The T Performer Profile: Jay Scott Henderson

A middle-aged guitarist, dressed in black from head to toe, sang passionately as a train to Braintree approached. He waved his hands in the air and winked to acknowledge his audience. As I circled around him, appreciating his music and attempting to make sense of what exactly he was saying, he quickly caught on that I was lingering for a bit longer than usual. He smiled at me and gave me a thumbs-up, and as soon as he finished his song, approached me with a smile and said hello.

He introduced himself as Jay Scott Henderson, and I asked him where he had lived prior to finding himself singing on a subway stop in Cambridge. “That’s a good question. You know, I was floating around for a while,” he begins. “I kept seeing this planet—this blue thing—and said that maybe one day I’ll go there. While passing Neptune, I decided to drink of its blue inert gas. I sat down on Mars, and I saw Saturn receive its crown—and I eventually wound up in this place,” he continued with a mischievous smile on his face. “But where am I from? Not sure, but Neptune was cool though. I tried to bring some of that gas here on Earth, but they’d probably lock me up for that.”

He says the first time he heard his voice in the shower at the age of four he loved it so much that he was confident that singing was something he wanted to do forever. He soon started writing songs and performing everywhere that he could, and eventually ended up frequenting T stops. “I write my own songs but I also borrow material from others. But I guess we all borrow from people—I borrowed some genes from my dad, some from my mom. We all borrow genetics, just like I borrow my music,” he says.

His favorite song to perform is “When Earth Was Blue,” which he sometimes calls “When Earth Was All Blues” or “Sky Blues”— depending on his mood. “The song is about all these synthetic things on this earth, like genetically modified food, that make it hard for us to claim the Earth. But who owns the Earth? We all do, we all really do. The Earth is all of ours, so let’s enjoy the apples that grow on the trees and not genetically modified things.”

When we ended our chat, Henderson reminded me to love everyone (and taking his own advice called me “beautiful,” which I obviously appreciated). As I walked away I noticed him smiling as he continued to sing. I couldn’t help but smile myself.