From an interview with Robert Leslie on the earthy & elemental joys of surviving thru street music. The @nyc_buskerball returns on April 11th, taking place in Tompkins Square Park with street performers of all kinds taking over the park throughout the day! See @robertleslie perform there at 6pm.
This clip was taken from a 2024 interview with Matthew Ward at the Pollock-Krasner house @pollockkrasnerhouse in Easthampton NY.
Soo surreal to be playing this thing again. Back in August this guitar got snatched off a 24 bus in downtown Seattle. Pretty much due to my own carelessness if I’m being honest. The bus driver described the guy who took it and where he got off, and I went looking for him later that day on my bike among the tent cities along Airport Way close to Georgetown. A completely daft idea. The encampments just went on and endlessly on, an overwhelming feeling of so many problems far deeper than mine. I called a bunch of pawn shops and guitar stores and set an alert on Craigslist, and I fairly soon gave up on ever seeing it again.
Six months later here she is! Seems she wound up at a pawn shop in Renton, where a gear reseller found her a week ago and then listed her for sale on Facebook marketplace. I guess I’ve searched for that model Guild enough times that the algorithm sent it straight to the top for me.
It’s by no means a fancy guitar, it’s not vintage or rare, in fact it’s mass produced in China and doesn’t even have a serial number. But it sounds good, eh?? It’s got songs in it.
The song I’m playing is “Shake Sugaree” by Elizabeth Cotten, bout how it feels when you’ve sold everything you own to the pawn shop.
Many shows coming up in Seattle and NYC. See my bio - big grin all!!!
A spooky depression-era tune for you all: “Lullaby of the Leaves”, written by Bernice Petkere and Joe Young in 1932. My jazz sensei @thefatviper taught me this one - and he also helped me procure the beautiful @nationalguitars I’m playing here. Big grin - stay scary - and if you’re in Seattle on Nov 26th come to @thecrocodileseattle where I’ll be opening for @thebrudibrothers !
Happy Harvest Moon! I only learned late in my 20s that each full moon of the year has its own name, your Pink Moons and Worm Moons and Cold Moons and so on. The full moon marking the end of summer is called the Harvest Moon and Neil Young wrote what may be the cutest song ever about it. Play this anywhere and old couples appear and start dancing. Always a favorite in Wash Sq and Tompkins Sq in NYC and more recently on the Bainbridge ferry in Seattle.
Instagram doesn’t want me to post the whole thing but I’ll slap it up on my Patreon!
Writing ye from the road, hiway 1 en route to @nationalguitars in San Luis Obispo CA to pick up a new guitar! Big grin R
the solstice is upon us, and hark, this year it falls under a bananamoon - these celestial signs cannot be ignored - I’m going to be in NYC on June 20/21/22 and aim to be screamin feelins - Seattle I will be playing @rabbitboxtheatre on June 18th with @raineeblake and @chloekat27 - spread word on both coasts !
pic of me moonlighting as a street poet at pike place taken by random stranger !
Happy new year loves ❤️
Here’s a song I love like an old friend: “Mr Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan. Every time I sing it it’s sorta like an incantation, it takes me to the place of mysteries, makes me feel the way I did when I sang it every time before, which is so so many times. Years ago it was one of my best meal tickets all thru France, Spain, Morocco. My favorite way to play it was at night, when the streets were quiet, when there was an echo, and no one around. I loved to play it for myself, and I’d find that playing it would draw others in who would come from streets over, following the sound. I’d do the same thing years later, playing the NYC subway at night, for the bums and the sleepers.
Wild to think that this was pop music when it came out, reaching #6 on the US Billboard album charts and #1 in the UK. A five-minute symbolist poem that seems to swirl and turn like a kaleidoscope or a brightly colored mobile. Imagine the feeling of driving alone down a dark road at night in March of 1965, listening to the radio announcer saying “Here’s some new music from Bob Dylan,” a name you maybe haven’t heard before, and then this song happens to you for the next five minutes. For this to be a brand new thing would feel like anything could happen next.
For me the song has something to do with being an explorer alone, going into the mystic. Singing the images really does put you in the mind of poetry, you start thinking about Rimbaud’s wandering and TS Eliot’s dusty shelves, Belgian riverboats hung with colorful flags, old seaports like Tangier and New Orleans, and there’s something of Van Gogh in it too, or Matisse. It’s one of the portals into that zone that I wish I could be in all the time.
Thanks Bob! I still haven’t seen the new movie, I’m a bit nervous, but as you can see I am cheerfully making use of the moment. What did ye think of it?
Big grin - here’s to expanding access to the mysteries in 2025
#bobdylan #folkmusic #acompleteunknown #timotheechalamet #pikeplacemarket
“Girl From the North Country” by Bob Dylan!
Wishing all a late merry Xmas, happy new year, solstice, etc etc and big goopy oodles of luv & peace to you as the great phantasmagorical clock ticks out our time & the mechanics of life & politics & human consciousness explode in ever weirder & more disquieting directions!!!!!!!
If you happen to be in Seattle I’m playing a last minute show in Belltown tomorrow, Fri 27, at @swampcowkavalounge with @kerrycourtney ! Details in my story + on swamp cow’s page
I think I’d better keep the Dylan vids coming - young Chalamet has rung the dinner bell for us Dylan boys - after all these years our time is here - hark - !!!
#bobdylan #acompleteunknown #folkmusic @completeunknownfilm
A strange, and strangely relatable old song for ya. Stop a while n brood with me. The Winter of the Mole is upon us. Burrow deep in yourself with eyes blind & find those inner flames to warm ya scroll-tired fingeys … Recharge your soul for the unending madness … Grow big, strong, clearheaded & warmly furred.
(If you happen to be in Seattle, I’ll be opening up for a night of song & dance this coming Monday at @thesunsettavern with @jonandrewfranklin and Stephanie Yamamoto!)
“I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” is a traditional folk song best known through Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s 1928 rendition that wound up on the Anthology of American Folk Music. It originated in Haywood County, North Carolina somewhere around the turn of the 20th C. It pops up in funny places - Bob Dylan lifted a lyric in his “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” and the Tallest Man on Earth also borrowed words and imagery for his “I Won’t Be Found”.
Good luck out there, much love R
“My Bananamoon,” off singer-songwriter @robertleslie album Halfway Home, sung in the barn at @pollockkrasnerhouse where Jackson Pollock painted some of his best-known works. Find it wherever you get your music, and join us for the entire performance and conversation on “Inner Rhythm,” our new podcast.
Watch the full concert on YouTube and find our conversation wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the link in bio for more.
Produced by: @peconicpictures
life rolls on - playing @chopsueyseattle tomorrow evening with some new friends, see ya there sea monsters - it’s been a minute since my last indoor show and nothing further is booked !
meanwhile, have started moonlighting as a typing street poet warm eves on ballard ave thanks to @the_speakeasy_jazz_cats who has also been teaching me jazz - there’s a phone recording of hoagy carmichael’s “stardust” up on my patreon if you’d like to hear & support - more news soon, look out for some very slick live footage & interview I recorded on long island back in may ! big grin RL
NYC!!! The 16th annual BUSKERBALL is here - Sunday July 14th! Join us on the rooftop of @thesultanroom for an extravaganza of street performers - buy ya tix via the affiliate link in my bio and 100% of your $ goes to paying me and the band ! Came a long way for this one, can’t wait !!!!
