Busk Break is an ongoing field recording series documenting live performances by busking musicians and other street performers.
Charles Clyde Toney II performs “Drunk Angels”
Charles Clyde Toney performing in front of the Woolworth Walk.Charles Clyde Toney II is hardly a stranger to Busk Break. In fact, he’s one of the most documented performers in the series, thanks largely to one particularly fun evening of music on a very warm spring night this year, where he was joined by fellow buskers Kris Wahl and Eris Valentine. Until now, however, there hasn’t been a recording of Toney performing by himself.
It was blistering hot out when I ran into Toney (joined by his friends Cody and Patrick) near the Woolworth Walk. After a few lackluster attempts at playing together as a trio, I asked Toney if he had a song he would play solo. He did. It wasn’t finished, but he figured he could make up any parts he didn’t have worked out yet as he played it. It’s a rare thing to encounter a performer who, knowing he’s being recorded and that his work will be released to the internet at large, is perfectly fine playing a song he’s only half-finished.
Steve Shanafelt used to think he was a writer. Lots of other people thought he was a very good one, and they paid him to write everything from news articles to erotic comic books. Then, a few years ago, he started to realize that writing was just one very tiny piece of the puzzle. He started recording podcasts, producing field recordings of busking musicians, making short video series and learning how to make websites. Along the way, he learned lots of ways not to manage businesses and how to promote those businesses online. Now, people pay him surprisingly large sums of money to show them some of the things he's picked up.
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