Reggie Miles, Scarecrow, and Robert Almblade - NW Buskers

NWPerformer Heritage Project (NWPHP)

Welcome to the Northwest Performer Heritage Project (aka Our Performer Family Tree).
I wanted to know who *my* mentors' mentors were and thus, this project was borne.
In the Pacific Northwest (USA), we are blessed with some of the best comedians, vaudevillians, musicians, and performers in the world. Seattle, Wa. has been lucky enough to host a large group of these performers, for at least 25 years. We have such a rich heritage, it seemed a crime to let it die with us. This performance bond has actually created a somewhat make-shift family between us all. That cannot be denied. Even though this may be our personal life history, it is also Seattle, NW, vaudeville, street performer and performance art history. Our histories, also, belong to the public, as they are part of our creation too. I want to help document and archive our community and culture so future generations can use us as a reference. Maybe a hundred years from now, street performing will be unheard of, and someone will find our story, and start a whole new community of entertainers entertaining entertainers, and the community, like we did. Stay tuned for more NW Performer Family Heritage to be posted here!

You can order Kirsten's new book about street performing, including interviews with street performers about a wide variety of topics. This is a unique view of the busker world from the inside.

Here is an example of one of our projects...this was one of our first projects, asking performer family who influenced them to become a busker and/or performer...

• Rhys Thomas aka Jugglemania: Chumleigh taught me that it's the words I should juggle. He also encouraged scholarship or at least awareness of variety arts history. Roberto Morganti taught me that the audience can give back more energy than you expend if you connect with them. Tim Miller taught me that with eye independence you can look at girls while juggling and that your own sense of humor is trump. The Flying Karamazovs taught me to flaunt my intelligence in performance and that the theater world can believe what we do is art. David Lichtenstein taught me to not be shy about sharing my politics onstage and that there's a whole world of streets to perform on. Moz Wright taught me that there's a mystical side to laughter and it's through there that the energy loop of entertainment flows. Russ Fish taught me to be proud of what I do, even when Chumleigh makes fun of it.
• Lou Hevly aka Lou Martin or The King: My mentors were PK, Ron Bailey and Bill Bagley.
• Howard Patterson aka Ivan Karamazov: I'd have to say my primary mentors were Chumleigh, three guys from LA called Cock and Feathers (Billy Barrett, Sandy Oxenhorn [now called Sandy Grinn], and Jeff Gluckson [now called Jeff Briar]), and five guys from Iowa who moved to SF and were called Duck's Breath Mystery Theater (Dan Coffey [Mr. Science], Merle can't remember his last name suddenly [Ian Shoals], Jim Turner [Randee of the Redwoods on MTV, now plays a character on "Arliss"], Leon whose name I've also suddenly lost, and Bill Abbott.). Besides them, Firesign Theatre, Tom Stoppard, the Beatles and the Space Program, but not as directly - though we have become palsy with Proctor and Bergman of Firesign over the years...
• Thaddeus Spae: Mostly I'm like Vaudeville 1.5 -- Gramps and Chumleigh and Artis were my inspirations, along with more distance sources like Dan Hicks and musical cohorts like the Damp Saddles folks and the Portland old jazz guys I hung with, especially John Ward and Rico Kemp and the banjo guy whose name escapes me but who really showed me how to use inversions. Plus o'course I was doing band music in high school and blew trombone hard at the Evergreen and was in a band or three there too. But I also taught myself a lotta stuff on guitar, pieced together out of books and listening. I never really had a guitar teacher.
• Mark Ettinger, First Husband of DuCaniveaux, Flying Karamazov Brother: Hovie Burgess (NYC Juggler) Artis FKB RB others?...
• Montana Von Fliss aka Royal Famille Du Caniveaux: i'm just starting out so i'd have to say that all of you are mentors to me; you, the du's, umo, mildred, faith. i think faith is probably an important one for a lot of us... many who are older than i as well. she is probably somewhere near the top of that heritage tree, the oldest one living anyway.
• Jim Page: I had too many mentors to go into it. Anybody with something new to show me, something I could learn from. Then it just became life in general.
• David Godsey, Artistic Director of UMO: My performer mentors were Bread & Puppet in Vermont, Bill Irwin, Avner the Eccentric, Ruth Zapora, Larry Pisoni (Pickle Family Circus Founder), Michael Moshen .... I didn't work directly with all of them, but they served nonetheless as guides and inspiration and a source of believing I wasn't crazy for what I wanted to do.
• PKDwyer: Ok, here's my little story; Always loved music from the 1st moment I can remember, my 1st epiphany came at about 4 years old; my mother, sister and I were sitting around the table singing "I Been Workin' On The Railroad" when my Mom started singing the 2nd harmony to it and my jaw hit the floor and I said you've got to teach me how to do that. Which she did. My 2nd epiphany came when I saw Elvis on TV, I was 6 and I then understood EVERYTHING! I then asked my Mother to teach me how to play guitar, which she did, so by the end of the 1st grade, I was performing, we would pick berries in the summer and during lunch my sister and I would entertain people, her singing the melody and me playing guitar and singing harmony, I did not see anyone else doing this at the time. My mom was pretty interesting, she played guitar, piano, sax and drums, sang and was a published poet and short story writer, till my father decided he didn't want her doing that!!!??? So my early mentors were my Mom and Elvis and all the rest of the '50's guys. So the next real epiphany was hearing " Like A Rolling Stone" on the radio. At the time I was playing the drums and I was really into The Rolling Stones and nobody in my band played harmonica so I got one and learned and got a harp rack and I was a harp playing drummer. So then when I heard Bob Dylan, I decided to go back to the guitar, bring my rack and harmonica and write songs, which I proceeded to do starting in Dec. '65, I then went out and started playing clubs, I was 15 when I got my 1st paying job, where I was kicked off stage for language. The street thang started becuase in 1970 I had a duo with a guy who played standup bass and sang and wrote songs and we decided to go to LA, so my wife at the time, our son, me and my musical partner and Louie the king jumped in a VW bus, which was from The Yakima Central Assembly of God Church and said so all over the bus, and went to LA where we got hungry pretty soon after getting there, so we heard sometimes people played on the grounds of UCLA and put their case out for donations, so we thought we'd try that rather than starve and we did ok and somebody told us that sometimes people played for the theater lines in Westwood. So we did that, me and my partner, Eric, playing and Louie passing the hat. Well all of a sudden we're making $50 a night, which was huge money in 1970, we were able to rent an apartment and everything. We ended up doing a soundtrack to a movie that came out, all kinds of stuff. But the thing is there wasn't anyone around doing it, we just sort of stumbled on it. The only other person I ever saw doing that at the time was Wildman Fisher if you're hip to that guy. So anyway, that's my evolution in a nutshell.
• Reggie Miles: First was probably my big brother George, who, in the early sixties, was able to talk mom and dad into allowing him to set aside the accordion and try guitar lessons. He started a band with some other guys and soon began to write songs. Being the oldest he was afforded those opportunities that I, the middle child of six children, could only yearn for. I would watch him practice with his new electric Harmony guitar and matching amp that dad had bought him and drool inside. I remember asking for guitar lessons but my parents would always respond by saying it was something they couldn't afford. "But George got to have guitar lessons!", was my tearful wail.

  My next influence and my introduction to singing and playing with others was shortly thereafter when the British invasion took our country by storm. My older sister, Aleta, being mostly responsible for getting me and several others in the hood involved. She somehow got a hold of some money and started buying 45rpm records, which she'd play over and over on a cheap little turntable. Her first record was by the Beatles, I Want To Hold Your Hand/She Loves You. She'd sing along with the records until she had the songs memorized. Soon a whole band of neighborhood kids began doing the same. We knew the words to any number of songs by popular British bands of the day like the Beatles and The Dave Clark Five. <-Where are they now? We'd get together with other kids in the neighb and pantomime the records as a band, always fighting over would would be Paul, John, George or Ringo. I remember one time when we played records on my sisters little portable record player, we set it on the step behind us as we stood in front of the stoop on the street and pantomimed the bands and songs. Yep, that's when we invented what we called Carry Yucky. We called it that because someone always had the yucky job of carrying around the record player, ya see, which was bulky and heavy and awkward. I hear it caught on in a big way somewhere back East but they call it something else. Some old guy walked by us and actually threw some spare change at our feet! Yup, and that's when we invented playin' music for money on the street. I heard much later that the idea caught on way back in jolly old England where they call it busking for some unknown reason.

  Getting back to my mentors, the next in line, in any big way, had to be my mom, who, after years of me constantly working on her, at every opportunity, finally caved, well sort of caved. For Christmas, one year, I received my first musical instrument. Well it wasn't exactly a musical instrument. It was more of a noise maker called a Kookie Kombo by Marx. It's frame was molded plastic made to look like plumbing and it had a neck strap and a waist belt. The whole thing operated with a crank on the side. Different levers, when engaged, would allow various items to be activated. One would start a small plastic hammer crashing into a pan lid, (a sort of make shift cymbal). Another lever would begin a spatula slapping the bottom of a frying pan. Activating another lever would begin a tooth brush scrubbing up and down on a metal wasboard face. The last one would allow a spoon, with a tamborine jingle on the handle end, to begin to beat the bottom of a soup can. All of these could be activated individually or in combination with any of the others and rhythmically slowed or quickened depending upon how fast you cranked the thing. In addition, along the top edge were a number of things that could be tooted. There was a huge kazoo, a two toned train whistle, a police whistle and a three holed flute. In short enough stuff to drive any parent out of their mind. So, I shouldn't have been surprised that the first words that came from my mother's mouth, upon hearing my exhuberant exploration into the intricacies of my first musical menagery were, "Get out of here with that thing! You're driving me crazy!" Easier said than done, as we lived in northern Wisconsin at the time and getting out of earshot meant going outside where there was about two feet of snow on the ground during that Christmas season, a nippy prospect. Undaunted and still reveling in the reward that took so many years of constant effort to finally receive, found me, soon afterward, marching triumphantly in my pajamas and snow boots in circles in the front yard through the light and drifting snow covered landscape.

  Woodstock was the next event that struck a chord in me. I seriously contemplated running off to take in the event, but I chickened out, as the world at large was pretty much an unknown quantity for me at the time. It did, however, make a big musical impression and I listened.

  Then, seeing my highschool art teachers play music in class one day. One was on guitar and the other on a washtub bass. I didn't know it at the time, but it would be this guitar playing art teacher that would be my biggest influence and mentor. His name was Robert Johnson. He taught during my first two years of highschool but then quit to play music full time. Later he tell me that he could make more money playing music on the weekends than he made all week teaching. It was on one of those weekends, after he had quit teaching, while I was hanging out on the streets of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, that I bumped into him while he was taking a break outside of a local pub. He invited me to come to work for him. He was going to open a ceramic shop to make and sell stoneware. Upon noticing my interest in playing guitar, while I was working with him, he bought me my first guitar as part of my wages. He taught me the first few chords and then let me use his record collection to listen to Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Muddy Waters, Gary Davis etc. I was in blues heaven. Bob was and still is a real role model for me. Seeing his performances gave me a blueprint of how to do it.

  I played my first gig while in highschool. I played clubs while going to college. I even had a goofy band that parodied the punk/glamore rock stuff that was happening at the time.

  It wasn't till years later, after college, that I lost the last remnants of the Kookie Kombo. My younger siblings had destroyed it while I was away at school, except for the whistle array. I moved to Seattle and lost that last piece in the move.

  Shortly thereafter I began playing on the street at the Market, where I met up with a curious fiddler named Crow. He and I were soon joined by an acquaintance of his named Robert Amblade another guitar player. Later we three joined forces with another fiddler named Tom Tilney, a guitar player, Cindy Three Kids, and Dave McKesson who was playing mandolin at the time. We called that combo the Music Circus. It was while trying to hammer out the direction of that band, what kind of music we would play and who would play what, that a real epiphany happened for me, or to me. The majority ruled in favor of a fiddle tunes/bluegrass type of approach, which kind of made me the odd man, coming from a background of fingerpickin' blues. So Dave, (we called him Mudflap) hands me this washboard and says, "Why don't you play this?" I reluctantly did as I was asked and when the only acutrament on it, a Planters Peanut can, fell off during the course of my initial scrubbing, I decided to make my own. Robert Amblade, (Cowboy Dog to us), always claimed it was at his behest that I eventually began turning my basic washboard into what I can only now describe as the adult version of the Kookie Kombo. The long forgotten instrument/toy I had received for Christmas years ago from my mother. It's still evolving today.

  My next mentors are those I've run into on the streets while performing. Besides all of those previously mentioned and others more obscure like West Viginia Slim and The Green Dragon from my years of playing at Pike Place, the late great musical saw god Tom Scribner has to be the most influential to my flexing of the razor sharp handtool. Even though we only met briefly, it was his ability on the unruly blade that continues to keep me focused and helps me carry on, risking life, limb and future family hopes, in pursuit of it's haunting timbre.

  Washboard Jackson, who I had the pleasure of working with in New Orleans, was a mentor as well as Billy Hultz during the early days of Strangers with Candy.

  Garage sales have opened a world of possiblities. Finding wacky old songs by Spike Jones, Bert Williams, Nervous Novus on crusty, dusty, chipped and scratched old 78s has been a constant inspiration, as well as the work of those who do the same.

• Jan Luby: My performer mentors were and are unknowns... Jocelyn Nixon - sang and played blues in SC bars and turned me onto Bonnie Raitt in the early 70's. Carol Robinson - singer/songwriter and dear friend in NYC when we were teens...recently died of cancer. Bill Hamilton - old boyfriend in NYC, wrote songs prolifically and played guitar. I was the only woman playing music on the streets in Santa Cruz when I started doing it...I may have been the first...But I come from a family of dancers and acrobats and jugglers...My dad played the streets of SF when he was young....I'd have to list my dad, stage name Mel Ody, too. See, no one's heard of them....Except the FKB know who my dad was...though he never "made it" he was well known among jugglers because he was so good.
• Mother Zosima As I hit my teens, in the 1970's, my first mentors were Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Maria Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt and Dan Hicks. I never saw street performers until I came to Seattle in 1978. Within two weeks of me seeing that existed at the Pike Place Market, I had a guitar and taught myself a few chords and was down there busking myself! I was both encouraged and discouraged by the predominantly male buskers at the Market. I learned street performance from great performers on the street such as Swing Bob McGuire, Rick Mandyke (jazz sax), Reggie Miles (washboard, saw), Crow (fiddle), Robert Almblade(guitar)as the Music Circus and beyond as solos, Sam Williams (FKB) and Bliss (Laughing Moon Theater), Chumleigh, Gramps, Jim Page, PKDwyer, RB and the Dynamic Logs, Orville Johnson (musical God), Liv (flute)and Mariide (sea Shanties). The women I was peers with at that point on the street were Susan Johnson (We Three), Cindy Threekids, Cyndy Boulding, Cyndy Sorrow, and Linda Schierman (Raw Sugar) and Shirley on fiddle. I have not since that period seen so many quality women acts busking the Market, or on any streets anywhere for that matter.

  I began to go to the Portland Saturday Market to busk in the 1980's and there I met David the Minstrel, Bob Shoemaker, Billy Kennedy, the Gravitini Brothers, Tim Miller, and a few others of the Oregon clan. They were all characters and I learned alot from them all. Later I moved to Santa Cruz, where I hooked up with Rebo and Jan Luby, some more of the Karamozov Brothers, Tom Noddy, David and Rosalyn, and that whole circus/vaudeville side of the family...I think I also met Thaddeus and Sandahbeth outside of Santa Cruz, in a busker competition that was fixed. I met T and S again at the Friday Harbor Jazz Fest in 1983, I KNOW that, as S. was doing a nightclub act there and I was very impressed with her voice.

  Eventually I made it to ocf where it all came together...where I met Rhys Thomas, Charlie Brown, Mildred Hodittle, Moz Wright, Henrik, UMO, and the Eugene crowd...And now, 24 years after I met everyone, my mentors are still Gramps, Rhys, Mildred, FKB...

This project will grow in time, so stay tuned.

Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.

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