Unicorn-headed busker for hire

WALLA WALLA – A man walks into a bar carrying a violin in one hand and a unicorn head in the other.

For musician Ben MacSpadden, it’s your run-of-the-mill Thursday night as he navigates through a local pub to find his target: a group of people celebrating the holiday at a cluster of tables pushed together for the occasion.

He introduces himself, dons the head that so many have seen him wear during his busking performances at First Avenue and Main Street, and begins a medley of Christmas tunes.

He calls them Uni-Grams. The idea is simple, the 28-year-old said: For $10, he delivers a message and a song while wearing his unicorn mask. At Christmas, he adds an ugly sweater to the get-up. Additional songs are $5 each.

Though started as an idea for the holidays, he sees no reason to stop now. This unicorn will be for hire as long as there’s demand.

It’s another layer to the live performances that kicked off when MacSpadden began playing at Land Title Plaza earlier this year.

A game buyer for Book & Game Co., MacSpadden considers himself a student of busking – street performing for tips.

The son of a music teacher, he’s played violin since he was a tot, although he says without a hint of irony he didn’t become serious about it until he was 5. That was when his teacher was covering the letter “V” with a depiction of a violin, which MacSpadden announced he could play. The teacher was awe-struck, and recommended an instructor. The rest is history.

It hadn’t occurred to him to play on the streets until he unearthed the unicorn mask during a move.

Purchased for a Halloween costume last year, he stumbled upon the mask and wondered to himself if he could play his acoustic violin dubbed “Oskar” while wearing it.

Once confirmed, he decided to take his act on the road. Or, rather, on the street corner.

So excited was MacSpadden to make his downtown debut last summer in a kilt and the mask and with a sign that read “Cursed by a wizard, need money for magic lessons” that he hadn’t noticed he’d set up camp on a different day of the week than originally planned. Nevertheless, he decided to play and see what would happen.

The Celtic tunes from MacSpadden and Oskar turned heads. It was exactly what he was going for.

“The reaction was immediate and amazing,” he said. “Folks were taken completely off guard. I could almost see people’s thoughts sliding from ‘What’s going on? Is this really happening?’ to ‘Hey, this guy’s pretty good.’ ”

And he is. When he was young, MacSpadden set a record for himself of practicing about 3,000 consecutive days. He fell out of that habit once he hit high school and college, but by then he knew what he was doing.

Music education was his career path in college at Central Washington University, though he left early.

With Oskar – a roughly 60-year-old instrument made in Germany – and “Sparky” – his electric violin with the extra-low string that gives him depth with chords and noodling around – his passion for performing has awakened once again.

Since that first performance in downtown Walla Walla, MacSpadden has not only returned to the streets weekend after weekend, he’s also attended the Thursday jam nights at Sapolil Cellars, performs at open mics, debuted an original composition during a performance at Mace Mead Works, traveled to Portland to busk, and has now added his Uni-Grams, complete with a dedicated social media page on Facebook.