On any given summer night in Harvard or Davis Square, street musician Manny Medeiros removes his Birkenstock sandals as part of a preparation ritual of sorts. The bare skin of his feet touches city brick or pavement. He has found his muse.
He plugs in his amplified acoustic guitar and the music flows.
A Somerville resident and street musician for over 20 years, Manny Medeiros, 48, is at home in more ways than one as he entertains a lively crowd in Davis Square.
Comfortably clad in khaki shorts, Medeiros exudes a unique stage presence, sporting a professional haircut that would look academic if it weren't for the unkempt brown wisps flailing about in the night air. His glasses reflect the glowing lights that hang in the square.
With a delicate tenor voice, Medeiros belts out songs from the '60s and '70s, an era of music he calls "groundbreaking." His playlist commonly features artists with well-known back catalogues such as Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and Otis Redding.
Medeiros said he chooses the song order according to the mood of the night and reaction from the crowd, always on the fly. He grew up in the area and remembers his youth, when the place "looked like a ghost town," he said.
"It was just empty, not at all the tourist attraction it is today," Medeiros said. "There was only the old [Somerville] theater and the Square itself."
That emptiness inspired his passion for song.
"I remember thinking, 'What a great place [this would be] to play music,'" he said.
Over two decades later, Medeiros still lives by that mantra. He's played on the street "circuit" across the country, passing through Chicago, New Orleans and even Milwaukee, he said with a smile. But the twinkle in his eye suggests that his home turf holds a special place in Medeiros' heart.
Medeiros first became interested in his job by watching street musicians perform in Boston. Once he gave it a try, he got used to the "vibe" on the street as opposed to more formal venues like clubs.
He prefers playing in city squares over the subway, where he says a day can completely disappear.
"The T's great if you're just going to grab the train," he said. "But try staying down there for 12 hours in a row. You go down in the hole early in the morning when it's still dark and come out after sunset. I start to miss daylight and fresh air."
Around 1986, the "ghost town" atmosphere in Davis Square was changing rapidly, Medeiros said. Two years earlier, the Red Line was extended from Harvard Square to Alewife, passing directly through Davis Square. Davis was already a bustling area for college students, but Medeiros credits a specific restaurant for promoting the arts locally.
"I think it all really picked up with the Someday Caf?©," he said. "They really started the tradition of musicians playing in this square. They encouraged us."
Sadly, it closed in 2006, but the caf?©'s influence lives on in the music that rings out across the street from where it once stood.
While playing, Medeiros often pulls back from the microphone and suddenly his entire body becomes an extension of the guitar. In an almost primal manner he hops to the left and right on the important beats, emphasizing a chord or melody with his body language.
In these moments, the music appears to come from a time long before the '60s - he is a modern-day minstrel.
Part of this impression comes from his decision to play solo, rather than with a band, he later explained.
"When you're in a group, you can kind of hide behind the other musicians," Medeiros said. "But when you're alone, it's just you, the music and the audience. You feel naked. You have to play what you feel."
This nakedness of emotion catches the attention of the crowd as he plays. Couples momentarily take their eyes off of their ice cream cones and kiss each other. A familiar song triggers a joyful reaction as people throughout the crowd, as if on cue, begin to mouth the words they know so well. A young girl gets permission from her father to give some money and she drops a few dollars in a grateful, if somewhat shy, manner into the open guitar case next to the minstrel's sandals.
But Medeiros said money isn't what has kept him playing for 20 years.
"I play music for the joy of doing it," he said. "Also to try and make a living, of course, but in that order. It just so happens that if you don't enjoy [playing music] you can't make a living from it."
In contrast to those he calls amateurs, who "keep a normal job by day and try to play music on the side," Medeiros considers himself and the other street artists in a class all their own.
But whether looked at as a journey to sainthood or just a way of life, Medeiros says that his 20 years as a street musician have not been without hardship. He recalls one experience in particular that no doubt added to his aversion to playing in the subway.
"Once I was playing down in the Harvard Square stop. I started singing 'As Tears Go By,' which is just the sweetest song, you know," he said, shifting quickly into song. "It is the evening of the day/I sit and watch the children play."
"Then all of a sudden, this really big guy runs right up to me right out of nowhere," Medeiros continued. "He picks me up by the guitar and lifts me completely off the ground and above his head. Then he threw us both, the guitar and I, onto the ground and ran away. The guitar broke my fall, and was smashed into pieces."
Medeiros said he found out from his lawyer that the man had just been in a mental institution.
"I guess some of his children died in a fire and he went crazy," Medeiros said. "The words of the song triggered the memory and that was it. I decided not to press charges."
But Medeiros remembers the past 20 years in a largely positive light, he said. And as he finishes his last song for a small crowd in the square, his guitar case is full of green dollar bills and his face is flush with a smile.
He loosens his guitar strap, puts his sandals back on and packs up his equipment - all in a day's work for a street singer - and starts walking down the road to his next performance.
