Taking a dream underground

Conventional jobs gone, T performers find fulfillment

They take to the platforms and passageways of the MBTA each day: stoic classical guitarists, polished blues musicians working on their chops for the next club gig, up-and-coming singer-songwriters hoping to emulate the success of such former T troubadours as Tracy Chapman.

This year, their ranks have been swelled by a new wave: people who decided to play to the crush of commuters chasing rush-hour trains at a time when landing traditional employment aboveground is so challenging.

They represent a small, creative offshoot of the nationwide trend that has seen some of the recently unemployed reinvent their careers, often in occupations they find more rewarding, if less well compensated.

While some of the newer performers are talented musicians, others display a command of their instruments and voices that is rudimentary at best. They are all living a dream - even if they do not always get paid much.

Jeremy Ross was working in a cafe in December when one day the ax just fell. Instead of looking for work, he takes his Taylor 110ce guitar and Vox amplifier into the T station, where he belts out a mix of covers and his folksy, rhythmic original tunes in a brash, earnest voice, his face red, his foot tapping time.

"This is my job right now," Ross, 24, said last week between songs during rush hour at the Park Street Green Line station. "Perhaps I haven't been as ambitious as I should be about getting a new job. But I am happier this way."

As T performers go, Ross was doing pretty well. The open guitar case beneath his feet had far more bills than the three singles he put there to "break the ice" at the beginning of his gig. Sometimes he makes $2 an hour, sometimes it is more like $20. He has a 12-song demo CD that he sells for $5, but those do not exactly fly off the platform. He plays well; he can solo on harmonica over his steady rhythm guitar, his voice does not waver or warble. Performing on a platform does have its downsides: the drunks, the loud trains, the people who walk by without listening.

"There's problems, you know," Ross said. "It's strange waking up and saying 'Geez, I need a couple of bucks, I better go play.' This is my biggest audience, but no one stays for the whole set. The truth of the matter is, it's fun."

He kicked into the next song, a cover of "Two Coins" by Dispatch. "I reach into my pocket for some small change," goes the refrain. No one in the crowd rushing by practiced what he sang.

Performers have to apply to play in the T. They pay a $25 fee, they provide references, they agree to perform in designated spots, on a first-come, first-serve basis. They agree not to play drums or trumpet (instruments deemed too loud). In 2008, from Jan. 1 through March 16, 45 musicians received permits, according to MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. For the same time period this year, 76 were issued, he said.

Not everyone is as polished as Ross. A man plays a fiddle very badly at Park Street on the Green Line. Other legendary clunkers have included a singer who accompanied Stevie Wonder tunes blaring from a beat box at the Harvard Square Red Line stop (where Chapman got her start), and a guitar player who scratched out solos to canned music at the same station. Recently, at Government Center on the Blue Line, a harmonica player has alienated passengers.

"He just blows," said Eva MacLeod, who commutes on the line. She had just dropped a dollar in the case of a musician whose work she found more appealing, Pablo Mendoza, 70. He was plucking Spanish guitar music from a bench at the station, almost completely ignored by the crowd as his simple, melancholy phrases echoed off the bare concrete walls. Mendoza has been playing here for four years; he stared impassively as a man in a Yankees cap sat next to him, absorbed in his iPod. Mendoza does not speak English, and he does not have a job. He does not remember the names of the songs he plays. He had four dollar bills and change until MacLeod made it five.

Mendoza, MacLeod said, "is better than the crazy harmonica guy."

Bobby "Clumsy Ninja" Bishop and Terelle "Miss Model T" Brown, who were playing blues at Downtown Crossing on the Orange Line, are probably better than that, too. Rush-hour passersby stopped to swing and sway to their stylish rendition of Elmore James's "Done Somebody Wrong." They dropped cash in the duo's case as his smoky vocals and her fiery electric guitar solo, played over a silky rhythm loop track he had recorded to start the song, reached a crescendo.

They met here six years ago; Bishop taught her to play. Now their band, Steppers Heaven, plays clubs more than they play here, though they still like to come down.

"The intimacy here - there's no parallel to it," Bishop said in the clipped English of his native Gloucestershire. When Tamaki Hosoe, a physical therapist from Japan who works in Malden, started whistling to the music, Bishop held the microphone to amplify Hosoe's makeshift solo.

Brown said she has noticed the arrival of new musicians in recent months.

"There's a couple of guys and girls who got laid off," she said. "Rather than look for a job, they have come down here to fulfill a dream. They're doing what they want to."

At the Orange Line stop of Downtown Crossing, Beth Fridinger was doing what she has always wanted to do. Strumming a simple, steady rhythm on her white Yamaha electric guitar, she made her way through a throaty rendition of "Dirty Old Town" by the The Pogues.

Fridinger started here in July, after playing open mic gigs for a year. A professional photographer, she decided to commit to playing music full time.

"Times are really tough right now," she said, as she fingerpicked the chords to "House of the Rising Sun." "It's very hard to get a job. But if I got a job, I wouldn't be able to do my music. I couldn't do this and work a full-time job. I'd lose the spot."

A woman stopped. "This is my favorite song," she said. But she put no money in Fridinger's suitcase. Fridinger - armed with sheets of chords and lyrics, an unabashed alto voice, and a tube of muscle rub - was ready to play a four- to seven-hour gig. She said she has made up to $200 a night, but she can also make much less. One night, her version of "Blowing in the Wind" earned her a quarter.

"In January, I was really sick. I almost starved," she said. "But this is just so much fun, man. It's been my lifelong dream to be a musician."

Next to her sat Patrick "Patches" Vautour.

"If I had the money to buy a permit," he said, referring to the $25 fee, "I'd do this. I'm unemployed right now. Rough times."

Patches had not paid Fridinger for her music.

"I told her all I can give her are my two ears," he said. "I really like her style."

Fridinger was playing an original song, "Looking in the Mirror," about an encounter with an old drunk man in a bar. A few faces turned but none lit up.

One man threw 50 cents in her case. He neither looked, nor slowed down.

He was wearing headphones.

David Filipov can be reached at filipov@globe.com.