Ex-Promenade Busker Recalls Alec Baldwin Encounter:
Singer-songwriter Andy Grammer—who was discovered while busking on the Third Street Promenade, and has since toured with Natasha Bedingfield and Colbie Caillat—will return there for a headlining stint at this year's Winterlit concert. The free show will kick off this year's Winterlit Holiday Celebration and take place Nov. 26 at 6 p.m. on the promenade, just south of Wilshire Boulevard.
Santa Monica Patch recently caught up with the troudabour, who recalled an encounter with Alec Baldwin, what it was like to regularly perform on the promenade and how he roused the crowd by covering Beyoncé.
Santa Monica Patch: What brought you to busking on the promenade?
Andy Grammer: I was born in Los Angeles but grew up in New York. I studied the music industry at Northridge and graduated in 2007. As soon as I graduated, I started busking, for about three years, mostly on the Santa Monica promenade.
[It involved] mostly getting up and going out and hanging out all day. I'd usually go Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I'd get there super-early to get a good spot. It makes a big difference to get there [early] to hold it. I'd get there at 8 a.m. and wait until 2 p.m. for the best spot.
I'd have to move every two hours, so I'd play from 12 to 2 [p.m.] or 2 to 4 [p..m]. Over the course of three years, I was probably out there at least 300 times.
Patch: What were your impressions of the promenade?
Grammer: It's like a tourist spot where everybody comes through. Very rarely do people come to hear you play. It was mostly first-timers you had to win over.
One time I was out there and Alec Baldwin came by, said he really liked what I was doing and gave me a $100 bill. One time, a whole girls' soccer team from Australia, all 20 of them gave me $20.
In hindsight, it's funny to talk about how you'd fight over spots with these characters. Me and a balloon guy would get into an argument. I'd be legitimately angry and raising my voice with a guy who's doing balloons.
Patch: What would you do in between sets?
Grammer: My off-time would be spent burning CDs on my computer and going to Kinko's cutting artwork. I'd give people signed ghetto copies [of my CD].
Patch: How did your material develop over the course of your promenade performances?
Grammer: The first year, I'd sing in harmony with my friends, and we'd sell a moderate amount of CDs. The second year, I did a lot of it on the computer by myself. I had to learn how to get someone's attention.
Was my voice good enough? Were my songs good enough? The answer was no. My songs were OK but not good enough to make people stop. So I did covers, which people stopped for. I'd cover of Beyoncé, telling crowd to clap.
Over the next two or three months, you find out one of these songs that people kind of liked. You slowly take things out of your set that aren't working and put in something that does.
After three years, I had 20 minutes' [worth of material].
Patch: Which songs of yours specifically revolve around playing on the promenade?
Grammer: "The Pocket" on my album [Andy Grammer], "Keep Your Head Up." … Also, the last song on album, "Biggest Man in Los Angeles"; in it, I list everybody I played with out there. If you're an artist, you don't really care enough about the size of the crowd, If you're singing to a couple of people who genuinely like what you're doing, it's the same as performing in front of 20,000 people.
Patch: How did you meet your agent on the promenade?
Grammer: Ben Singer came out and said "that song ['Pocket'] can make you a lot of money." I had a lot of people tell me things like that and hand me cards. I wasn't jaded, but I was like, "Sure." But he really followed through with it. He put in the amount of work he saw [me do]. He came out, and his whole plan wasn't like, "Maybe we'll get you on TV." He was very methodical. He upgraded my cart on the promenade, then got a rug [for me].
Patch: What was your setup like?
Grammer: You can't have too much of a setup, because … everything has to be moveable every two hours. The amps, everything has to be taken down. It's a mad dash. If you go out there at any even hour, which is when you're switching stuff, right at the end of that, you'll see what looks like a list of circus performers running at their fastest speed, trying to find a spot.
Patch: Did you make a decent living busking on the promenade?
Grammer: What's cool is that, I was right out of college, so a good living was if there was food in my house. Me and my friends, if there wasn't food in the house, they'd be like, "Dude, what's going on here? There's food in the house. You must be doing well."
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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