AT the chic-by-jewel end of Glasgow's Buchanan Street a young Australian musician called Rhys Crimmin is warming up the lunch-time shoppers. I’d only intended to hang around for a couple of songs but I’m still here after half a dozen, mesmerised by this itinerant, one-man, foot-stomping, guitar-playing, country blues orchestra from Melbourne.
He’s now giving us The Devil Went Down to Georgia “with an Aussie twist”. It becomes apparent that what he means by this is that a didgeridoo will feature boisterously in the arrangement. Within a few minutes his audience has grown from a handful to around 50.
A group of workers, renovating the grand sandstone building opposite, appear at a first-floor window, turning it into a pop-up executive box.
By his third song the crowd is approaching that of a Scottish second division football match. A punter, slightly sparkled with a mid-afternoon swalette, decides to give us an impromptu shimmy.
He’s soon on his way and Rhys plays a blues/country roots/folk/reggae version of Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. “This’ll be interesting,” says the chap standing beside me sporting a bandana and biker's jacket with all the badges of heavy metal aristocracy sewn on. He needn’t have worried though. Turns out that rock’s most recognisable riff loses nothing in being rendered by a didgeridoo.
The workmen show their appreciation by producing a bass-line with a lone pneumatic drill in tune with the didgeridoo: thump-thump-thump … thump-thump-THUMP-thump.
“Could you all please take a couple of steps closer to me,” Rhys asks us. “Just so that we’re not creating an obstacle for pedestrians and wheelchair-users.”
He’s been travelling around the world as a street musician for 18 years and knows the etiquette of the busking fraternity. This is his ninth time in Glasgow, en route to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next week.
READ MORE: Glasgow launches consultation to find views on city centre busking
“I love coming to Glasgow,” he says. “Unlike a lot of other cities, it’s really laid-back and chilled and they go easy on the regulations. You don’t need a permit and there’s no-one telling you where you can and cannot go."
On my sojourn up Buchanan Street and then left on to Sauchiehall Street I encounter a dozen or so buskers, all of them providing the citizens of this care-worn old city with a day-light, outdoor symphony. All the musical traditions are here: from rock n roll and bluegrass folk to a lone, Hungarian violinist playing a sweet air full of pain and longing.
They were all united in their appreciation of Glasgow as a go-to place for their artistry. None seemed aware of the consultation launched this week to ascertain their impact on the city.
Explaining the purpose of this exercise, Angus Millar, convener for City Centre Recovery for Glasgow City Council, said: “For many people, busking and street performing is a positive feature of a visit to the city centre, with the vast majority of these performers acting within the guidelines of our code of practice.
“We would like as many people as possible to give their views on buskers and street performers through this consultation as this will allow us to support what people enjoy and tackle any issues identified.”
The consultation follows complaints about noise from city centre businesses and some residents. Yet, none of those performing in the city yesterday came close to creating troublesome noise levels. On Sauchiehall Street, some of these street musicians were providing thrum and brio to a boulevard that’s lately been looking haggard.
Since the end of lockdown many businesses have lamented the reduction in footfall caused by the cost of living crisis and a reduced transport network. Surely they’d welcome any help in making the city centre a more vibrant and attractive place in straitened times?
Outside the Apple Store, Vinnie Moon is playing a more than acceptable version of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. He’s rocking a refugee Woodstock vibe in shades and long silvery hair.
A silken, black mantilla with a skull motif is wrapped around his microphone. We don’t trouble him for a comment because he’s in the zone, but he acknowledges us with a ‘rock on’ salute as he launches into the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. This pleases me more than it should.
And then we happen upon the day’s headline act, a heads-down, kick-ass rockabilly trio, called The Best Bad Influence. You could build your afternoon around these chaps: Michael McGill on drums, Alexander Munro on guitar and vocals and his dad, Alasdair Munro plucking a pink double bass and expertly maintaining a cigarette.
As they get tore into their set, a crowd gathers and a woman in a black scarf and black and white polka dot dress jouks and shimmies to their tunes. She dances like she means it and if she’d had a hat we’d have dropped some silver in it too.
“We’ve been doing this for the last four years,” says Alexander. “It’s great fun but it’s getting more demanding as we’re seeing more buskers and obviously people are struggling right now.” They’ve driven up from Ayrshire. “But we had had to leave the van over the bridge because of the new LEZ restrictions,” he says.
A young female singer comes along and asks where’s good to set up her pitch. The boys are helpful, but they don’t want to drown her out. And so, photographer Gordon and I point her in the direction of Sauchiehall Street. It’s quieter up there and we think it could do with another singer.
Outside the Buchanan Galleries at the Sauchiehall Street end, we meet singer/guitarist Maya from Brazil. She’s fallen in love with Glasgow.
“This is only my second visit but I love this city,” she says. “The people are so kind and friendly and they are very open to hearing different forms of music. In all my travels I haven’t found a better place to busk than Glasgow.”
An older lady in a green top stops to greet her. She’s a member of St Andrew’s West Church of Scotland on Bath Street and tells Maya that her minister is from Brazil and that she just felt she had to drop by and say hello. “See what I mean,” says Maya. “Scotland is such a wonderful place for musicians. It has music in its bones and I feel at home here."
Outside another of Sauchiehall Street’s ghost buildings, the Bhs store, Gavin Clinton from Ayrshire is playing the Fields of Athenry. He’s a fine guitarist with a good voice and plays this song quietly, almost contemplatively: the way it should be sung.
“I did this regularly for 12 years and then took a long break. This is my first time in almost a decade,” he says. “It helps to generate income for me, but the chief motivation for me is just the enjoyment you get out of simply playing in public. And people in Glasgow seem to appreciate you making the effort.”
Eleanor Kane, a Glaswegian actor and singer/songwriter now based in London has fond memories of her years busking on Buchanan Street. She’s currently rehearsing for a major new production, but gets back to her home city whenever she can. “Sometimes I’ve come off the train at Glasgow Central to be greeted by a group of street musicians and they let me join in with a song.
“I started on the Buchanan Street steps when I was about 12 underneath the Donald Dewar statue and I remember when I was 14 at a singing competition in town. Afterwards we were all heading to Wagamama, but I didn’t have enough money. So I got my guitar out, went up to Buchanan Street and earned enough for me to pay for my lunch.
“There’s some informal etiquette that binds the busking community. Everyone is very respectful of each other. If you get up early you can grab a good location and no-one will interfere with that.
"In a lot of other cities, like London, Manchester and Belfast it’s a lot more regulated than in Glasgow. People might not have a lot of money but they’re always generous, whereas in other cities too many see it as a free performance.”
On Sauchiehall Street, outside the shell of what was once Marks & Spencer there’s a ‘God love him’ moment. A creased and wizened man with hollow cheekbones, wearing a grey trackie top is expertly playing Always on my Mind on his mouth organ. He’s doing so with due reverence as though trying to lift the spirits of this street.
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