Busking in their musical success
Artists are going back to basics to kick-start their music careers. Chris Schulz meets those making waves, entertaining on the streets.
Abearded man in a red shirt shuffles by. A woman with long hair and a backpack turns her head. A couple holding hands ignore them.
It’s a slow start, but as the duo standing on Courtenay Place begin banging drums and blasting a saxophone at a gathering crowd, the mood changes.
Ripples of applause can be heard. Kids start moving their hips. Students carrying a cask of wine and a box of beers catch the melody and burst into song as they walk by.
As the pair finishes, a woman steps forward and drops coins into their case. Someone starts cheering.
The duo’s January 2013 performance was filmed and uploaded to YouTube by someone who wrote in the description: ‘‘Came across this pair performing in Wellington City.’’
It’s among the first-known performances of Drax Project, one of New Zealand’s fastest-rising pop groups.
Known for their radio staple Woke Up Late, they’ve expanded to become a four-piece with plenty of success behind them, including recording and releasing their debut album, winning several New Zealand Music Awards and touring with Camilla Cabello and Lorde.
They’ve also performed to much bigger crowds than the handful gathered in inner-city Wellington that day.
In 2018, Ed Sheeran chose Drax Project to open for him at three Mt Smart Stadium shows, in front of 40,000 people each night. A year later, they were on before Six60, and set the record for the biggestever headlining show by a Kiwi band at Western Springs, attended by roughly 50,000 people.
On that summer evening in 2013, though, things were a little more humble.
Those standing outside Wellington’s Reading Cinema didn’t know they were watching the beginnings of a band.
Neither did the two Wellington music students featured in the clip.
‘‘That was our little spot – we’d be tucked under Reading [Cinema’s] foyer,’’ says Matt Beachen, the one hitting the drums and bashing a fair bit of cowbell.
Next to him was Shaan Singh, who’d invited his mate from music school to a casual busking session when his usual buddies dropped out.
‘‘I thought, oh yeah, why not?’’ says Beachen. He hadn’t busked before, but soon learnt upbeat covers tailored to the crowd were the way to go.
‘‘You’d figure out what kind of music people would like . . . If you see a hen’s do, they might like Katy Perry or Taylor Swift, or if you see some golden oldies [who’d] just finished dinner we’d play some Stevie Wonder.’’
Being a band wasn’t on their mind. The pair were just trying to make some money so they could buy dinner.
‘‘You’d take the cash from the saxophone case and go buy some burgers,’’ Beachen says.
‘‘You can’t abandon the drums and saxophone, so one of us was always there. There’s always music going.’’
On Saturday nights, they’d play all evening, often past midnight. They made good money, sometimes pulling in $600 each.
Things didn’t always go their way. ‘‘We got so many parking tickets busking,’’ says Beachen. ‘‘We got lazy with it. We were parking out the back of Reading. [The fine was] $60, an hour’s wage.’’
It was casual to start with, but things quickly got serious. The bar manager for El Horno liked what he heard and offered them a gig, which turned into a regular slot. They started receiving requests to play private parties and weddings.
People kept asking them for their name, so they called themselves Drax Project, an amalgamation of ‘‘drums’’ and ‘‘sax’’.
They added Sam Thomson on bass, and Ben O’Leary on drums. Shaan started singing and they began working on their own songs. They released their first EP in 2014, then their first music festival offer, from Rhythm & Vines, came in.
Beachen agrees that busking honed their skills, and fast-tracked their abilities. They’d played so much together that by the time the gig offers came in, they were ready.
‘‘It taught us how to entertain, because if you’re not entertaining, you’re not getting any money. We figured how to do big build-ups, big drops, just changing it up.
‘‘If you can sneak a couple of songs into the set that people know, it actually does the world for
you. We still play [Justin Timberlake’s] Cry Me a
River.’’
Drax Project didn’t know it at the time, but by taking their music to the streets, they were following a major trend.
All over the world, budding musicians are turning to busking as a way to get a head start in the hugely competitive music industry.
Those who choose to do it have plenty of role models to choose from.
Ed Sheeran is now one of the world’s biggest stars, but search YouTube and you’ll find footage of a scrawny teen performing on a Galway street corner to a handful of people. In 2018, Sheeran sold out two stadium shows in that same city.
Sheeran’s chart-topping success has inspired musicians all over the world, and they all profess their love of busking. That’s exactly how Michael David Rosenberg, British singer-songwriter Passenger, kicked off his career.
‘‘If you can play on the street, you can play anywhere,’’ he recently told All Music.
In Australia, Tash Sultana (who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun they) used guitar and bass to create songs on the fly on the streets of Melbourne.
‘‘I am a self-taught musician,’’ they say in a YouTube documentary. ‘‘I got a job, I f...ing hated it. So I started busking.’’
The artist has since performed in New Zealand several times, including a headlining show at Spark Arena in November.
Toni Watson chose a similar path, performing covers of songs like Outkast’s Hey Ya! using two keyboards and a microphone in the streets of Byron Bay.
‘‘In the winter when no-one else would busk, when it was raining, I would be busking,’’ she told
The New York Times.
‘‘It wasn’t about the money, it was about, no matter what, being able to get more fans.’’
Now known as Tones and I, Watson has all the fans she can handle thanks to Dance Monkey, the chart-topper that saw her visit New Zealand for the first time in January to perform at Bay Dreams.
Then there’s the extraordinary story of Nelson’s Nick Ferretti, who moved to Spain with his family and was busking in Majorca when a judge from reality show German Idol walked past, loved what he heard, and invited him on to the show. Ferretti entered and came second.
‘‘I never thought I’d be a German B-grade celebrity,’’ he told Stuff. ‘‘I can’t believe I got this far.’’
Pam Glaser, event director for the annual Auckland International Buskers Festival, isn’t surprised more musicians are taking their songs to the streets.
Busking hasn’t just become more acceptable over the past few years – she reckons it’s become a phenomenon.
‘‘It used to be that you’d stop, you’d stand and watch, and you’d move off,’’ she says. Buskers with all kinds of acts and from all walks of life now pull large crowds, make good money and spend their time travelling the world performing at festivals.
Glaser says busking is so common now that it’s expected. City streets seem quiet and boring without them. It’s also teaches performers how to play to a crowd.
‘‘It’s raw, it happens in front of your eyes, unrehearsed. It’s live, it’s interactive, it’s a skilled performer using what’s in front of him or her.’’
Because busking has become commonplace, crowd expectations have risen, and the performers have had to follow suit.
‘‘They’re incredibly skilled,’’ says Glaser. As a way to improve, busking is ‘‘so simple and so effective’’.
But it doesn’t come without risks. Howick musician Mitch James discovered that for himself when he moved to London in an attempt to follow in Sheeran’s footsteps.
In interviews, James has been open about the problems he had during a two-year stint on his lowbudget OE.
‘‘I played 250 gigs, busked more than 150 times
. . . slept on the street for eight weeks, was robbed twice, beaten up once, and witnessed a stabbing,’’ he told Stuff in 2018.
After posting a collection of covers to YouTube, Sony Music offered him a deal, and James released his first album in 2018, which included radio staples 21 and Bright Blue Skies.
He went on to realise an even bigger dream when, like Drax Project, he opened for Ed Sheeran on his 2018 New Zealand tour.
His biggest show at that point had been to about 300 people. He then walked played in front of 40,000.
‘‘It’s like some kind of drug . . . it’s so hectically surreal,’’ says James. ‘‘It was the biggest baptism by fire ever.’’
James still uses skills learnt busking in live shows, throwing in surprise covers, songs from Britney Spears, TLC and Nelly, to keep the mood up. Once a busker, always a busker.
Drax Project’s Beachen says he’ll always check out buskers when walking around Wellington and often gives them money.
It’s his way of giving back, reminding him of the days when he and his mates hosted a street party in Wellington every weekend.
‘‘I miss just the innocence of it, just having fun. All your mates are walking past, they’d surround you, like an outdoor club. It’s just a big party and everyone’s happy. It was so much fun.’’