Doug Clark: Playing for others’ suppers

The eighth annual Spokane Street Music Week kicked off Monday on the sidewalks of downtown Spokane with some 60 performers donating their talents to raise money for the Second Harvest Inland Northwest Food Bank. The event continues during the noon hours through Friday.

Monday saw jazzers, bluegrassers and blowers of horns. A sizable group of high-stepping Highland dancers, drummers and bagpipers from Shadle Park High School wowed crowds in the Parkade courtyard.

George Jarrett brought along his 12-year-old grandson, Geordan. The two rockers strummed electric guitars on the sidewalk next to the P.F. Chang’s restaurant.

There were even a few never-before-seen Street Music Week acts.

Kenzie and Maddie Lauritzen, for example. The cute 11-year-olds were the first twin jugglers to ever appear in the charity event. They were good, too.

Then there was local attorney Steven Schneider.

His act is, well… a bit harder to describe.

First a few words about his wardrobe. Schneider wore a garish red plaid cap with a yellow-and-black plaid sports jacket. He said he got this schizophrenic fashion statement one year when he went to a Halloween party as an insurance salesman.

( COLUMNIST NOTE – My father was an insurance agent. And while no sartorial wonder, he knew enough to never mix his plaids.)

Schneider’s instrument was a Halloween party, too. It was a homemade hybrid percussive contraption he called his “1-Man Bodhran Band.”

The thing had one cymbal, a sort of bass drum, a couple of wood Indonesian temple bells, a makeshift tambourine, the snare from a snare drum and a washboard stuck on the back.

I had to ask. “What’s ‘bodhran’ mean?”

Schneider explained that it was a word of Celtic origins meaning “a terrible noise.”

He played it a bit for me. Yep, I believe that sums it up.

“It is an unholy alliance,” added Schneider with a chuckle.

I asked Schneider what sort of law he practiced. He told me he was working on a form of universal equal rights for musicians.

Yeah, “every musician gets a girlfriend and an apartment,” he quipped.

I’ll admit it. Street Music Week is the most fun I have all year. The people who participate are positively wonderful, and there’s still time to come out and have a blast with us. Just contact me via the information below.

This year’s version of Street Music Week is only going to get better.

•Today Peter Rivera, former lead singer of Rare Earth, returns to Street Music to perform some of his monster hits like “Get Ready” and “Celebrate.” Like last year, Rivera will appear on the Main Avenue sidewalk near Starbucks across from River Park Square.

•On Wednesday trombonist extraordinaire Wally Friel, a retired Whitman County Superior Court judge, intends to travel here from the Palouse and perform at his favorite spot near River Park Square. With him will be Dave Bezdicek on tuba. Together they are Two Old Brass Guys.

Friel told me he is bringing song sheets to pass out. At 12:30 p.m. he wants to conduct a mass singing of “Meet Me at the River,” the tune made popular at Spokane’s Expo ’74.

•On Thursday, Spokane City Council President Joe Shogan plans to stop by the Starbucks location. Word has reached me that Shogan wants to sing “House of the Rising Sun.”

This should be interesting.

I remember warbling this hit by The Animals at an Officer’s Club gig on Fairchild Air Force Base back when I was about 16 and in a band called The People Upstairs. I urge you all to come hear Shogan’s version.

•On Friday, Mayor Mary Verner intends to pop by the Starbucks spot to…

OK, I’m not completely sure what the mayor wants to do. Last year she sang “Proud Mary” with me. This year, secret mayoral song selection negotiations have been under way.

I voted for “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” This was nixed in favor of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

Gee, mayor. Is that a song title?

Or a threat?