Grand Army Plaza's Subway Country Music Freebee

Marc Orleans, of the musical group "Eleven Twenty-Nine" will be performing on Friday night, August 19th in Brooklyn at @  St. Vitus—but this morning, Grand Army Plaza commuters catching the early hour 2/3 trains to the city for work, school or other stuff were treated to his intricate, devoted crazy steel string country guitar playing for free.

According to the Brooklyn-based private record label, Northern Spy, Marc Orleans is a "Free-form psych veteran and secret weapon behind some of the heaviest mumbo jumbo and dusted American cosmic-craziness to come out in the last decade and a half."

Marc pioneered his twisted lines with Juneau, Enos Slaughter and the Sunburned Hand of the Man back at the end of the 20th century. Now, residing in Brooklyn, he plays steel guitar ninety hours a week. As well as with Eleven Twenty-Nine, Marc is an active member of the Acid Twangers, D. Charles Speer and the Helix and has appeared on N-Spy’s Colin Langenus’s latest record as well as Steve Gunn’s Borum Palace. He also just finished steel guitar work on Meg Baird’s upcoming Drag City release.

Normally the Grand Army Plaza platform features an Italian classical-style elderly violinist, occasionaly an acapella homeless woman who sings "Amazing Grace" with true gusto and resonance and the ever-popular Spanish troubadours whose talent is both great in technique as it is in balance as they strut from one end of the car to the other, never faltering.

But my millennium i-pod habit almost always keeps me a long distance away from external music so I can better prepare for the day ahead with Pink Floyd, Nancy Griffith, Janis Joplin and, embarrassingly, Dan Fogelberg. But there is something about the live twang of a steel guitar and someone who loves to play it that interrupts the sacred and—I will admit—I missed at least two trains that pulled up to the platform, just to catch a little more before hurtling through black tunnels to destination: day job.

Thanks Marc.