Maestro Irish Spoon Player

This just came in from England, a bit of London cheer on a rainy wet Wednesday AM:

Hi Lloyd,

Thought you would enjoy this amazing dude playing the spoons to Faithless’ “Insomnia.” He is an English street person but has amazing presence and seems to spread a bit of joy wherever he turns up.

   I have found a few vids of him in various cities links collected together on my blog here.

   Cheers Robin (Wood)

I learned to play the spoons, also the musical saw, from an eccentric old guy, Holger Christiansen, in the (ulp!) late ’40s. He was caretaker on my dad’s rice farm in Colusa, Calif., and also built a foot-powered organ and carved his own violin. In the last part of this video, the guy is talking to me: “Now that be a lesson to you, young man, when you think you can play the spoons…”

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

5 Responses to Maestro Irish Spoon Player

  1. There are few things as satisfying as seeing musicians totally devoted to their craft, lost in the music. From Yo Yo Ma to this homeless man on the spoons, it gives nearly everyone joy to watch people float away when lost in their art.

    This man made me smile and livened my day. Great post.

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