Don’t assume anything. This isn’t a story about some down-on-his-luck street musician who doesn’t have what it takes to make it big. Levie Ball doesn’t have to play in this tunnel if he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t rely on your spare change to make ends meet. And just because he plays here eight hours a day doesn’t mean that he can’t get a gig. He’s played jazz with Bill McFarland. He’s played reggae at the Wild Hare. He was a sideman with legendary R & B crooner Walter Jackson. He’s rocked the crowds at CrossCurrents, the Quiet Knight, and Hidden Stages, playing in bands like Om and Inner Glimpse.
Levie Ball exudes cool. Everything about him says cool. It’s not only the way he plays. It’s the way he carries himself with that smooth, mellow, unpretentious confidence. It’s his jokey, philosophical way of speaking–he can use words like “hip” and “hep” and “cat” without sounding the least bit corny. He designs his own clothing–brimless African caps and garments made out of loose-fitting cloth. On anyone else it would look like drapes, but on Ball it works. Even his slim paintbrush of a goatee is in character. Without ever hearing him play, you can tell that he carries the stamp of jazz.
It’s about 10 PM. A young couple walk past Ball and stop to listen. The man is wearing a white undershirt with a gold chain around his neck. His girlfriend, barefoot, wears an emerald green one-piece swimsuit. The man eyes Ball as if he had come upon a trained seal, something he can exploit to entertain his lady friend.
“Well, play something real smooth.”
The woman laughs, and Ball resumes playing. The man leaves a buck in the saxophone case and tries to lead his girlfriend away.
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“This is my sanctuary down here,” Ball says as he stands in the tunnel, his golden saxophone tied around his neck with an old shoelace. “For me, it’s like a church. I come down here to find peace. This is my spot. I have been elsewhere, but I always come back here. It’s peaceful. Nobody bothers you. They just jog through. When you practice at home, you can’t play as loud as you want because you get people saying, ‘Why don’t he keep that down? Why don’t he play something else?’ You need your own little spot. I choose to come outside where I can play as loud as I want, as hard as I want. I’m conditioning my attitudes and my emotions so that when I walk onstage, I can have a command sound. But if I was practicing inside a house where you can’t play loud, I’d have a little unsure sound. I’d have a closet sound. You stay in a building, you got people over you and under you. My sound might be beautiful, but people might not want to hear it that day: ‘Hey man! Why don’t you shut up?’ You understand what I’m saying. Everybody’s got their own way of how they get into music, and this is just my way.”
