Luke, age 54, plays at the Shuttle in Grand Central Station and has a cherished group of commuters he sees every day, that he refers to as the "Inner Circle".

I went to art school and I worked as an illustrator, and I kinda liked that; I did magazines and book covers. But I always had the guitar going on the side. For many years it only had four strings, but at some point I got the extra two strings and I got a little bit better. And I got divorced and I started having a different kind of social life, and hung out in the Village a lot, and at that point I started doing the open mikes at Folk City and Speakeasy's and all those places.

Eventually, I got hired for a place, so I started pickin' out limousines, and what super model I wanted to date. But that reality never came to pass. But I'm able to kind of, you know, just kind of barely squeak by; I'm always late on the rent—I get the turn-off notices instead of the bills. But I'm actually able to do what I love doing, and since the only commodity you have in life is time, I think you should not fill it up with doing something you don't want to do.

When I was starting out, me and my buddy got an act together called Hot Duck Sauce, and we rented an acoustic spinet piano, and used to put it on a dolly and push it to Columbus Circle, and play there. One day a cop came while we were setting up, and he got pissed off at my buddy and wanted to confiscate his instrument, and he looked and he saw it was a piano, so he said, "Well, I'll take the guitar." So I'm the guy that gets his stuff confiscated! It gets impounded and you have to come up with like 30 bucks to get it out, so we had to run around and look for one of our friends who had that much money, which was not easy!

I play here from about 7:30 to noon, and I see a natural progression with the crowds. Very, very early, I see the real, real, real people, like the immigrants that are going to work or maybe even comin' home, and they don't make a lot, so they don't have much to give and I understand that. A little later, it gets, like, the Working Joe, who's into this kind of music, and appreciates another person working hard and trying to do stuff. And then it gets really crazy, because it gets really rush hour and people are like psychotic. And then, right after that, it becomes people who come off the trains from Connecticut and Scarsdale, and they're not rich enough that they don't have to be in the subway, but they're rich enough to look down their nose at you. So then I don't make any money and I hate them, and that's when my energy level takes a nose dive. I guess I'm a classist.

But you never know what's gonna happen later, so you have to stick around. So, after that, you get a really bizarre mix of people, like people who are out of work, who don't have to be anywhere, dotted with tourists and weird business guys, that you don't know why they're roaming around in the subways in suits at this time...like, have they been fired or are they the face of the new homeless? But how long I stay around all depends on how late I am with the rent.

Once in a while I'll get tired of the struggle of doing this, and I'll get a regular job for like a week, and that's about all I can take. It's important to do something, no matter what it is, that makes you feel like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing on this earth.