I started singing and playing my guitar in the Boston subways in June of 1998 and I1ve been doing it 3 days a week pretty regularly since then. I do mostly fairly standard Trad folk chestnuts plus a few J. Cash, a few Hank Williams, a few Woody Guthrie and a couple of contempory folk gems thrown in, all pretty well known stuff and all songs I picked only because I happen to like them. To my surprise, people like it. Not everyone, of course, but enough to keep me happy. I sing acoustic so I can1t perform anywhere near the length of time some others do. My voice lasts about two hours. In addition, at age 57 I have to watch out for tendonitus in my left shoulder and this limits my guitar playing time. I do get money but no where near some of the figures mentioned in posts above. I got $11 today, a little better than my average but last Tuesday only about $3.50. I1m not doing this for the money but for the practice. Down there you are singing in front of people, even if they1re not looking at you (and mostly they don1t except if they are young children). But they ARE listening. I know because whenever I goof up and play a chord that is badly wrong, 6 or 8 heads will turn around and look at me.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that winter playing was not a problem. The station that I frequent (Davis Square) is a full two stories underground and averages about 40 degrees winter and summer. The guitar gets cold and starts to sound a little tinny after a while on a real cold day.

There are a fair number of people making music in the subways, a few very regular people and a larger number that you see every once in a while. But as far as I can tell this activity is completly unregulated except at the Harvard Square station where the is a 7AM coin toss to see who gets the spot. Everywhere else it1s whoever gets there first. Nobody has ever given me any grief or even questioned me in any way. The worst time I have had was one Friday night when some sad old drunk wanted to sing along, but I ignored him and he went away after a couple of songs. On the positive side, many have come up and thanked me, said they liked my music. A minor annoyance is people who come up to me and want to talk when I am trying to concentate on my music. I1m slowly learning to deal with such distractions but it usually throw me off for a while.

Dan from Boston