they knew another alternative. The clerk was friendly but only knew of a place west of Broad street (9 blocks too many!) and thought he'd seen one on 4th St south of South[1].
At this point I figured too much more delay was just silly. Went back to our spot[2], detuned the string, and swapped the pegs it was on. Tuned it back up to a B and, after a couple seconds of strings setting, started the set back up.
It wasn't the best tone, no. And the lack of an upper E string threw some of my chords a little wonky if not outright confused me for a second. (D major or minor chord? How do I... Oh yeah.) But it was serviceable - certainly much better than just trying to play without the B string. That gap is just... completely confuddling.
And the bottom line is that we still did pretty well. The tips could have been more generous, of course. But we enjoyed ourselves and the weather was almost perfect for busking. Maybe just a *tad* cold (for me at least) but not quite so cold that our muscles, joints, and vocal cords were affected.
- I only remembered what place he was talking about LONG after the busking was over. But that place is open only randomly. I suppose I could have checked but...
- James and I did try and contact a couple other people in hopes they might have or have access to a spare but that garnered no results.
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