Songs from the Subway

When he met Melvin Cannon in a men’s shelter ten years ago, Charles Owens never imagined where they’d be today. “Everything that we’ve done is washed away; everything becomes new,” Owens said Monday evening at Union Square Station. “We’re renewed in Jesus Christ, in his blood, because we’ve turned our lives over to him.” Today, and for the past nine years, Owens and Cannon have been singing gospel music together, often in the subways. But on Monday night, for the first time, they sang as official Music Under New York performers with their partner Barry Reid.

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“I always knew He had his hand on me because he always brought me out of the bad times,” Owens said of his relationship with God. “I just feel that I’m grateful that he chose me – a sinner, who thought one way.” Wearing matching MUNY sweatshirts, the group – who call themselves Made Over – belted it out for about two hours near the entrance to the NRW trains at Union Square Station as passersby clapped along. The group handed out stacks of flyers while they performed. “Thank you Lord for your Grace, Mercy, Love and Forgiveness of our sings,” the flyers say. “We are honored and grateful to be selected to lift up your name in song.” Owens said their name, Made Over, stems from their collective spiritual rebirth. “I found out sometimes it takes us to hit bottom, dirt bottom,” he said. “My wife kicked me out; she got tired of me going back and forth using drugs, abusing the money – stuff like that. So me being out there in the cold also helped me find the Lord.” Charles Owens: ‘Doing much better‘ The group formed at a men’s shelter through the Ready, Willing and Able program. “We’re all doing much better,” said Owens, who lives with his new wife in Mount Vernon and works for a housing development non-profit. “But one thing we’re not doing – we’re not abusing drugs. We’re not abusing people, we’re not stealing. We’re praising the Lord and giving him thanks that he saved us.” And soon, Made Over  will be featured in a documentary called Underground, which tells the story of three New York City acts. “He saw that much in us,” Owens said of the film’s director.

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Barry Reid: ‘I’ve always had a voice’ Reid, who joined Made Over about six years ago, is the group’s vocal director. Growing up a single child with a supportive Mother, Reid said, he had a “beautiful” upbringing, and learned to love music in the third grade.

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He used to “work” the R train in the subway with a group of singers that met at 57th Street and 7th Avenue to sing doo-wop music. He also sang with the Addicts Rehabilitation Center Gospel Choir. And for most of his life, he has played the trombone. These days, Reid has been diagnosed with diabetes and finds it hard to sing for three hours, as the group often does. He said now that Made Over has only three singers (at one point, there were five) it’s more difficult to co-ordinate their sound. As they develop, they have to work with each other to adjust – and because they have little time to rehearse, their underground performances include very vocal tweaks. Although Reid’s diabetes and some personal problems have been distractions, though, they haven’t stopped him from pursuing his passion. “Due to bad choices in life, I lost it – you know, I pretty much lost it all,” he said, referring to his past drug addiction. “I recently, I guess, started singing again, about six years ago, seven years ago. I’ve always had a voice and I played music. I’ve had all the theory.” Melvin Cannon: Spiritual music ‘feels so good’ Cannon, who grew up in a family with ten brothers and two sisters, said music was an important part of his childhood. He sang in choirs and in quartets, often with his siblings. “It came first and foremost, singing in choirs in the Church,” he said. Although he has sung with a number of groups, he prefers gospel music. A barber, he was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and grew up in Newark. His family used to attend church services throughout New York City, from Brooklyn to the upper Bronx. “I can’t do it no other way than to sing spirtual,” said Cannon, who sings top tenor and first tenor. “Spiritual songs have always been in me, and now it’s coming out. And it feels so good.” And for him, the subway is an ideal spot to let it out.

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Tags: gospel, made over, new york, subways, union square station

“You getting married? Oh, congratulations! I’m gonna do this tune specifically for you. It’s called Love Story and I’m gonna play it on the trumpet. Okay? Let’s give them a hand; they’re getting married, ladies and gentlemen.”

It’s rare to see a crowd in 42nd Street station stick it out. Many stay to listen to one song; sometimes, two. But on Saturday morning, one couple listened to trumpet player Ron Michaels perform for fifteen minutes. A showman at heart, he even took requests.

From the Phantom of the Opera to the Little Mermaid, the Beatles and big bands, Michaels is open to everything. He moves between his trumpets and his voice, performing alongside prerecorded tracks. He plays what people pay for, and finds many New Yorkers respond well to Disney and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

More than once, Michaels stopped playing to thank people who dropped money into his collection tin, which is red and covered in pictures of Santa Claus. When one fan told him she’s learning to play the trumpet, she got an impromptu trumpet lesson. And he was more than happy to take time away from his performance to talk.

A seventh grade professional

Born New Jersey, Michaels describes himself as he’s a New Yorker at heart. When he was playing the drums in seventh grade, he discovered trumpet player Harry James and fell in love with the instrument. (His business card advertises one of his many musical projects, a Harry James tribute band.)

His voice broke when I asked him who taught him to play the trumpet.

“He was my high school teacher and he taught me to love music,” he said, adding his mentor is now over 80 and unwell. Michaels’ album, The New York Experience, is dedicated to his teacher.

“I was a little troubled kid,” he said. “I would have went to jail or been dead or both. And this guy kept me focused on music.”

As a teenager, Michaels already considered himself professional. In 7th grade, he had a jazz big band. He started playing music on the street, in clubs and at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Now “50-something,” Michaels is teaching young musicians out of his New Jersey home, as well as at Jonathan Baltimore Music on 46th Street. He has also been doing clinics at schools.

“I found out that these kids are really not learning properly,” he said, adding few young players understand the theory behind the music. “Even if you don’t become professional you should know how and understand it.”

After he injured his eye in his 20s, Michaels learned to play the trumpet all over again and began to grasp the physics behind the instrument.

“See, you learn to play music, but you develop to play the trumpet,” he explained. “If you ever want to take lessons off a guy in the orchestra, don’t go to the first trumpet player. Go to the third trumpet player. He’s the one that busted his butt to get there.”

He said the first player, on the other hand, is a natural.

“He doesn’t even know how he does it; he just does it, you know what I mean?”

Trumpet player Ron Michaels demonstrates multitasking at its most musical Saturday morning in 42nd Street Station.

“Where Bob Hope wouldn’t go”

After high school, Michaels served in the Vietnam War, where he played trumpet.

“We were playing where Bob Hope wouldn’t go,” he said of his band, an eight-piece show band with four men and four women. When the war was over, he went on to play trumpet with the National Guard.

Over the years, Michaels has played with big names, as well: among them, Tony Bennett, Tom Jones, Rosemary Clooney and Patti LaBelle. But he said on the stage, the connection with the audience is much different than it is playing on the street or in the subway.

“Out here you really see if they’re really liking it,” he said, adding people show their appreciation by throwing something in his tin, which held a few bills on Saturday. “I don’t really make a lot of money playing on the street because I’m not one of those guys who sits there and make them give me their last dollar. I’m not going to embarrass them to put it in, you know what I mean?”

Although a few “regulars” come by to see him play, Michaels doesn’t normally like to play in the station, where there are too many distractions.

“They don’t really get the soul of the music,” he said, adding he can usually be found at Golda Meir Square on 39th and Broadway. “Playing notes is one thing; playing music’s another. To see is one thing. To really hear is another.”

Although he’s living in New Jersey, he’s studying to be an auxiliary cop in New York—one of many on his list of gigs, which also includes a spot in the Somerset Valley Orchestra.

“In the music business you have to be very diversified, playing with music, and teaching, and playing different styles,” he explained. “If you don’t you won’t make a buck.”

Tags: 42nd Street, Ron Michaels, trumpet

As the doors closed on a crowded G train at Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn Sunday night, a woman tossed a red flower into an open violin case on the platform. Daniel Baer, Rob Chamerblain and Song Lee acknowledged their fan and continued to perform as the train pulled away.

Busking is still relatively new for the members of Kinoko Orchestra, an eclectic five-piece band that also includes Isabel Castellvi on cello and Marisa Clementi on vocals. Although the band has been together in some form for about two years, their first show was in mid-September, when they performed at Williamsburg’s Rose Live Music. And it has only been about two weeks since they started busking as a group–though, like on Sunday, it isn’t often the entire group can get together.

Over post-performance snacks at Kellogg’s Diner in Williamsburg, the band talked about their first experience performing the subway, when a spectator accused them of playing “gentrified” music. But for the most part, the G train platform is the ideal spot for Kinoko Orchestra, who feel like they’re becoming a part of the community at there.

“There’s always people clapping,” said Chamberlain, who sang, played guitar and worked the “crowd” on Sunday night. “You’re not going to see that anywhere else.”

From love in the mud to children of wood

Kinoko Orchestra began as a pit band for a modern dance piece called Love in the Mud.

“We all liked playing together and we like each other as people,” Baer said. “So somebody finally came up with the idea that we should play together.”

For the first little while, the band was nameless. But when they finally chose one, Heroes in the Seaweed, it was taken by another Brooklyn band. So one day over lunch at a Chinese restaurant Chamberlain and Lee came up with the name they ultimately adopted: Kinoko Orchestra. The word kinoko means “mushroom” in Japanese, Lee said, and the phrase also means “children of wood.”

And the word orchestra? “We liked how it sounded.”

They didn’t play their first show until more than a year after they actually began thinking of themselves as a band, Chamberlain said.

“The material’s been sitting around for so long,” he said. “It took a long time for us to get out and perform.”

In My Tree, one of the songs they performed on Sunday, has been part of their repertoire since the beginning. (Because Castellvi, the cellist, couldn’t make it, the band could only work with their cello-free pieces when I met them. They went through In My Tree a few times, making little variations each time.)

During the underground performance, which lasted a little under two hours, they only brought in about $24, leaving each with $8 to spend at the diner. But it was a step up from the last time they busked together: $6 each.

The parts of a five-piece orchestra

Chamberlain, who has written some of the band’s songs, said a lot of what he writes fuses a folksy sound with strings.

Lee plays the changgu, a Korean drum she has played since she was young.

“A lot of the stuff that I come up with is a cross between singer-songwriter stuff and more driving string music,” he said. Along with Lee, he works in Manhattan at the World Music Institute, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on traditional and contemporary music and dance from cultures around the world.

Lee plays the changgu, a drum used in classical Korean music. She learned from her mother, also a drummer. Passersby rarely know what the drum is called, or even where it’s from. (A couple of people stopped to ask on Sunday night.)

Baer, who’s also in a band called La Strada, plays the violin. Other than a brief clarinet phase in elementary school, it’s the only instrument he plays. “It’s a little embarrassing to me because I only play one instrument, because almost everybody that I play music with plays more than one,” he said, shrugging.

Developing a presence

Now that the band has moved beyond the two landmarks it takes to make it as musicians—coming up with a name and actually performing—they’re starting to think about recording an album. Because they don’t have a studio, Kinoko Orchestra has to take advantage of the G-train rehearsal space. But Chamberlain said busking is the best way to learn the songs in the early stages of performance.

“If you have to loop them over and over again, you get very tight, very quickly,” he said. “Also, it’s just great for developing a presence.”

“I actually like tried out very subtle variations on what I play,” Baer added.

Lee said she appreciates being able to get an immediate response from the audience.

“Even though a lot of people pretend like they’re not engaged in the music, you can feel that a lot of people get into it when you try new stuff,” she said. “You can feel it. You think its sounds good and then if you can see that they actually enjoyed it.”

But because the subway gig is new for the band, they’re not sure what winter will bring.

“Wait until it gets really cold,” Baer said. “It’s really hard to play violin.”

For Chamberlain, the next step—beyond recording an album and maybe getting Yo-Yo Ma to give them a listen—will hopefully include a road trip.

“We want to pile into a bus or a van and just head out,” he said. “Lead the gypsy life. That’s what I want to do, anyway.”

Tags: brooklyn, changgu, kinoko orchestra, metropolitan ave.

On Sunday mornings, Sergio Clark feels most at home in church. But sometimes, church is more of an attitude than a place.

“You’re singin’ Under The Boardwalk, Oh Mary Don’t You Weep … those songs touch your heart,” Clark said, sitting on a bench in Union Square Station. “It brings back a time when we were in love with love itself.”

Clark and his a cappella group, God’s Creation, were on their way to perform at a mass in Brooklyn when we talked. But for the group, performance can happen almost anywhere. God’s Creation is one a few groups of subway artists who perform in the trains, a risky venture with police around. The advantage of music-in-motion? When they begin singing, it’s hard not to listen.

Doo-wospel

Dressed in a snappy red shirt and a black vest, Clark followed the others—Dell Allen, Dexter Conyers and Prince Daniels—through the station and onto the first train after we talked. As always, they waited until the doors closed before they began.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Allen boomed, surprising a few passengers. “My brothers and I, we’re part of an organization called God’s creation. This is what we do: we do doo-wop and gospel. We take two sounds, doo-wop and gospel, we merge them together. We like to call this doo-wospel. There are many a cappella groups out here singing today. We want you to know that we are the original, God’s Creation.”

King Kong and the Grand Ole Opry

Allen, the group’s lead singer, started singing with Conyers about two years ago. Conyers has been singing since he was six years old, when he fell in love with the theme song from King Kong and music by the Jackson Five. He came to New York in 1980 and, by 1988, he was singing with a group that snagged a record deal. Unfortunately, there was “a lot of animosity in the group,” he said. “I was out of the record deal.”

But between then and now, Conyers performed background vocals for the Fine Young Cannibals. He was also part of one of the first a cappella groups to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

“If I wasn’t doing it, I’d probably be fat and depressed,” he said of the subway excursions. “At my age, I just like what I’m doin.’”

Bringing their doo-wospel sounds to the subway, the members of God's Creation try to brighten commuters' days. From left to right: Prince Daniels, Dexter Conyers, Dell Allen and Sergio Clark.

Turning frowns upside-down

For Daniels and Clark, who joined the group a little later, the tradition goes back 20 years, when they used to perform together at nightclubs and in talent shows. But for about ten years, they lost touch. Daniels, who became addicted to drugs, spent some of that time in prison. Meanwhile, Clark discovered gospel music—something he’d never tried before, despite his Christian upbringing.

“I got a feeling that wasn’t like when I was singing R&B,” he said.

When the two ran into each other again, Daniels told Clark he was singing on the subway to make a little extra cash. With a little persuading, he convinced his friend to give it a shot.

“Today I find it very challenging to be on the train,” said Clark, who also works as a consultant. “It’s not an easy thing.”

But at heart, he considers the project something more than a scheme to make money.

“It’s about making people feel better,” he said. “We do know that when you give services or anything like that, people give back.”

Allen, who started singing in the subway 13 or 14 years ago, feels the same way.

“It’s not so much the money,” he said. “It’s if we can go into train cars and turn frowns into smiles. Music is a universal language.”

A new type of high

According to Daniels, the tradition of singing in the subway cars began about 40 years ago.

“This started from guys that was homeless, addicts,” he said. “As things started escalating, they started playing the trains. Now there’s maybe 8, 9, ten groups that does what we do.”

One of the first things Daniels mentioned when we sat down to talk was his own struggle with addiction. Before he got into drugs, the chatty singer was a member of a New Jersey group called God’s Gift.

“I messed up,” he said. “I started getting high on drugs and they discharged me from the group.”

Even when he was making money, he didn’t keep it for long. Any cash he earned went toward his drug habit. But since he got out of prison, he said, things have been different.

“Since I’ve come into this group, we took this group to new levels. We don’t get high on drugs. I get high on making money,” he said, gesturing to the gold bracelets jangling on his wrists. “You see me walking around with jewelry and all this? At that time, I wouldn’t do that. I’d spend it on drugs.”

‘God is backing us’

Clark said God’s Creation is getting ready to make their mark. Within the next couple of months, the group will make an appearance on television with Church Alive Community Church. He said he hopes to raise some questions about New York City’s mayoral election on the air.

“We’re going to be speaking about how we feel about the police attacking entertainers, so to speak,” he said. “There should be no reason for harassment. Some of the best musicians in the world are on the trains singing.”

Clark said God’s Creation has heard of Music Under New York—the official program that permits musicians to sing in the subways—but because they have other goals in mind, auditioning wasn’t a priority. Singing on the trains is simply a means of exposure.

“The Church is backing us right now,” he said. “Not only that—God is backing us. We’re not just a group of singers that just sing on the train.”

As Juan Castillo performs at the 42nd Street station, he stands in front of a red and yellow banner that designates him an official Music Under New York performer. Occasionally, he flashes a peace sign as people walking by catch his eye. When he finishes a song, he thanks his audience.

After 10 years playing Andean and classical music in the subway, Castillo has built a fan base. As he took a break during a long, Saturday afternoon gig, a passerby asked whether he was going to start playing again. “Very nice,” the fan said of his music.

Born in Chile, Castillo moved to New York City 16 or 17 years ago. He plays in the subway five days a week, usually at Times Square, Grand Central Station, Penn Station or Union Square – all of which have good acoustics, he said. He doesn’t always make a lot of money, but he’s doing what he loves to do.

“If you want to pursue your dreams, you gotta do what you gotta do,” he said.

(Listen to Castillo perform Punku Arica at 42nd Street station.)

Playing with a permit

Castillo started making music as a child in Chile, where he grew up in a family of musicians and artisans. Before he moved to New York, he built instruments – rain sticks and ocarinas, which resemble sweet potatoes – for a living. But in New York, he doesn’t have the space to continue with the trade, and the climate isn’t ideal. Most of the instruments he plays were crafted by his brother-in-law, who lives in Chile with the rest of the family.

Castillo moved here to learn more about music, “because New York is the centre of the world for music.” At first, he performed on the street with a friend. But changes made by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani brought him underground. “Giuliani, he did like a war against all the musicians,” he said.

As an official performer, though, Castillo has more rights than those who play without a permit. Every two weeks, MUNY gives Castillo a permit to play at certain locations. During our conversation, a pair of police officers approached. His three-hour permit had run out, but the musician who was supposed to take over hadn’t showed. The officers let him stay.

Once musicians are accepted into the program, they don’t have to re-audition, Castillo said. But many who make it only play a few times and decide they don’t want to keep it up. “It’s a struggle,” he said. “It’s not easy. … The noise, people passing by.  But you’ve got to push yourself and try to make it sound professional, sound good.”

Cherango, quena, siku … Beatles?

For Castillo, music is a full-time job. He doesn’t smoke, because blowing into the panpipes he plays takes a lot out of the lungs. He practices at home and plays in the subway five days a week, performing for at least three hours each time. Often, his subway performances get him gigs at festivals and private parties.

Although his primary instrument is the guitar, his own guitar is no longer in good enough condition to play often. But South American music is rich with different sounds and instruments, he said. The charango, though it resembles a miniature guitar, holds more possibilities. “In South America, you’re going to see groups playing classical music – Bach, Handel, Vivaldi – on Indian instruments,” he said. “The instruments are very adaptable.”

Along with the charango, Castillo pays the quena, a simple bamboo flute with seven holes, and the siku, a panpipe also made from bamboo. But although he focuses on traditional South American music and classical music, he’s a big fan of pop. “I love the Beatles, you know? I grew up listening to the Beatles,” he said. After he performed a couple of South American songs, he moved on to And I Love Her by the Fab Four. (Listen here: Juan Castillo)

While he plays, Castillo’s accompaniment  is a recorded background track. But it’s the haunting melody of the siku that makes passersby slow down as they pass. Timidly, a young boy dropped a donation into Castillo’s bag and runs back to his mother, who watched for a couple of minutes.

“The thing with Andean music is it has all the emotion to it,” Castillo said. “Sometimes it’s very soulful, sad, and sometimes very happy, you know? It has so many different rhythms, melodies you know?”

What is it that makes music in the subways so much different in New York? If you ask Mike Taliaferro, the answer’s simple.

“It’s a New York thing, you know? Other cities try – DC, San Francisco – but nowhere beats New York.”

But why?

“Because it’s New York,” he said one afternoon early last week, doubling over with laughter. “You come to New York, you expect to be entertained one way or another.”

When we met, Taliaferro had only been playing in the subway for a week and a half. For the past year or so, he has been working full time building cabinets in Brooklyn, making about $12 an hour. Recently, he was laid off.

“If everything else fails, I know I can do this,” he said of his subway gig—“with or without Music Under New York.”

In the past, he has taken part in MUNY, the official subway musicians’ program.

“You know what? It’s a little too much of a hassle,” he said. “The police still hassle you sometimes.”

The heydays

Public performance is nothing new for Taliaferro, who introduced himself to me as “Mike T.” He has been drumming in the subway – solo and with groups –for almost 20 years.

“Most of us who play in the subway actually have other gigs that we do,” he said. “This is like a paid rehearsal.”

A couple of years ago, he was part of a group known as Organic Grooves, which worked with a Swiss record label called Codek Records. But he said his specialty is drumming with DJs. At one point, he worked with a DJ at Kiss & Fly, a Meatpacking District Club where he often brought in $1,000 for a weekend.

He also looks back longingly upon his days performing in front of a hotel midtown. There, in the early 1990s, he often made $250 or $300 a day.

“Those were the heydays,” he said. The day we met, Taliaferro had made $60 over three hours at 42nd Street Station. $60 is his quota, but he likes to make $100 each day he drums.

“I don’t like to wear out my welcome in one spot,” he explained as he packed his drum and counted his earnings at the NRWQ platform at the 42nd Street Station. The next stop? Grand Central.

Drumming with closed eyes

Talioferro, 47, wasn’t born in the city. He grew up in Baltimore, where he went to an elementary school known for its boys’ choir. At his church, he was involved with a gospel choir that traveled to different cities.

But it wasn’t until he was 17, when he left home and joined the military, that he really got into drumming. While stationed in Hawaii, working with supplies on a 9 to 5 schedule, he was introduced to the bongo.

From The 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., where “everybody that’s anybody” has played, to New York’s The Knitting Factory, Taliaferro has made his rounds.  But he said he doesn’t notice a big difference between those venues and his spots at 42nd Street and Grand Central.

“A lot of times my eyes are closed, so I don’t really see the faces change, but what I do really remains the same.”

25 cents for art

Beside the basket he uses to collect bills and coins, Taliaferro arranges a small stack of CDs going for $10 each. These days, he doesn’t sell many.

“That’s one of the things that has changed with the MP3 players, MP4 players,” he said. On the day we met, he only sold one copy of the CD, which showcases Afro-Caribbean jazz he produced and arranged himself. (“I have some music programs,” he said, pointing to an Apple computer in his bag. “If I want to mix a beat; make a track, a loop.”)

In the subway, he plays Jamaican music, mostly spiritual songs. Although he hasn’t played for a year, Taliaferro said he doesn’t think people’s generosity has been affected by the economy.

“Even with the recession, you can afford a dollar, 25 cents,” he said. “It all adds up .”

But when tourists take films of his performance and don’t give him anything in return, he tells them to move along.

“When people take your picture and don’t give anything, that’s like stealing art.”

It was hard not to stop when I heard the voice reverberating off the walls of the 42nd Street Station Monday afternoon. A woman dragging a rolling suitcase leaned against a pole to listen, nodding her head to the beat and clapping when the song was over.

Timothy Robert Blevins smiled at his audience of two.

Half an hour later, his vocal chords tired, Blevins climbed the stairs to head into the sunshine above ground.

From Juilliard to the A train

Blevins has been stationed underneath New York for six months now, he told me. He laughed as we walked to a Burger King restaurant on 7th Avenue, where he and his friend Ike grabbed lunch.

“I should be famous, but I’ve had some issues,” he said.

For Blevins, the underground gig is temporary. He has been performing in the subways to earn a little extra cash, some of which he used to buy the burgers.

“I get work when I audition,” he told me, cracking a smile. I must have had trouble hiding my surprise. “I’ve worked in New York City. I was a lead on Broadway.”

Not only that, but in 1992, he received a Masters degree in music from The Juilliard School.

Location, location, location

Although he used to make a lot of money singing on the trains, that tactic often resulted in run-ins with the police, Blevin said.

“My main spot is 59th but yesterday they kicked me out of that spot. Twice. Three times, actually.”

When I met him, Blevins finished his set with “Danny Boy,” a ballad that shows off his impressive vocal chords. He said he sings a lot of old-school spirituals and musical theatre. When he used to perform on the trains, one of his featured tunes was “The Impossible Dream,” from the musical Man of La Mancha.

“I don’t think there’s anybody on the A line or the 1 line who hasn’t heard me sing those songs,” he said.

On Monday, Blevins made $50. He said the most he has taken in was about $200, in just a few hours. He can’t perform for much longer than two or three hours because it’s hard on his voice.  Lately, he prefers to take a few days off in between performances.

Solos and ‘the opera stuff’

Born in Los Angeles, Blevins played football when he was young. It wasn’t until college that he discovered he could sing.

“My Grandma took me home and asked what I want to do with my life,” he said. In 1985, he started singing, and “started liking it.” He joined a choir, received a scholarship and “next year, you know, I’m singing all the solos and doing all the opera stuff.”

After his time at Juilliard, Blevins performed on Broadway – Miss Saigon in 1993, Showboat in 1996 – and sang overseas.

“Started partying too hard,” he said of his time in Germany. When he returned, he sang for the New York City Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Virginia Opera, among others.

‘A day-by-day thing’

The first time he sang on the subway, Blevins realized it was an easy way to make money.

“I sang and got paid and after that it was like an addiction,” he said. Although he prefers his spot at the 59th Street station, he likes to move around. (”Police got me spooked.”)

The Metropolitan Transporation Authority has a program called Music Under New York, which features more than 100 artists, but Blevins missed the auditions this year. Besides, he said, he doesn’t plan to stay underground.

“It’s a day-by-day thing.”

Recognition

It’s not an opera house, but the New York City subway system provides a performer with an ever-changing audience, and plenty of feedback. Most people are surprised to hear the voice that comes out when Blevins opens his mouth, and many appear grateful, he said.

“Most of the people tell me, ‘What are you doing here?’”

While most generous passersby offer money, some give Blevins food – and others, advice. He has a pocket filled with business cards offered up by people who have seen him perform.

Some, though, are less receptive. Blevins recalled one spectator, who yelled, “You suck.”

“And I probably did suck,” he said. “My voice is human.”

Human, maybe. But Blevins’s Broadway vocal chords seem out of place in the subway – and he knows it. He laughed as he assured me I’d have no trouble finding him if I Googled his name.

“You don’t even know what you bumped into.”

Tags: Broadway, Music, New York City, Opera, Subway