by Bruce Curtis

Photo taken by: Frederica Kreitzer (fredericakreitzer.com)at "Coffee N' Things" in Baywood Park, CA

(The following originally appeared in San Luis Obispo County Magazine on July 8, 2005)

You can love or hate street fiddler Sol Rudnick, but you can’t forget him.

The first impression is an elaborately engineered violin rest he wears like a body brace. He built the device out of common hardware items because Years of fiddle playing triggered physical problems; his physician eventually discovered that other longtime violin players suffered similarly, the affliction ended the public career of legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz, so Sol assembled and refined an elaborately-framed rest, held together by JB Weld, a steel and epoxy composite reportedly strong enough to fix engine parts.

The device that saved his musical career is a one-off, utilitarian creation you would expect from an aerospace prototype engineer, not a downtown San Luis Obispo street musician.

Not that Sol Rudnick fits the street musician stereotype, the retired tool-manufacturing technician doesn’t live on the street and he doesn’t dress like most street musicians, choosing instead to don a smart blue dress shirt, navy vest, Navajo silver bolo tie, and a natty blue yachtsman’s cap as he plays for tips in the Coldstone Creamery Alcove in San Luis Obispo.

“I’ve got it worked out to a science,” he explains, “I don’t have to prove it, but I think I am proving that you don’t have to be…you know…” he hesitates to use a negative term, but he did offer advice to another street musician, telling him to lose the ‘homeless’ sign, the bad clothes or anything else that hints at indigence.

Sol doesn’t like to talk about how much he makes, though he smiles at the thought of the tips on certain holiday weekends. He appears trim and youthful at 67.

Seated at a sunlit table with coffee and a tollhouse cookie, Rudnick gazes contentedly at downtown San Luis Obispo, offering comments about loud music and human rights. He lives at the old Anderson hotel, which puts him within two blocks of three local performing venues.

“Two of the best craft stores I’ve ever seen are right within walking distance,” he adds.

Soft-spoken and intelligent, he seems right at home at a bookstore coffee table, but the truth is that Rudnick is completely out of his regular environment. On the street, he’s bold and confident, easily taking up conversations with downtown shoppers and tourists. Rachael Denny, who frequently accompanies Rudnick when he plays various coffee houses, is more reserved.

“I admire his dedication to the things he believes in. I have to admit that occasionally he has a bit of a clown streak in him and I don’t,” says Denny, "but, it’s nothing I can’t live with.”

Sol’s music was set in motion early in life when he was picked out of a class to learn an instrument. He first discovered his love for music when he realized he looked forward to the Lone Ranger every afternoon for the playing of the William Tell Overture, not the show itself.

He took up violin lessons, receiving encouragement from a helpful Rabbi, but it was during a summer in upstate New York that Rudnick encountered folk fiddle music; from then on, he was no longer a violinist, he was a fiddler.

“If I get a request, I can play romantic waltzes and music like Blue Spanish Eyes, or Fernando’s”, but my first love is exactly what’s on here,” says Rudnick, pointing to a St. Anne’s Reel CD, a collection tunes dominated by lilting, generic foot stompers that could be Irish, Bluegrass, European. Some are original, some written by Rachael Denny and some compelling relics that might have been heard in either an old west saloon or a 1700’s Irish tavern.

Some cuts, like, The False Lover won Back and Polly Wolly Doodle feature Rachael Denny’s unrestrained 19^th Century twang, riding the gravitational pull of Sol’s beat.

Every shred of Sol Rudnick’s music is straight acoustic because he despises amplification. Today, he gripes, you can see the Nutcracker Suite, performed without an orchestra; all music is CD-based. That disgusts him, he calls it “karaoke ballet” a symptom of a music industry that has come to rely on overblown sound and recorded effects.

“There is one thing I am disappointed with in San Luis Obispo—and I’m happy to be here—“ Sol disclaims, but, “they used to play folk and acoustic at Farmer’s Market, now they blast rock. I will never use a sound system, in fact, I’ve turned down many bookings because I would not use a sound system.”

Although he doesn’t work 9-5, isn’t a part of either the SLO downtown business association or San Luis Obispo’s counter-culture corps, in the three years he’s lived here, Sol has been featured in several articles. Those, and his street presence are the best advertising he could run, and he receives numerous performing jobs that way.

“I get quite a few bookings from people who have heard me out there.”

As interesting as he is, Rudnick creates writer’s angst because he could be controversy’s poster boy. Personally polite, gentle and thoroughly nonviolent, he nevertheless evokes such strong emotion that other writers have been shamed into silence on Sol’s main extracurricular cause, choosing instead to write only about his music. He lavishly but kindly condemns them for their cowardice, because the pre-born occupy such a large part of his life. If I mention his crusade, it will be the first time in years any writer has so dared, he says. He has thrown down the gauntlet.

A Bronx-born Jew who moved to Phoenix to raise his family, Rudnick converted to Christianity about ten years ago. He is also staunchly pro-life. To other Jewish people, he’s a sellout; to abortion rights people, he’s a fount of hate speech, but because he’s so charming and self-effacing, publicly, opponents won’t say anything worse than that he’s “eccentric.” If Sol is an enigma, a political and social iconoclast, he’s no late-night radio talk host. He ruminates carefully over his words and how he comes across. Sol shuns the topic’s stock emotionally charged phrases, preferring to call his work a ministry of teaching others see the value of all human beings in all stages of life.

Not owning a car and living at the Anderson enable Rudnick to devote his retirement income to informational materials and nonviolent vigils, as he describes, not to change the law but to change hearts and minds. Whichever side you’re on, Sol brings his fiddling’s calm, compelling and unamplified civility to an explosive social issue.

Rudnick expects to go on playing his soft folk rhythms everywhere from street corners to multi-million-dollar mansion parties for another 30 years. If he does, his charm and charisma will have had a lot do to with it.