Music for Change

Singer-songwriter Birdie Busch saves her pennies to make something generationalless.


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Published: Sep 19, 2007

Photo By: Michael T. Rega

Digital music may be convenient for checking out new bands on the cheap, but for singer-guitarist Birdie Busch, downloading doesn't hold the same thrill as stumbling across a Paul McCartney record in a thrift shop or unwrapping Mark Olson's new CD and devouring the lyrics. She still treasures album art, and virtual liner notes are a feeble substitute for the real thing.

We're in Rittenhouse Square, drinking iced tea on a sunny early September day, and she's talking about the photo on the cover of her second album, Penny Arcade, which comes out Tuesday. It's a shadow box assembled by Angela Miles, one of her fellow waitresses at World Café Live, using pennies, feathers, daisies, butter wrappers and Busch's grandmother's ribbons. It's pretty and sentimental, much like the music inside.

Busch is describing the DIY cover concept when a TV reporter and cameraman approach. They're profiling Philadelphia for a new international network and, perhaps unfamiliar with the functions of my pen, notebook and rolling tape recorder, start asking questions about our city. The newswoman wants to know "what it's like to live here" and "what the top companies are." Busch politely tells them to scram, and somehow we manage to contain our laughter until they're out of earshot.

The Collingswood, N.J., native loves her adopted hometown, but companies don't have much to do with it. Maybe instead the TV crew should listen to "South Philly," from her first album, The Ways We Try, with its references to junkies and PGW bills. Or "Huff Singers (North Philly)," from Penny Arcade, about a gospel group practicing at 29th and Diamond.

But the city's top companies? The question's just so absurd, we toss around some mock answers. Busch cites PGW and PECO, who send us a lot of mail, and Taqueria La Veracruzana, because a girl's got to eat. Then there's Aramark, whose tower orients us when we're wandering around, and Commerce Bank, right across the street from the park. Ha ha ha.

But wait. In a way, Commerce did have a hand in the new album.

"It's not like we were at a company and we were generating tons of profit for someone and we were in high demand," says Busch, 28, "so I was realizing that the only way it was gonna get done was if we — if I — just started to really work my ass off and save money to match any amount that Bar/None had, which wasn't much." The Hoboken-based label has a lot of intangible assets, like decent distribution, an eclectic roster and a solid reputation for not meddling with the music, but apparently it doesn't just show up at the studio with bags of cash. "So I had this Mason jar and I was literally putting my change in it every day. And that kind of became this visual of, like, how I was funding this. Which was by will and determination. We would turn that in to the penny arcade at Commerce for gas money and we would take short tours."

Busch isn't using the royal "we." She plays alone when she has to, but her band's not just for decoration. Along with bassist Todd Erk, guitarist Ross Bellenoit, drummer Chris Giraldi and multi-instrumentalist/producer Devin Greenwood, Busch just wants to play music, anywhere and for anyone. A Christmas luncheon for underprivileged youth, a skanky nightclub, an old folks' home, a show at Beat Happening's Bret Lunsford's house, a farmers market and World Café Live — she's rocked 'em all. "I never wanted to play for a specific age group," she says. "I wanted to try and make music that was generationalless."

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

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Generationalless may not be an actual word, but it perfectly describes Busch's charming, marimba-kissed songs. Themes of mercy and forgiveness run through Penny Arcade songs like "Water," "Clemency" and "Back Catalogue." "Huff Singers (North Philly)" came out of her friendship with an older musician she met while working World Café's gospel brunch; "Hold Ya" and "Heel to Toe" find joy in this imperfect life.

She decided to record the Steve Miller Band's psychedelic "Wild Mountain Honey" when WXPN's Helen Leicht solicited covers of songs from 1976 to mark her 30th year in radio. Busch describes the original as "smoother and Steve Miller-ish," but she was touched by the lyric's message of simplicity. "It amazes me what is considered a normal lifestyle now," she says. "It requires so many more possessions. ... I'm choosing to live really simply and I don't have health care and I make hardly any money, I'm kind of in a way living like poverty level, technically, by numbers."

Scraping by can be a tough sell for people who'd rather know about a city's top companies than its top artists. But for Busch, it's just her way of pursuing the American dream. "I grew up in middle-class America. I come from the suburbs. But I still have this very vivid idea of what makes me feel the most alive and what is my dream. It doesn't involve climbing the class ladder but ... wanting to do something that's really hard to do."

And her parents worried that an English major was impractical. "It's funny, 'cause I kind of am using it more than a lot of people are using an English degree, 'cause I'm always writing," she says. "It's just, I'm not writing at a paying job, which is probably what they would like to see." Working at World Café Live is an education in itself, though. It exposes her to artists she wouldn't have seen otherwise (she raves about a recent KRS-One show, calling him "the Frank Sinatra of rap") supports her sometimes unpredictable schedule and gives her a glimpse into the stuff that turns a performer into a career artist.

"You have to have this insane amount of conviction in what you're doing. Not only for yourself to survive, but for people to like it," she says. "That's why we like someone like Patti Smith so much, because she has such conviction. She doesn't care if you're gonna get it or not. She's just gonna keep doing it."

And so is Busch, even if it means slowly turning pennies into bills at Commerce Bank, one Mason jar at a time.

(m_fine@citypaper.net)

Birdie Busch plays Sat., Sept. 22, 1 p.m., free, at the Collingswood Music Festival, Haddon and Woodlawn avenues, Collingswood, N.J., www.collingswood.com/entertainment/music-festival, and Tue., Sept. 25, 8 p.m., $8 at Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, www.johnnybrendas.com.