If you’ve visited festivals like Wakarusa, Electric Forest or Big Day Out lately, then you’ve probably seen that one guy, with strange instruments on stage… sorry, you’ve probably seen That 1 Guy, one of the most interesting acts around. As his moniker implies, he is a solo act, but what distinguishes him from other one-man bands is that he is “one” from scratch to the final product. He invents and makes his own instruments, performs and produces his music. Although classically trained double bass player, the American musician Mike Silverman (which is his real name,) started his career on the East Coast progressive jazz scene in the 1990s. Early in his career, he developed a unique percussive technique of playing the double bass, something that earned him the image of a one-man rhythm section, incorporating traditional and slap-bass playing with percussive elements using the body of the instrument. Soon after that, feeling restrained by the limitations of the upright bass, Silverman decided to design and build his own instrument called the Magic Pipe, a 7-foot-tall (2.1 m) collection of steel plumbing pipes and joints, orchestral bass strings, and electronics. Several other inventions followed, such as the Magic Boot (a scorpion-emblazoned cowboy boot, which is wired and fed through the Magic Pipe’s audio lines,) The Magic Saw (a musical saw, which is wired into the main effects box. It utilizes a small adhesive speaker and is played percussively as well as with a violin bow. It sounds similar to a theremin,) and the Magic Duck (a sock puppet, which is more of a character than an instrument.)
That 1 Guy’s music resembles that of his favorite artists, including Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Dr. Seuss and Tom Waits. One of his dreams came through when Waits invited him to play the saw (and subsequently the bass) on tracks for Waits’ “Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards” album. That 1 Guy gained a cult following in the US, as well as in Australia, which he has toured several times. Averaging 150-200 shows a year, mostly in North America and Canada, he is one of the most prominent non-mainstream artists. Praised for his virtuosic skills on the bass, as well as on his homemade instruments, Silverman is also widely praised for being a creative visionary as well. He stated in an interview: “Iʼve always wanted to sound different and have my own sound. I was headed that way on the bass, but for me to fully realize what I was hearing in my head sonically I was going to have to do it my way… So much of my music has miraculous qualities to it because itʼs hard to tell whatʼs going on. There are lots of slights of hand and sonic misdirection. It feels like I was meant to do magic.”
