In an era when Auto-Tune and heavily produced music reign, PK Dwyer is an anomaly.
You won’t find him on MTV or VH1, you’ll see him singing and playing the blues on the street with his guitar case full of dollar bills and loose change.
He performs anywhere he can find an audience — on street corners, in coffee shops, clubs, and at music festivals all over the world — but for the last few years, he’s found his home by Popejoy Hall on UNM campus.
The 61-year-old singer/songwriter didn’t always play the blues:
For the greater part of his career, he played rock and roll and was in a band called the Jitters. It wasn’t until 2000 that he converted.
At the time, he was looking for a K-161 thin twin guitar, and he stumbled upon a Jimmy Reed CD that he said he hadn’t listened to since he was young.
“It changed my life,” Dwyer said. “I went, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve been drifting too far from shore.’”
He then fired his band and started writing blues songs.
Dwyer plays without manipulation and synthesizers, using only his harmonica and guitar. This is his own version of the blues, or what his wife and manager Carol dubbed “sidewalk hipster blues.”
He said he started busking, or street performing, in 1970 after he moved to Los Angeles. After two weeks without work, Dwyer said someone told him that musicians were making money by opening up their guitar cases and playing at the UCLA campus.
“I played one night and I made $50, which in 1970 was actually quite a bit of money, and I was thrilled,” Dwyer said.
A year and a half later, in 1971, he moved to Seattle where he said he was the first person to busk at the Pike Place Market.
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Since that time, Dwyer has made a living by busking in cities all over the world, including New York, Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona.
He said he likes playing on the streets because he is in charge.
“I can do it when I want to, where I want to, as long as I’m allowed to do it,” he said.
Dwyer said the blues are an important part of western music because they can express a range of emotions, and he said he hopes to drag them into the 21st century.
“Blues is the roots, the rest is the fruits. Everything springs from it,” he said.
He said he hopes to continue playing it and sharing it as long as he lives.
“The blues can be anything from being upset about what’s happening in your life to a celebration of what’s happening in your life,”
he said. “It’s not all sad, and even the sad stuff is the kind of stuff where it makes you feel better to hear it.”
On more than one occasion, Sam Korostyshevsky, a junior studying psychology, said he has watched Dwyer play on campus.
“I’m always pretty impressed with his technique,” he said. “He’s very good, but jazz and the blues seem to be declining art forms.”
Orlando Madrid, a music education major, said he agrees.
“The blues is kind of fading with today’s youth,” he said. “People are in it for the money, but I think more people need to do music for the love of it, like street performing.”
To hear some of his music and to learn more about upcoming shows, visit: pkdwyer.com
