At the height of the late 2000's recession, a singer-songwriter throws himself at the mercy of the streets. A panorama of pedestrians, workers, graffiti artists, bike messengers, homeless, hipsters, hustlers, punks, drunks, poets, grifters, and gangsters-Busking Blues is about giving up everything for the muse.
Down and out, but on top of the world, Heine gives a devil-may-care serenade through the underground of bad relationships, dead-end jobs, blues jams, for-profit colleges, hospitals, dive bars, all night diners, subway tunnels, back alleys, blood banks, and one ancient YMCA. This streetwise tale based on real life is in turns sympathetic, adventurous, gritty, and oddly uplifting.
Busking Blues is a slice of time in an ever-changing city. Though, some things are constant. In a place where flesh and souls are for sale, Heine sees the cosmic beauty haloed in the streetlights. At the frontlines of America, this is a meditation on karma, superstition, classism, race and inequality, heartbreak, disillusionment, and freedom. He waxes philosophically from the highs of freedom to the lows of the gutter, while pounding the pavement until it cracks.
"A broke down history of the blues. Ain't no other map of Chicago like this one. A quest for self. Though I walk through the valley of urban apocalyptic death I shall fear no evil. What does it take to live and be your dream? There is no tribal ceremonial ritual way to escape from being forced to live a status quo do what your conditioned and told to do life to living and being your dream. But a few rare individuals, against all odds, choose to be guided by their deep rooted passion and, regardless of the consequences, go their own damn way. Westley Heine throws the system's rule book out the fucking window. Once I entered the story I couldn't put his book down. BUSKING BLUES: Recollections of a Chicago Street Musician & Squatter is a masterpiece." -Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate
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"Provocative and visceral, Busking Blues eviscerates the Chicago streets with a rusty knife... hits like a shot of neon blue morphine icing through your veins. This book will make your teeth curl and your hair fall out. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: We are all in the gutter... but Westley Heine is looking at the curb."-Leon Horton, International Times
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"If you ever dreamt about being a street musician or wondered why anyone would dream of being one, this memoir by Westley Heine is for you. In honest and rocking and often intensely poetic language that evokes Kerouac and Bukowski at their best, Heine pulls us into his wild life trying to make a living playing on street corners in Chicago in 2010. I don't know if Heine can sing, but he sure can write. If you love Chicago, you'll love it even more after reading this!" - John Guzlowski, author of Echoes of Tattered Tongues, winner of the Eric Hoffer/Montaigne Award for the most thought-provoking book of 2017.