My name is Stefano Tocchio. I’m 53. I was born in Italy 9 October, 1971 in a small town but quite famous touristic town because we have a long pre-Roman, Roman and Middle Age history, too. It’s called Spoleto. It’s between Rome and Florence. For me, it’s a little paradise because my family is there, and it’s really quiet. It’s really small, but lots of Italians know the place because it is connected to the history. It has a Roman theater and aqueducts. It is famous for stopping the attack by Hannibal, a General from Cartagena, Spain, who defeated the Romans near here. But in Spoleto, the soldiers threw hot oil on the advancing army from this famous tower, now called the Oil Tower, to stop them.

In the summer of 1987, I saw a group of people playing guitars on a bench in the north of Italy near the seaside. It was a nice group of people. I listened to it, and I just liked the style of a guy on an acoustic guitar singing. I don’t remember what song, but I thought, “This is amazing!” It was kind of an inspiration for me. I was 16 years old. Then I went back home, and I bought myself my first guitar. My first guitar was a Spanish guitar, but I didn’t like the sound, so I changed the strings to steel strings for acoustic guitar. It was so uncomfortable because the neck on the Spanish guitar is so thick and wide!

I started with country music. Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, John Denver. Maybe inside of me I already had this plan to travel the world, and Italian music will only be appreciated in Italy, but I wasn’t really thinking. My mother sometimes used to sing some Bob Dylan songs with me. She doesn’t know even one word in English, but she used to sing when I was learning the guitar. I could hear her sometimes singing along. She doesn’t know what she is singing. It’s funny.

 I was really into the guitar style. I remember at the beginning I preferred fingerpicking because I was shy that my family or someone would hear me. I just sing really soft and fingerpicking until I start to busk in London the next year.

When I was 18, there was a one-month program from the school in a youth hostel to have English lessons. There, I met my girlfriend. She was two years younger than me. I had a little bit of money, but I wanted more money to go out together with her sometimes. I need some extra money. At that time, I only knew 4 or 5 songs. I just went to the subway. I sit on the ground, and I start to play and sing these 5 songs over and over. I don’t think I was nervous at that time because it was just a game for me. Nobody knows me. I’m a stranger in a big city. I was just living in a dream. I knew that I wasn’t a good singer or a good guitar player. I just did what I had to do. I was young, I had long hair and smiled at people. I think I made a little money just for pity. That was the moment when I realized fingerpicking wasn’t good for me. That’s when I started to strum.

This girl was my motivation. Luckily, she liked me. She was from Italy, too. We are together today 35 years later. It’s a long story, but we connected again on Facebook 15 years ago. I received a friendship on Facebook. I just accepted. I didn’t recognize her name. I thought it was a friend from high school, but it was her! Life changed.

My father is an accountant. Since I was a little child, he used to tell me, “You have to follow my steps. We have a business already with customers.” Nothing big. So, I started in the Economics University in Perugia. I lived there almost 20 years. I moved there because it is a university town, even foreign universities with people from around the world. I think the main language there was English because everybody came from everywhere to study here. After a few years, I realized that the subject I like the most was law, so I changed to law school. But I was doing everything very slowly because I was busking and playing music too in Perugia. In the end, I didn’t get my degree. I started to work in a fruit market. They used to pay me good money, black market of course. I worked from 4am really early to let’s say 12 o’clock. Then, I could rest and busk and then play at night in bars, sometimes alone and sometimes in a little band with friends.

I met a friend, half English and half Irish, Patrick, who was a great violin and mandolin player. That’s why I learned some Irish music. With him, we played a lot. We found a lot of gigs. In this university town, there are a lot of bars and nightlife. So, we played a lot. I did this until 1999. Suddenly I stopped because I had an accident with my motorbike. After a few months, I received a bunch of money from the insurance. This is when I decided to open my own bar, and I stopped busking. I built some of the furniture in the bar because I like to work with wood and I didn’t have enough money to buy everything.

It worked for a while. Of course, I spent all my money on busking equipment and my motorbike! I had the bar until 2009. I played in my bar also about once a month, but we had a lot of live music maybe three times a week. I wanted to continue playing with Patrick, so I sold half of the business to a friend of mine from Turkey so I could have more time for music. We changed the bar a little and had Turkish food. I had more free time to travel and play with Patrick. We had a band called Ethnic Summer, but mostly we just played the two of us. He was a fantastic musician, and later he went touring with an Italian band, Modena City Ramblers, and then he went touring with an American artist, Amanda Palmer.

After 2009, I sold the bar, opened another one with 3 other guys. I was even more free. Then I sold this bar and opened a restaurant with another friend of mine in 2015. I needed to change my lifestyle not staying awake every night and drinking a little bit. It was time to end this game and start something else. The restaurant was a bad business, really really bad, and I lose everything. This is when I start to busk again until now.

So then, with my girlfriend we thought about something else. In 2015, we came to Spain for the first time with the motorbike, a tent and a guitar. It was really really cheap in that time and the weather was great, so we think about Spain. We traveled through Spain for 4 months. As soon as we arrived to Málaga, we said, “Oh, that is an interesting place.” So, on the way back to Italy, we stopped again in Málaga. I said, “If we are going to move one day, that is going to be the place.” In 2017, we moved here. 

When I moved to Spain, it was already two years that I was busking again in Italy. I busked in Málaga the first year and a half or two years with no amplifier, just acoustic in the narrow streets. Then slowly Málaga became every day more crowded, so I needed an amplifier, and I bought that 5 years ago, one year before Covid.

I used to play in front of the Roman Theater when we were allowed until 2019. It was great. A lot of groups stopped there. The tips were good, but it’s not just a question of for me to have a good day just because I have money. It’s also to have the good energy sometimes I need some coins! It brings energy. Otherwise, I wonder sometimes if I’m doing something wrong.

The thing I like the most about busking is that I am free. I don’t have a boss. Nobody tells me what to do. I am also free to play the songs that I feel in every moment. That’s why I prefer to play in the street than the bars. In bars, you have to kind of respect the kind of program. You have to start playing softer and then higher and higher as the night goes to follow the people as they get into the music, the party, the alcohol. Then people ask you to play this song, or they take the microphone and want to join me, which I understand, but for me the bar life is over. That’s why I prefer the street. It fits more with my feeling now. I’ve changed over the years. I prefer the really soft and cool situation in the street instead of the noise in a bar. Before it was the other way around.

While I was busking when I was younger, sometimes I was feeling like I was doing something like a rebel. I feel like I’m doing this because I don’t want to be a part of society. Nobody understands me, but I’m going to survive anyway. A little bit of anger connected with my young age. I loved it. I was proud. I used to take my money and my guitar and walk confidently saying, “I did it another day. I’m so happy even if the world is against me.” It was a good feeling. By accident this changed in time maybe 10 years ago. I crossed some line. Now there is nothing connected to this feeling because I changed my life and my mind. Then I began to see I’m doing something that people like and appreciate. This free art.

All the time I have this feeling that people are not giving me money because I am good. I know I am not so good. I think they are giving money because they get a good vibe from me because they can feel that I do it with my heart.

In the street, magic happens. Magical experiences. A couple years ago I was playing at the port, and it was very strong for me. One moment, please. This family stopped there. This little girl sit there and then asked her mother for a coin. She put a coin. Ok. Then I played another song, and she asked another coin. And she put another coin in my suitcase. It went like this for 3 or 4 songs. Then the family came up to me. They were from Eastern Europe. Her mother with a big smile told me, “You know, the coins that she gives you are her coins. When we left home, her grandfather gave her these coins and said, ‘You are going on holiday, you can buy something nice for yourself.’” Then her mom says, “It’s two days that we are hanging around entering shops and we ask her, ‘Do you want to buy some souvenirs?’ She said, ‘No, no, no.’” But she decided in this moment to give her money to me. She told me that, and I started crying for half an hour. I could not play. Incredible. It was incredible. I can tell you not million but thousands of stories but this one, I wasn’t ready for something like that. The energy and the power of the music is that.

Sometimes I don’t have the energy to play, but then for some reason you don’t have a chance to play because of the weather or my voice is bad, and I miss the street! The magic of the street for me it is so genuine the reaction of the people. It’s not like in a bar or a concert where there is some expectation. People just walk by and even for them it is a surprise. They didn’t know they were going to have this experience.

I have played in many places here. Torremolinos. Torre del Mar. Torrox. Benalmádena. I start to play in this spot here, too, and nighttime at the beach in these places. The police are a problem. This is the way I do it. In the summertime, the police stop you and tell you to leave. So, what I do is I don’t show my face in the same place for a couple weeks. I go somewhere else. They stop me, and I then I return again in this circle game. If they catch me again, I make some excuse. But in the summertime, the police are more relaxed because the streets and the streets are crowded, but you still have to be careful. In September, the police are not so busy; they get bored and have nothing to do, so it is harder. In Pedregalejo, I used to play in front of the terraces with a Scottish guy. We play a few songs and then collect money, which is one thing I don’t like to do by myself. Together it was OK because he would go and collect the money at each restaurant while I was playing my last song. But myself, I stop the music, silent, and then go there and ask for money. I don’t like this. But when he left, I returned to my busking style by myself.

I go to all these places with my equipment and bungee cords on my motorcycle. To travel this way with all my stuff can be very scary with the trucks and wind and rain sometimes, but I do it. I am getting older, and my motorbike is older too, so it can be a little stressful. We live in Rincón de la Victoria, and it is much more affordable. There are a lot of local and retired people. It’s really calm. At 11pm, everybody is in bed.

This busking is enough for me. It’s efficient. Now, I am old enough to know how to live with few money. I don’t go out much. We just enjoy to stay at home, or just take a walk or ride our bicycle. I make enough money because I’m quite consistent. I play regularly every day. I learn which is the best music that works. Sometimes I don’t care about money at all. If I have a good day one day before, I just go out with a really soft heart and play my music, and that could be the best day of the week! Of course, money is important, but it’s not the first thing. 

This is my work. Even my girlfriend jokes with me. She works as a waitress. When I tell her I’m going to work, she says, “You can’t call what you do work. You just move two fingers. That’s how you make money!” She likes what I’m doing, but she has to work 8 hours a day in the restaurant, so sometimes she wants to take a little revenge1 People don’t know how much energy it takes to play 2 hours. I’m not complaining. It’s just true.

Sometimes I don’t like to listen to myself on video or recording. When I’m playing, I think I’m doing great, but when I look at myself, I feel like I’m speeding when I’m playing. But it’s good to see sometimes because I can tell myself, “Stefano, concentrate now, be in time, slow down, find the right pattern.” So, I’m trying always to improve. I would like to play more in time. I’m not getting better, but I’m a different player now. My style became more free. I’m used to playing by myself and at this time while I’m busking, I interpret more. With Patrick or the band, we played closer to an original song. Now, I don’t even remember the original version, but I have changed the melody, timing and rhythm because I play more with the songs when I busk.

Sometimes people stop and just ask me, “Are you doing this for a living or just once in a while for fun?” At the beginning I thought it was just for curiosity, but then I realized maybe they are interested to change their life. So, maybe I can be an inspiration because I put my heart in what I’m doing. That’s it.

I remember I heard that Cat Stevens was going to do two concerts five years ago in 2020 in Rome and Tuscany somewhere. Usually, I go home to see my parents twice a year, so I planned this trip around these concerts for July. And then in March was the lockdown. I arranged everything to see my parents and tickets and then it was all cancelled with Covid.

Two years ago, I was worried and wondering, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do this the rest of my life. I’m getting old.” Then, one day I saw a commercial that Cat Stevens was doing a concert in Marbella in a place called Starlight. It was the 21st of June. I remember this date because it was a dream for me. He was turning 75 years old. I said, “I’m going not just to listen, but to watch. What can he do at 75?” He did a real concert, two hours. In this natural cave, outdoors open to the air. Great acoustic sound. It’s a magical place. He did songs like Father and Son in the same key. So, I said, “No worries. I can do this for 20 more years!” I just have to follow him in this lifestyle too!

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