My name is John MacPherson, a one time business man from Revere MA. In the year 1990 my children gave me an alto saxophone for my 50th birthday. I left them the family business we were all working for at the time and headed for Key West to learn how to play the saxophone and live the life of a free spirit. It was there I met Joey Picasso, a street musician, who after listening to his stories of playing the saxophone on the streets of Europe, Canada and the United States, I decided, "that's what I want to do." In 1996 I spent the winter/spring in New Orleans as a street musician with my friend Trumpet Bob. Since then I have traveled the country as a street musician, wintering in Key West.
This web site will act as my home base during my travels. I will try to get on-line at least once a month to update the site and answer my e-mail.
To the many friends I have met during my travels, you can e-mail me at bluesmansweetmac@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you and if you have taken a digital photo at one of my performances and e-mail it to me, I will post it on this web site.
There are links on the Jukebox page where you can listen to songs and download MP3 files of my recordings.
I hope you will check out this site once in a while to follow the progress of my journey.
Stay cool, Sweet Mac
Boys Be Boppin - Oil Painting by Mike Bottis
Thoughts
The essence of jazz is improvisation.
Improvisation!
A way to let Go!
A path to be Free!
Dig It!
Groove, move,
to the rhythm of the soul,
it sooths me.
Groove, move,
to the melody of the mind,
it sooths me.
Groove, move,
to the song of the spirit,
it sooths me.
I am one with natures life force,
it empowers my being.
It brings health and awareness
to my body, mind and spirit.
Favorite Quotes
"A busker finds his niche,
and finds where he is supposed to be and he does what he is supposed to
be doing, and the universe takes care of him."
~Mustafa
"If we respected only what is inevitable and what has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets."
~Henry David Thoreau
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
~Henry David Thoreau
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
~Robert Frost
"If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed for."
~Chinese Proverb
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
~Mark Twain
"Always tell the truth, that way you won't have to remember what you said."
~Mark Twain
"A free man is moral because he wants to be, not because he thinks he ought to be."
~Alan Watts
"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler;
solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor
weakness weakness."
~Henry David Thoreau
" You may see a man on the street wearing a ripped poncho with broken
bloody feet. You may feel sympathy for that person. Yet, in his mind he
could be having the best life he ever dreamed of."
~ A.E. Mac
" However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and
call it hard names." "You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling,
glorious hours, even in a poor-house."
~Henry David Thoreau
" One who is cheerfully ready for anything and everything that comes escapes all pain, his cheerfullness acts as an anaesthetic"
~ Mahatma Gandhi
" The perfect way is without difficulty. Only when you stop liking and disliking, will all be clearly understood."
~ Old Zen Poem
"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
~Confucius
"Yesterday is history, while tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift!"
~Tyga
"The real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth."
~Thich Nhat Hanh
"The core of our being is the act of perceiving, and the magic of our being is the act of awareness."
~Carlos Castaneda
"Forget the self and you will fear nothing"
~Carlos Castaneda
"When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is,
you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous than you
thought it was."
~Alan Watts
"We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree." ~Alan Watts
"In separateness lies the world's great misery; in compassion lies the world's true strength."
~Buddha
"Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights."
~Henry David Thoreau
"While looking for the light you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light"
~Kerouac
"I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope to god it's not a train."
~James Carville
"Anything can happen"
~Murphy's Law
"Wherever you go . . .There you are!!"
~peoples guide
"The essence of jazz is improvisation."
~Sweet Mac
"Jazz is Freedom"
~Thelonious Monk
"Now's the time."
~Charlie Parker
"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing."
~ Duke Ellington
"Remote for detachment, narrow for chosen company, winding for leisure,
lonely for contemplation, the Applachain Trail beckons not merely north
and south, but upward to the body, mind, and soul of man."
~Harold Allen
"We are all members of One Human Family"
~Truth
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
~John F. Kennedy
"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for
the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all."
~John Maynard Keynes
"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."
~Carl Sandburg
"Peace begins when the hungry are fed."
~Anonymous
"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist."
~Indira Gandhi
"I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed there would be no more war."
~Abbie Hoffman
"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but
also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man,
but you refuse to hate him."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more."
~Oscar Wilde
"If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner."
~Nelson Mandela
"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
~Malcolm X
"If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having."
~Henry Miller
"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
~Bertrand Russell
"Instead of tug o' war, let's play hug o' war."
~Shel Silverstein
