In the busk

Plattsburgh State music teacher shares stories about his adventures in Europe

Story and photos by Gabrielle Bilik

Daniel Gordon is a man of many hats. This particular hat, the hat in the center of the table, seems to have caused a bit of trouble. Perhaps not the hat directly, but it’s involvement in the sequence of events that have unfolded definitely left it guilty by association. See, the hat holds the money.  The Swiss money. The money that wasn’t earned entirely legally.

The money was earned through a practice called busking. The term sounds like it should be naughty, but it’s bad only if you don’t have the proper paperwork.  The Swiss take pride in their pristine snow capped mountains and perfectly manicured fields of grass. Any sort of pollution would be tragic, and so as a preventative measure, they require that their street performers, or “buskers,” have proper documentation.

“Don’t ever jump a policeman”

“This was in the 80’s,” Gordon explains. “You couldn’t possibly know all the rules and regulations of every place that you went. You could either look into it ahead of time, or just play dumb. Usually this worked, but that time it didn’t.”

Gordon and his busking partner were escorted to a police station and were asked to pay a fine for playing their saxophones without a permit. Not wanting to give up any of their precious traveler’s checks, they acted as though the 50 francs in their hat, (equivalent to about 35 dollars), was all that they had. Gordon’s partner, Gary Scavone, was certain that the cop questioning them was going to pocket the money. After much un-cooperation from the two, the frustrated officer did take the money in an attempt to leave. Seeing this, Scavone jumped the cop. “Don’t ever jump a policeman,” warns Gordon.

“Of course officers are trained for this sort of thing,” laughs Gordon, opening his arms explicatively. “He dragged him across the floor; we gave him the hat money, and left in disgrace.”

Not all of the experiences Gordon had in his busking days were bad.

“Busking was at its best when unusual things happened,” says Gordon.

At one point during their travels, he and Scavone had been frequenting a bridge that crosses the Seine, leading to Notre Dame Cathedral. One day they arrived at around 6:30 p.m., their usual time, to discover someone else had taken their spot. Discouraged, they walked under the bridge out of earshot. A man approached them and said he had heard them the past few evenings, and really enjoyed their music. He asked them to play for his wife’s birthday, and they ended the evening performing for a French woman in a beautiful Parisian penthouse overlooking the Seine.

Gordon was thrilled that the trip didn't cost nearly as much as he had anticipated.“We were giddy with excitement when we realized that we could support our travels by doing what we did for fun,” says Gordon.

Gordon looks back fondly over his busking days, and recounts his adventures in an online book called Sax on the Streets: Confessions of an American Street Musician in Europe. He spent the summers of 1987 and 1988 busking, and the book includes several of his experiences as well as his overall train of thought along his travels.

 “I don’t think there has ever been a book like this by an actual street musician. They’re always moving too much to sit down and write. That’s the pitch I used when first trying to write this book,” says Gordon.

“I had no desire to get a job, but a big desire to travel, so I slapped a backpack on my back..."

Before his travels, Gordon graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from Syracuse University.

“I had no desire to get a job, but a big desire to travel, so I slapped a backpack on my back and ended up eventually stumbling upon a job in Barcelona,” says Gordon.

It was after spending time at this job that Gordon and Scavone decided to travel throughout Europe. They enjoyed it so much that they did it again the next summer. In between summers, Gordon freelanced in New York, teaching private lessons, and working as a music copyist.

Gordon has since hung up his busking hat, and now spends his time juggling his life as a conductor, teacher, musician, and family man.

“I also formed an ensemble among the music teachers called the Adirondack Wind Ensemble,” Gordon says. “As teachers, we create a lot of performance opportunities for our students, but not for ourselves, as it turns out there is a really well balanced wind ensemble in the area.”

At first, Gordon didn’t expect the turnout to be so large. He says he expected only fifty percent of the people he emailed in 2002 to answer him, but about ninety percent of the people said yes, they began practicing and performing, and they have been ever since.

“Having spent the last twenty years in professional Military Concert Bands and Wind Ensembles, it has been a real pleasure to find a musician of Dan’s caliber in the North Country when I retired,” says Lori Salimando, musician and board member of the AWE.

To satisfy his artistic needs, Gordon is also a member or a small saxophone quartet named the “Frontier Saxophone Quartet.”

“Two of them live in Montreal over the Canadian border, and we also like to play new works on the musical frontier,” Gordon says.

Gordon is very happily married to a Finnish woman that he met during his travels as a street musician in Norway.

“Finnish is an impossibly difficult language. I’ve labored for over 20 years to learn it and my kids switch on and off from English to Finnish without thinking anything of it,” marvels Gordon.

“My wife and I celebrate three anniversaries a year, since there are a lot of complications with marrying a foreigner, we’ve been married three times,” Gordon says.

Gordon smiles as he explains this, and eyes the pictures of his daughters on his desk; he glances at the people passing through the rearview mirror that he has glued on to the window of his office. The office is mostly gray, but with sharp, brightly colored, geometric patterns decorating the walls.

“I fought to keep the walls like this," Gordon says. “I think I have the best office in the world,” he says.  His office overlooks the sculpture park outside of Meyers, Plattsburgh State’s fine Arts building.

“I like the variety of doing different things,” says Gordon, “I don’t think I would be happy specializing in just one thing. Life is a juggling act and I’m happy having to maintain the balance.” Even while wearing so many hats, it seems Gordon is able to keep them all in the air at one time.

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