Banjo Frank is or was a folk singer/songwriter/street act in the Pete Seeger/Woody Guthrie tradition (as developed and distorted by Dylan and the Beatles etc.)
The first music I liked a lot was the commercial folk of the late 50's and early 60's. Kingston Trio, the Limeliters and so forth. From that I was drawn to the Leadbelly Woody Guthrie Pete Seeger Lomax Songbook level. There was a realness to the music and the words actually said things. So when I first learned guitar that was the music I tried to play.
Of course the Folk Era ended abruptly with the assassination of JFK and the arrival of the Beatles. In the mid to late 60's and on into the early 70's I played bass in bands a little and did a few recording projects but I was more a songwriter than a performer until in the mid 70's and on into the early 80's I was a solo act and bass player in the Cleveland Acoustic Scene.
In 1984 I moved to Portland Maine where I did a bit of random club playing for a few years until in the summer of '87 I started street playing. That Fall I headed down to New York where I played the open mike nights a little and the subways a lot thru 1991. Then I was out to San Francisco on thru the 90's, playing the sidewalks and BART stations. I made a series of cassettes at my buddy Mike's very nice home studio to sell when I played. The first one was all traditional, them old folk tunes, but the subsequent ones had more and more originals. I kind of got into a nice writing groove for a while out there. Those were the days.
Anyhow I figured I couldn't stay there forever so I came back East in the Spring of '99. I played a couple more summers in Portland Maine, '99 and 2000. And that was it for streetplaying. Fun while it lasted. That was pretty much it for any public performing, actually, but I suppose that could be subject to change.
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