East Lansing street musician Greg Robertson discusses his experience performing on the streets of East Lansing and Lansing, and his passion for music.
Many see Greg Robertson on Grand River Avenue during the week strumming his guitar and singing a folk song. But few stop to ask who the man behind the guitar is.
“Right now my day job is a street musician, which I’m totally cool with,” said Robertson, 53-year-old Lansing resident.
With the advice of his close friend and manager, Robertson took up street performing in late 2010.
He said becoming a street musician was appealing because of the heavy exposure.
Each of his shows are two to three hours long and contain 37 different songs. They contain a mixture of acoustic covers in addition to Robertson’s original compositions.
Robertson said he makes around $38 per show.
Music is not a new element for him. Robertson was born in Tampa, Fla., to musician parents. Robertson came to Adrian, Mich. when he was 2 years old.
“Music was there in the beginning,” Robertson said. “I literally spent the first year and a half of my life backstage.”
Robertson said his mother, a choir director classically trained at the Juilliard School in New York, taught him how to sing at a young age. He also quickly picked up the guitar.
“By the time I was 6 or 8, I knew my chords,” Robertson said.
Shortly after his high school graduation, Robertson went to what is now Siena Heights University for a semester.
After he left college, he joined the Navy. But, he only lasted for two weeks because of a macular lesion in his left eye that Robertson said came from looking directly at a solar eclipse when he was a child.
After his mother died in 1984, Robertson said he was inspired to perform music in her memory. He studied for about seven months to be a music minister. Despite never becoming ordained, Robertson played in mostly evangelical churches in various states.
“It reinforced the fact that music is universal in its applications,” Robertson said. “That’s why I really appreciate the street musician aspect of my career — because you’re ministering to every person that walks by, whether they know it or not.”
Robertson stopped playing in churches around 1997.
“As a guitar-playing, long-haired dude, I couldn’t work in the ministry,” he said.
He began working each and every kind of day job. His job experience ranges from restaurant work to painting to working at a laundromat.
At one of these jobs, he met a woman he began working with to produce an album. The duo aimed for it to launch at a music festival in September 2001.
After the catastrophic impact of 9/11, Robertson’s partner decided to take a different path and focus on spiritualism, Robertson said.
He then began working on another album, but all work was halted when he had a heart attack in 2007 and the medical costs took away all funding for his album.
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In the midst of recovery, he continued to work on his album through the years. In 2009, after an open heart surgery, he was weakened to the point he could barely work his day jobs.
In 2011, Robertson said he had a seizure which stopped his breathing for two minutes and required CPR to bring him back to life.
“I’m not a zombie, not a vampire, I promise,” he said jokingly.
He refuses to let his illnesses stop him. The positive response he receives from students is what encourages him to keep going, he said.
“The old saying is that music has the charms to soothe the wild beast, so think what it could do to civilized people,” Robertson said. “Music does heal and does teach. I’m honored to have such responsibility and see daily how it’s fulfilled.”
Robertson will be part of a free concert Oct. 24 at Reo Town Pub, 1145 S. Washington Ave., in Lansing.
