A lovely, friendly Dane named Connie made my day simply by walking the two miles from the Greyhound depot to Music City Hostel & arranging to spend the night as our guest. I said hello over a small meal at the dinner table & her smile thawed my frozen heart. Half an hour later I was driving Connie & her guitar to Lower Broadway, where she was determined to busk her way out of temporary poverty.
This radiant foreign gal, fresh off the bus from Canada via Detroit, managed to get a geezer in an Air Force uniform to bestow a tip before she'd even played a note. I handed her a pair of berry-flavored Ricola lozenges for her sore throat, bought her a sweet tea with lemon at Jack's Bar-B-Q, and gave her an audience. For good luck, I tipped her a buck. I watched her perform for 20 minutes, by which time my greenback had plenty of paper company in her tip-cap. Here's the poem I wrote in her honor:
A Busker on Broadway
by Josef C. Mrazek
Connie commands the corner of Fourth Street and Broadway
a Danish queen of the folk guitar, strumming and singing
through a winter Nashville afternoon, alert and fearless,
picking those cold steel strings, making them ring warmly,
performing as though her next meal depended on that pile of
wrinkled dollar bills falling into her green tweed cap.
Busking is merely business, but music might just be
her soul’s salvation.
She inspires the lunchtime passersby who return her smile,
who stop to listen, to comment, to appreciate the bright
sight of a striking blonde in a black billed hat, absorbing
the life-giving sun in a black sweater, legs encased in torn
blue jeans atop red suede shoes outside Gruhn Guitars,
‘round the corner from the famous Ryman Auditorium,
within view of the Cumberland River, adorning the dirty
sidewalks of honky-tonk row. She dwells supreme in
Hillbilly Heaven.
An approachable angel in dreadlocks drawing upon
a repertoire of Americana classics – Sheryl Crow,
Neil Young, “Me and Bobby McGee” - plus songs all her own
in Danish and English, she pauses to take requests, sips sweet tea,
then launches into “Part-Time Gypsy,” daring to rhyme playas with
Himalayas, opening her heart, pushing notes past delicious
lips, attracting coins and other satisfying signs from
a generous universe.
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