Underground sounds
Billy James has been soothing weary commuters in the subway for 37 years. And he’s not alone. Here’s a look at some of TTC’s 78 musicians
Billy James was in his twenties when he rolled into Toronto with his guitar, driven by a duo of hippie girls he convinced to give him a lift to Hog Town.
It was the 1970s and like many of the city’s beat-driven bohemians of that era, he stumbled upon music mecca Sam the Record Man and instantly started busking in front of it. Before he knew it, crowds had formed and the store’s legendary owner, Sam Sniderman, was promising James free records if he returned to the spot once more.
James obliged, but his true love was just down the block at Dundas Station. Beneath the city streets, in the bowels of the transit system, he found a stage that he hasn’t left for the last 37 years.
You’ve probably seen James. Nearly everyone has. He’s the longest-playing TTC busker — a 61-year-old with an infectious smile, a proclivity for jigging about and a voice that is filled with enthusiasm.
It’s what’s earned him an honorary exemption from the TTC’s musician auditions, held every three years.
But even more than that, it’s what’s earned him the hearts of countless commuters who pass him on their way to work and school.
They usually drop coins in his guitar case, but James says he’s been given everything from a pair of shoes to an expensive box of Belgian chocolates with a $50 bill tucked inside.
Children, he says, have left him artwork they crafted at school and angst-ridden youngsters have scrawled him thank-you notes. One, he recalls, came from a teen contemplating ending her life.
“She said she was going to commit suicide until she heard the music and felt like it was sign of the good in life,” James recalled. “It affected her enough to stop something tragic.”
She wasn’t the only one who has been touched by James.
Years ago, a young boy and his grandmother visited James every week. On one trip, they stopped with a Christmas gift in hand.
James was loath to take it. He figured it was a token that had been left under the tree for the boy, but the grandmother assured him it wasn’t.
He unwrapped the package — addressed to the Music Man — to reveal a plaque engraved with a message about a man following his own path, marching to his own drum.
Some time later, he discovered the boy had died from cancer. The visits with James came as part — the boy’s favourite part, the grandmother said — of a regular pilgrimage to Sick Kids Hospital for treatment.
Stories like that, intertwined with music, have been the “best therapy,” said James.
“Music creates such good energy. My enthusiasm infects people. If I feel lousy, I get up and play and I’m a whole other person,” he told the Star, while busking one evening, despite having a cracked rib from tripping while carrying his case.
He wears the survivor badge well, having endured a childhood in foster care near the old CFB St. Hubert in Quebec. That was before a teacher plucked him from obscurity and fashioned him into a choirboy who later dabbled in bands, landed record deals and ended up nabbing one of the city’s first TTC licences in 1978.
That licence was his ticket to a smattering of gigs unveiling murals, playing in clubs and even jamming in train cars on a General Motors-paid journey between Toronto and Niagara Falls accompanied by hockey star Bobby Orr.
Looking back on it all, he says, life as a musician is what he was “born to do.
“This is all I do and all I have ever done.”