When I was 11, in 1974, my step father took my brother and me to the Pike Place Market. There we saw a pony-tailed hippie (Jonny Hahn) wheel his beat-up piano out to a corner spot and play free-form compositions.

• Saw Dr K Boogie Woogie play an improvised version of Passacaglia on a public piano at London train station

• became obsessed and dusted off piano after 30 years

• began lessons at age 45

• bought a portable piano to play in the streets

• applied to busk at local train stations

• after 2 years of practice flew to London and do a duet with Dr K

• Got 450 K views!

• Now play portable piano all over my city.

I had learnt to juggle from a friend, Gavin Hay. I would say the main inspiration for Gavin and myself was in 1988 (our last year of high school). There was an event held in Brisbane, World Expo 88, where a large amount of street performance was programmed for 6 months throughout the Expo grounds.

Gavin and I had season passes to Expo 88 and were inspired by the acts that were there. Every day in the paper they would print a schedule of the street acts so we spent a lot of time skipping school and watching the performances. There were amazing performers from around the world.

Jugglers, acrobats, mimes, clowns, jesters.... Fred Garbo, Lee Ross, Dick and Dick, The Antibodies, Captain Keno, Jonathon Acorn, Derek Scott, Circus Oz, The Natural Theatre Company UK, Thomas Arthur, Legs on the Wall, Mr PP, Glynn Nicholas, David Lichtenstein, The Checkerboard guy, The Butterfly Man... the list goes on.

We absorbed the skills, learnt the styles, asked all the dumb questions and the performers were only too happy to pass on their knowledge. By the end of Expo and our year 12 we knew what we wanted to do.

We started performing in the Brisbane mall alongside some of the acts that stayed on and others, because of the popularity of Expo came to Brisbane and many other people were inspired to do the same. Some of those other acts were Lucky Rich (when he only had 1 tattoo) Anthony Livingspace, Pepe, Nick Nicholas, Rusty Balls, Dirty Fred and more.

35 years later I'm still performing on the world's stage. So in answer to your question it was not one but hundreds of performers that inspired me and I thank them all.

I was at a local arts festival in Hamilton Ontario in 2016 with my buddy Luc and we were just wandering through admiring the artists and vendors. We had been playing music on and off together since high school, about 7 years at that point, but nothing had really ever come of it. I had a pair of bongos in my car and he had a didgeridoo in his, and he suggested busking.

We had never busked before this, I had never even considered it. I was in my second year of music school and busking was unfortunately frowned upon for some reason. He said "Let's grab the instruments, play for an hour and see if we can make enough money to buy a beer." I thought this could be a fun idea so we headed to the cars to grab our instruments.

We got back to the very busy James St North and realized we didn't have a tip jar. I suggested we buy some deep fried pickles from one of the food trucks as they were served in a small cardboard plate thing. We did and were able to find a sharpie with which we wrote "TIPS" on our greasy takeout container.

We set up on the side of the road, both of us sitting on the curb and played some very basic rhythms for the passers-by. Within 10 minutes of playing, we had made $20, enough for each of us to get a beer. A lightbulb went off in both of our heads, we had never made this much money so quickly, let alone doing what we love.

The festival was on all weekend, so the next day, I went to a local thrift shop, bought an old suitcase I could use as a kick drum, gathered whatever I could from my miscellaneous drum bin I had at home and put together a makeshift suitcase drum/percussion kit. Luc brought out another didgeridoo and our duo Dirty Hippie Music was born.

Since then, we've played all over Canada at numerous festivals and events, we've appeared on the radio and performed on television and have had quite the run, all because we wanted to have a beer at a festival all those years ago.

Covid limited my indoor gigs, so I started busking here in Calgary

I'm a trained classical professional musician. I'd lost two jobs halfway into the pandemic, but more importantly I lost many gigs and I really needed a source of income.

I started busking in summer of 2020 shortly after my community (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) went into voluntary COVID lockdown. People were isolated in their homes and scared. I decided that I could practice playing music safely in the open air outside on the street and others might enjoy it. People seemed scared and traumatized, but I noticed that they perked up and smiled as they went by. Even if listening to my music only provided a sense of normalcy for a few moments, it was a way to give people a break from the fear.

I started busking in the second part of quarantine when the Greek government allowed people to walk outside. Most of the older buskers were afraid to play music because of the police. I wanted so much to play music for people and express myself, also I wanted a bit of money, so I decided to start busking by taking the risk. The funny thing is that it was almost Christmas and the weather was cold but people were so hungry for listening to live music. My night concerts were AMAZING.

My wife has always been against it as in the Thai culture it's thought to be similar to begging. Just three months ago I caught her at a weak moment and she relented and I went to play my Sax in the CBD of Sydney.