Peter is an accomplished singer and guitarist -- and a whole lot more. With his feet he plays the kick drum, snare, cowbell and high hats. Then he adds harmonica, kazoo, train whistle, mouth siren and whistle. And it's all completely acoustic -- nothing is added electronically. He plays many instruments all at the same time!



To download a coloring page of Peter and his band, click below:

Peter McCory Coloring Page (PDF format, 63K)
















A Little About One-Man Banding!

Here's a photo of a friend of mine's great-great-grandfather performing as a one-man band in about 1900. His stage name was Jim West, but in "real life" he was a pharmacist named Franklin T. Bassick. Thanks to Beth Marche and her family for sharing it!

According to a little research I've done, one-man bands have been around since the 13th century. And while you don't see many today, they were quite common during the Vaudeville era, performing on street corners and as part of stage shows. For the most part, one-man bands have been considered more of a novelty than serious musicians. People are intrigued because they are fun to watch, though some don't sound very good! I look at it a little differently. I think I'm a pretty serious musician, so the sound is everything to me. I'm not really interested in being a clown with multiple instruments, though I know those guys are pretty fun, too. To me, the music has got to be good!

I guess when I first started experimenting with multiple instruments, I was mimicking Bob Dylan, who made famous the guitar and harmonica combination. But if you let your imagination go wild, you can find a lot of other instruments to add to your mix! The only limit is how many arms, lets and mouths you have.

Children ask me all the time, "How can you play all those things at the same time?" It gives me a great opportunity to tell them that they do multiple things at the same time every day! A child playing basketball has to dribble, watch the other players, plot his or her strategy, run, work with teammates, and eventually shoot the basket. It's really the same thing! We're all used to seeing athletes do multiple things, so we don't think anything of it. It's a little more unusual to see a musician play multiple instruments simultaneously, but that is the joy of one-man banding! You get to be the rhythm section and play all the leads yourself... and you get to be lead singer, too.

Moms are probably the world's best multi-taskers! Moms can fix dinner, quiz you on your vocabulary words, watch the news, chat with Dad, feed the baby and talk on the phone all at once! Maybe someday I'll find a mom playing multiple instruments! Now, gadgets... that's where we dads shine! I love to tinker and find new ways to add more sounds.

For me, part of the joy of performing as a one-man band is showing off the low-tech fun of acoustic instruments. Even though I use microphones, I don't play anything electronic. My stringed instruments, drums and woodwinds produce sound just as instruments have since the first human hit a log with a stick and said, "Coooool!" So I don't use drum machines or synthesizers. I like for the kids to see acoustic instruments in action. And if the power fails, I can still play! In this day of iPods, video games and computers, it's fun for me to show the kids that you don't have to have batteries or a wall plug to have fun. Long live homemade music!