{"id":18773,"date":"2020-05-31T05:30:06","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T09:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=18773"},"modified":"2020-05-05T10:22:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T14:22:02","slug":"busker-abby-the-spoon-lady-roach-brings-out-the-fine-silverware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/31\/busker-abby-the-spoon-lady-roach-brings-out-the-fine-silverware\/","title":{"rendered":"Busker Abby \u2018The Spoon Lady\u2019 Roach Brings Out the Fine Silverware"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Train-hopping hobos are part of America\u2019s cultural fabric. From the late 19th<\/sup> century through the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of itinerant people in America made their lives on the fringe of society, traveling the rails, picking up work wherever they could. The hobo subculture developed its own traditions in music and folklore. And while today there are far fewer \u2018travelers\u2019 than a century ago, their influence on folk art and culture remains.<\/p>\n

Kansas-born Abby Roach rode the rails for several years. Today she\u2019s settled in Asheville, and has become a leading light of the city\u2019s busker culture. Known widely as Abby the Spoon Lady, Roach weaves hobo culture into the arts of the mountain city.<\/p>\n

Living by different rules can mean that conventional notions of time are less important. Roach isn\u2019t even sure when she first hopped a train. \u201cI\u2019d have to think hard on the year,\u201d she says. \u201cI was 23.\u201d She traveled all around the United States, developing a facility for playing spoons as a way to contribute to the folk music being made by her fellow travelers.<\/p>\n

Roach ended up in Asheville by mistake. \u201cI took a wrong train and ended up here,\u201d she says matter-of-factly. But the city\u2019s character stirred something inside of her, so she stayed. \u201cI already knew a bunch of folks here,\u201d she says. \u201cA lot of creative folks who used to travel had kind of set roots in Asheville.\u201d Unlike many other American cities, in Asheville street performing isn\u2019t prohibited by law; for Roach, that added to its charms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an entire culture behind street performers,\u201d Roach says. \u201cTraveling minstrels are a little bit like migratory farm workers; they\u2019re going where the work is. And when tourist towns outlaw [busking], a lot of times they\u2019re outlawing it for reasons that don\u2019t necessarily have to do with street performing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teaming up with multi-instrumentalist Chris Rodrigues, Roach began busking on the streets of the city, delighting passers-by with homespun folk music that brought alive a little-known part of America\u2019s cultural character. Roach attracted national attention; she contributed to three documentary shorts about busking culture. In 2017 filmmaker Justin Johnson made a documentary, Abby the Spoon Lady<\/i>, and Roach was the subject of a 2018 profile in Washington Post<\/i> Magazine.<\/p>\n

Today, in addition to busking, Roach leads the Asheville Buskers Collective, a group that advocates for the unique needs and concerns of the local street performer community. She also hosts storytelling events, and since 2017 has hosted Busker Broadcast<\/i>, a weekly program on AshevilleFM community radio.<\/p>\n

All of those endeavors build upon and expand Roach\u2019s treasure trove of songs and stories, gems of culture that she collected during her days on the railway. \u201cI love the entire idea of musical anthropology,\u201d she says. \u201cI like to compile stuff that so that other people can enjoy some of the things that I\u2019ve collected. And I\u2019d like to do more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roach’s raised profile comes as a bit of a shock to her. \u201cI don’t necessarily want to be famous,\u201d she says. \u201cI used to wear my PJs to Walmart, and now I can\u2019t, as I usually end up taking a selfie or two with folks while shopping.\u201d But she and Rodrigues still busk on the streets of Asheville. \u201cWe play on the street as often as we can,\u201d she says. Roach hopes to build upon the notoriety she’s gained; she and Rodrigues are currently seeking management representation. \u201cI have no idea if all of this will pass,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the primitive tools used to make her music \u2013 repurposed kitchen utensils, battered acoustic guitars \u2013 Roach makes full use of technology to bring music and folklore to a wider audience. \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a subculture of music and song,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd in the internet age, a lot of times folks are learning new music through YouTube and Spotify.\u201d With more than 70 performance videos, Abby the Spoon Lady\u2019s YouTube page boasts nearly 150,000 subscribers.<\/p>\n

Roach and Rodrigues produced those videos themselves. \u201cChris does all of our recording, and I do the video stuff using Adobe After Effects,\u201d Roach says. \u201cWe pretty much do everything DIY.\u201d Coupled to current technology, that do-it-yourself aesthetic helps the music find new and enthusiastic fans. \u201cFolks react pretty well to stuff that\u2019s shot on the porch,\u201d Roach says with a warm chuckle.<\/p>\n

Those folks react the same way when they encounter Roach playing spoons on the sidewalks of downtown Asheville. \u201cI got hooked on street performing when I saw just how satisfied everybody was with something so simple: us playing music with silverware.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Train-hopping hobos are part of America\u2019s cultural fabric. From the late 19th century through the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of itinerant people in America made their lives on the fringe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,30,41],"tags":[4199,237],"class_list":["post-18773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-folk","category-interview","tag-abby-the-spoon-lady","tag-asheville","cat-6-id","cat-30-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18775,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18773\/revisions\/18775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}