Playing in a park or on a street corner isn’t new for musician Johnny Franco. Franco and his brother Domenico are buskers, and during the pandemic they started taking requests from people who wanted to be serenaded from outside their windows with concerts.
Now, with Curbside Serenade, the two have teamed up with other musicians to organize regular outdoor concerts around the city during the summer. The goal, they say, is for audiences to stumble across music wherever they happen to be. We talk to Johnny and Domenico Franco, along with Dave Pollack, one of the founders of Curbside Serenade.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with a conversation about busking and street musicians. Johnny Franco, who calls himself “The Professional Entertainer,” plays shows with someone known as his “Real Brother Dom,” who is in fact his real brother Dom. They emigrated to Portland from Brazil and have become fixtures in the city’s music scene, playing shows on the streets, in parks and in theaters. Along with the musician David Pollack, they co-founded the nonprofit Curbside Serenade during the pandemic, and all three join me now. It’s great to have all three of you on the show.
David Pollack: Great to be here.
Johnny Franco: Hi Dave. Thanks for having us, and hello to the listeners.
Miller: Johnny, can we start with a song? What do you have for us?
J. Franco: Sounds good, yes. I’ll do a song of mine called “Thursday at the Park” that’s supposed to paint a picture of what happens at Laurelhurst Park every Thursday, for five years now.
Dom, are you awake?
Domenico Franco: I’m awake, Johnny.
[“Thursday at the Park” by Johnny Franco playing, live in studio]
Miller: That is “Thursday In the Park.” Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom. I don’t think we’ve ever had a song that had the phrase “eating meatballs from a jar” on this show. What brought you to Portland?
J. Franco: It was love, Dave. I fell in love with an American woman and ended up in the United States.
Miller: You’d already been making music in Brazil?
J. Franco: Yeah, some music. I was mainly an actor when I was down there. But dropped everything I was doing to just be with this woman. We ended up moving to Portland in our attempt to find somewhere less cold and more affordable than New York and LA, and that wasn’t too expensive or too Republican. So we ended up here.
Miller: How’d it go?
J. Franco: First we couldn’t find anywhere and then we settled for Portland. It was the correct decision. This city’s changed me in the best ways possible, and I’m pretty happy to be here.
Miller: David, you came from New York. What brought you here?
Pollack: Well, a couple things. I went to school in Vermont, and I really loved it up there. But I was looking for something like Vermont – not as cold, also, because it’s freezing up there. Also, I have some family that was in Seattle. So I came out to Seattle specifically a lot, and I always saw myself out here. Years later, I flew out to Seattle, and I was like, “oh, this is not as cool as it was when I was a kid.” [Laughs] So somebody told me to take a bus down to Portland, and I took a bus down to Portland and never left.
Miller: What was your musical plan when you got here?
Pollack: My musical plan when I got here? I really didn’t have a plan when I came here. But I always grew up busking pretty much. So when I first got here after the winter … It’s really funny, when I got here, there was a major snowstorm, 2017. But then once everything melted and got into the spring, I busked a lot, and that’s kind of how I made a lot of my money before I got a job. I was a paraeducator for a while through Portland Public [Schools].
Miller: And Johnny, what about you? Love brought you to the states, and then the combination of qualities of Portland brought you here. Did you have a musical plan or dream?
J. Franco: No, the idea was just to be with the lady. That was the only idea, was to just be with her. Because of the situations when you move around here, and because I didn’t really plan on moving, it was also sort of young and fruitful, and following-the-heart kind of thing. I found myself in a position where I couldn’t really get a proper job. I had to just get by with what I had. I was telling the boys, they didn’t know this about me, but the first thing I actually tried in Portland was – do you know, those horse and buggies that they have in New York City that they give you the ride?
Miller: Yeah, like around Central Park?
J. Franco: That’s right. I played the horse in real life here in Portland. I did that for about a week.
Miller: [Laughs] You were a human-powered buggy mover?
J. Franco: That’s right, yeah. When I moved out here, for the first week. I made 20 bucks in a whole week of work. So then I realized that I should probably just go to the street and play music because I probably had a better chance that way. And I did, and the streets changed me, in the best way.
I became intimate with the city of Portland that way. I slowly started to feel like the city recognized me. Not the people, no, but the pavement, the bricks, the trees. It was the weirdest feeling to be, every day, a complete stranger to everybody, but in such a deep relationship with the city, with the streetcars, with the trees, with the buildings, with the lights, and just the organism that is the social clockwork of downtown Portland.
Miller: David, can we hear one of your songs?
Pollack: Yeah, totally.
Miller: What do you have for us?
Pollack: This one’s called “Roses.”
[“Roses” by David Pollack playing, live in studio]
Miller: That’s the Portland musician David Pollock with the song “Roses.”
Johnny, what is Curbside Serenade?
J. Franco: Curbside Serenade is of my creation from the pandemic days, to put together an organization that helps buskers and musicians, to keep it alive back then, the live music. And now it’s transformed … David, will you do it for me? I can’t do it. I’m trying to speak radio language and it’s coming out weird.
Pollack: Well, it’s a nonprofit. It started back with Johnny and Dom. They were delivering private serenades during the pandemic, when there was no music going on. And I kind of came on and was like, “you know what, we should do this on a larger scale.” So we had other musician friends of ours who were also delivering serenades. One of the serenades was done in Laurelhurst Park, for a couple of lovebirds in Laurelhurst Park, and Johnny and Dom came and performed.
Somebody there was like, “Oh, you should come back next week. This is great.” So they did and just kept coming back on Thursdays, week after week after week. That became our Thursday in the Park series. That first song that Johnny played. It spawned into, not just the Thursday in the Park, which is what we’re most well known as. But Mount Tabor on Monday, we have a partnership with Portland Clean and Safe at Director’s Park downtown.
We have a new partnership with McMenamin’s that we’re going to unroll this year. Rainbow Road, Pedestrian Plaza, St. John’s Farmers Market. So the list just goes on and on. So it’s really gotten … this is our sixth year, and it’s really, really blossomed into something really incredible and special.
Miller: Johnny, what are the skills it takes to be a successful busker? To get people to pay attention when they’re not there probably or necessarily for the show. Like maybe they’re going shopping, maybe they’re just walking by. How do you keep their attention?
J. Franco: The sidewalk, street performing is a place for giving. You have to give everything. At least to me, I could never hold back one single part of myself and be successful at it. It has to be 100% always. Now, of course, you can go there and you’re going to become part of – David says it always – the landscape that is being painted there, you’re helping being a part of it.
But I would say that there’s no recipe. There’s more about, you have to let go of everything and put everything you got into it. Otherwise, it’s just not going to affect people in any way. Another thing that helps me is I’ve got my brother with me. I honestly don’t know how people do it without a brother. I did it without a brother for about two-and-a-half years. But it’s much easier with him.
Miller: Someone who knows you?
J. Franco: Yeah, somebody who’s there with you when you’re on that post-lunch ... Because here’s the other thing. For you to make it on the street, make enough money, you have to play for hours at a time. You can’t just go over there for two hours and think that you’re going to accomplish something, financially speaking. You can go there and accomplish something great within five minutes, 10 minutes, just like anybody else when they’ve emerged into the social life. But to actually make it financially, it has to be for hours there and you have to have all these little dynamics of interacting with the people.
So after lunch, when you’re on that home stretch, after four-and-a-half hours of playing, that’s when you need somebody to give you hope, comfort and support. Before the brother, I had that from the people of Portland. I still can remember the taste of the Canadian whiskey that the people were drinking on the street or the smell of the menthol cigarettes when they would sing with me on the microphone. Of course, I’m speaking of Leo, Grandma Katie, Will Birdman and so many of the people of Portland who became part of my family.
Miller: Can we squeeze in one more song? Some of the people who are name checking that. Can we get “Ones and Pennies?” We have about two minutes left.
J. Franco: Let’s do it. This one is our anthem to our relationship to the United States of America, I mean, to Portland. I live in Portland, but hey, the United States of America is just about a 30-minute drive out of Portland.
[“Ones and Pennies” by Johnny Franco playing, live in studio]
J. Franco: There’s a little quick one for you there.
Miller: I am impressed by your time management. That was Johnny Franco, a very professional entertainer, along with His Real Brother Dom Franco. They are along with David Pollock, some of the founders of Curbside Serenade.
So just to remind us again, when can folks see you all and other Curbside Serenade shows in the coming months?
Pollack: You could find our schedule at curbsideserenade.org, but also Laurelhurst Park on Thursday, starting in July. Mount Tabor Mondays, every Monday until Labor Day, and a bunch of other ones as well.
J. Franco: And you could come and see us on June 13, Saturday, People of Portland, at Alberta Rose Theatre on our Do Everything Show. Johnny Franco, His Real Brother Dom, and the great cast of traveling strangers and unfortunate weirdos that’s gonna be a part of this show, and you’re one of them invited.
Miller: Johnny, Dom and David, thanks very much.
J. Franco: Thank you.
Pollack: Thanks for having us, Dave.
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