Pete Gray, OMB.

As a One Man Band, I could play the bass drum and hi-hat, whilst I play the guitar and either sing, play the harmonica, or do some sound effect.

The act was developed on the streets of Europe as I travelled from place to place. I travelled by train, with all of my posessions inside the bass drum. I have played for crowds of hundreds of people, and worked professionally in daycare centers in France and here in Canada.

I travelled through Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, and Sweden in this manner. I still play occasionally here in Canada, for street festivals, picnics, daycares, or for fun.

"On The Road Again!"(sound clip)

I get a lot of emails asking "How can I be a one man band?" or "how can I build a one man band?" or "Why isn't black a colour?". I will try to answer some of these questions here in the

One Man Band FAQ

(frequently asked questions)

What the heck is a "One Man Band"?

A one man band is a person who performs music on an unusual number of musical instruments. The common format is with a guitar on your front and a drumkit on your back. This is the approach I took. One variation is to use a banjo or a ukulele on the front. There are also one man bands that do not conform to this format at all. I have known one man bands who play jazz on the trumpet while accompanying themselves on keys, hi-hat, and bass pedals. I have known new-age one man bands who play digital pan flutes and a rack of synthesizers. I have known one man bands who play fiddle while they accompany themselves playing a cheesy little organ with their toes. Essentially, if a person performs alone, and plays so many instruments that an audience member would be inclined to ask "How the heck do they do that?", that person qualifies as a one man band. Even if they are a girl. (I have only known one female one man band. Get it together, girls!)

How do I construct a One Man Band rig?

The 'Rig', or the 'Kit', or the 'Outfit', or simply, the "One Man Band",describes the equipment you use that allows you to play multiple instruments. I will only try to describe the one I built, as it is fairly traditional, a bit complex, and I understand it. So I will do my best at helping you to understand how one might build a one man band rig.

At the core of my one man band is a big bass drum. Getting a big bass drum is no simple task. Lots of drum shops only want to sell whole sets of drums, unless you want to buy some hi-tech $4000 special drum. That is probably not what you want. I was lucky enough to have had some friends find a bass drum in the attic of a building they were cleaning out, just around the time I started looking for one. Hopefully you can get so lucky. Before you can use the big bass drum as a one man band, you need to come up with a way to attach it to your body. I had been travelling around, living out of a backpack, carrying a guitar and not making too much money. I wanted to be able to make a whole lot more, so I needed a one man band. It occurred to me that I didn't need the backpack anymore, as I could carry all my crap around inside the drum, so I go a big knife and hacked apart the backpack. Oh, it hurt me. But then I had a nice suspension system, complete with padded shoulder straps and a belt, which I bolted on to the big bass drum. After a few difficult adjustments, it sat nicely on my back. The 'skeleton' of my one man band was complete.

Next, I needed a way to play the drum. I went to a drummin' shop and purchased the cheapest bass drum pedal that they had (about $50, I think, still more than I wanted to pay). I took the pedal part off, and attached some hunk of metal where the pedal had been. I then drilled a hole in the bottom of the drum and stuck this peice of metal through. You will probably notice that I am not giving many details of how I did these things - You are going to have to figure the mechanics out for yourself, based upon your way of thinking and the parts you have available. Then, I took some sort of strap and ran it down from the metal thing to some widget I had attached to my shoe. Then, I could go "BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!" I immediately picked up my guitar and headed downtown to try the sucker out. It was really difficult to even keep the beat with the thing, but still I made twice as much as I would have without it, and I got my first practice with the thing.

Then, it's just to add one piece to the one man band at a time, and then take it out into the field and test it. My second instrument was a hi-hat cymbal. For this, I used an actual hi-hat stand sawed off, with it's metal slider bit going through a little hole drilled in the bottom of the drum, like the one for the bass pedal. Then I could go "BOOM crash BOOM crash BOOM crash" and quickly learned to go "BOOM Ba-BOOM c-crash BOOM Ba-BOOM B-B-CRASH!" and stuff like that. At this state, one is a very basic, bare-bones minimalist one man band, and could go on tour thusly.

Or one could continue building. I got one of those things that holds a harmonica in front of your face, and a harmonica, and learned to do a few tunes with that. The money was rolling in! All the other instruments I added after that were icing - I could get better results by learning to sing new songs, or sing better, (which is always very important), or finding better places to play. (more on this later) I also picked up some wacky sound effects things, like a duck call, a goose call, a siren whistle, and a kazoo, and attached them to the harmonica holder thingie. These are great to bread up the monotony. Great for laughs.

And it can go on forever. I attached a bike horn to the drum so I could play it with my left elbow. I attached a bike bell to the hi-hat stand and rigged up some thing with bungee cords so that I could ding it by pushing down on the neck of the guitar. I attached one of those rythm eggs to my wrists so it would woosha-woosha while I strummed the guitar. I attached one of those springy door-stopper things to the drum so I could make it go BOINGGGG! and I build a velcrophone which would make one of those ripping velcro sounds and then reset itself with a bungee cord. You think I like bungee cords? Once in a police raid in german, I lost the spring from my hi-hat stand, and wired it back together with a bungee cory for the spring action, and it remains that way to this day.

I could go on. A hat with a tambourine around it. Cymballs on the knees, that you can play by bashing your knees together. God only knows what. Just keep on inventing, and your rig will become more and more amusing.

The weather will play a factor too, so don't go somewhere that is cold and rainy during their cold or rainy season.

That being said, just because you are busking around europe doen't mean you are in the best place. Avoid music festivals - people are musicked out. Go to food festivals, movie festivals, anywhere lots of people are partying and there isn't already 10,000 musicians. Don't be afraid of really big towns. Don't be afraid of really small towns. Find out when small towns are busy. Do they have a market day or a children's festival? These sorts of things help a lot. Medium sized towns are quite good - lots of people, and they aren't usually overrun by lots of other buskers. The cops are usually nicer, too.