Have you seen That 1 Guy? You’d definitely know him if you saw him – there’s no mistaking his trademark Quaker-Oats-guy hat, jutting blades of sideburns, and that crazy pipe-harp looking thing he’s always pounding on. Well for the record, that crazy instrument is the Magic Pipe, and the magic man himself is Mike Silverman, better known by his alter-ego, That 1 Guy. He has re-navigated the boundaries between percussive, string and electronic instruments through his use of several custom-made musical monstrosities, including the Magic Pipe, the Magic Boot and the Magic Saw. His style is hip-hop and psychedelic, it’s techno and it’s rock, it’s folk and it’s beat poetry over superbly coordinated noise, and it’s quite possibly the most intriguing specimen in the history of musical evolution.

We got a few minutes to talk to him by phone while on the road for his current tour, which brings him back to Minnesota for a return to the Bella Madre Music Festival at Harmony Park on Memorial Day Weekend. 

Q) You were at Bella Madre Music festival last year, jamming with Buckethead.

A) Yeah, we were doing a little tour together, about a two-week tour. He did his set, I did my set, and we played a little together at the festival.

Q) How did you guys start jamming?

A) I opened up for him a few years ago on a tour and we just sort of hit it off. He asked me to come sit in with them and it just kind of clicked... We're sort of doing our own thing this year. I'm not sure what he's doing, he kind of keeps to himself. We'll probably do some more stuff down the road at some point.

Q) You did an album together called Frankenstein Brothers. Is that rare, or hard to get?

It kind of is hard to get at this point. That's our sort of two-man band that we bill by the Frankenstein Brothers. It was sort of a tour-only CD. We just did a real big tour together, September-October-November, and we were selling it at those gigs ... It's one of those kind of hard-to-find things ... It keeps things special.

Q) Originally you wanted your album, The Moon is Disgusting, to be the soundtrack to an animated film.

A) Yeah, I had this whole little story I was working on for a few years that I'm still putting together. I don't know a whole lot about the film industry, so it's a move behind on those ideas, but I figured I'd put the album out because I'm first and foremost a musician ... [The story] is pretty much finished, and I need to just sort of storyboard it out. I think that's the thing that's next, is really deciding on the medium of it all. If it's going to be fully animated, and how much of it I'm going to do myself versus farm out. I want to keep the idea real pure, but like I was saying I'm not super familiar with animation. I've done some animation with some people in the past for some music videos, but I'm still learning about it as I go so I feel like I'm kind of delving into uncharted territory, which is okay. I don't mind. It's kind of fun that way.

Q) Will it be more of a children's movie, or will it be all-ages?

A) It's sort of like my music, it's sort of for everybody. I think kids are gonna like it a lot. My stuff in general has a lot of sensibilities for kids. Not that I do that on purpose, but I notice lately they've been really fravitating towards it. I think it's gonna be just a visual extension of my music, really.

Q) You've got a decent cult following on several continents, yet have never enjoyed a whole lot of mainstream press attention, at least in the U.S. Is there a different way media in other countries look at you?

A) Possibly. I mean, media's kind of similar around the world in a way. They always tend to focus on what's new and exciting. In this country, the mainstream media focuses on very mainstream-type things, or things that they think is mainstream. In terms of the music scene in other countries, it's a little different. It's a lot more fragmented here, only because it's such a big country here. The little scenes are very divided, fragmented and separate all over the country. You have to kind of crack each one individually because the mainstream press doesn't really cover the underground thing too much. In Australia, for example, it's like one giant small town. So when you go over there and play and people really grab onto it, it spreads really quickly by word of mouth and underground. It's just a little different. But I'm sort of noticing it's starting to happen here for me too, 'cause I stay so busy and I play so much, and that's where my music really shines is live, when you see it. That's when it seems to make the most sense for people. That's how I'm delivering my message, just by getting out here and playing.

Q) It sounds like Australia really likes your whole style, maybe because of similarities to some of the aboriginal music, or...

A) Yeah, there is a bit of that in there. There's a real rhythmic sensibility to that, the aboriginal culture, the way the didge sounds, lots of low frequencies and things, and I think there's a lot of overlap with mine, even though technically it's a completely different approach. Mine's a string and percussion instrument, and the didge is very much just a wind instrument. But when you listen sonically to what's happening, there's very similar sensibilities happening. So it's pretty neat that way. That could be part of the overlap.

Q) How does an Australian or a European crowd differ from an American one?

A) You know, European is a different audience too. Europe in the same way Australia is isn't as hung up on itles and genres and scenes. There's definitely aspects of Europe culture that are. In the U.K., they're very scene-oriented. But... I played this festival in Holland a few years ago, and if you looked at the lineup it was like Korn, and Marilyn Manson, and Apocalyptica, and then folk music, and hip-hop... just everything. And everyone seems to just want it and check it all out ... It's not so genre-based. I think the audience is just way more open-minded over there to just everything, and I like that a lot better. I know as a fan of music, if I go to a festival I don't wanna hear just one kind of music all night. I don't wanna hear just jam bands or just metal, I want to hear everything. My iPod's got every kind of music in it, and that's what I want to see, you know?

Q) Who would you like to collaborate with that you haven't yet?

A) That's a good question... I don't know... I like playing with drummers a lot, and percussionists from around the world. There's this incredible percussionist, Zakir Hussain, from the Bay Area, who's just the best tabla player I've ever seen in my life. I always wanted to do something with him. I've never gotten to meet him, but that'd be a fun one. Who else... if Rush let me be in their band for a week, I'd so that cuz I'm a big fan, but I don't know if I'd fit in well.

Q) Have you met them?

A) No, I haven't met them. They're just my favorite band ever. I think if I met them I'd probably just freak out, wouldn't even be able to talk to 'em.

Q) What's the most fun or unique collaboration you've been part of?

A) The Buckethead thing is really magical. We made some really neat music together and had a real neat musical connection, I thought, and that's probably my favorite. There's been some one-off things that happen at festivals that are really fun. I played up at the Winnipeg Folk Festival and did this workshop with this bluegrass band. There were actually two bluegrass bands and me, and we all played at the same time together. When I played "Weasel Pot Pie," they all jumped in with me, and it was so neat, just had such a neat vibe. It was something that I couldn't have planned, and if you would'a told me we were going to do try to do it, I would have thought it was a bad idea until we actually did it.

Q) Will anything like that happen at Bella Madre?

A) I don't know. It'd be neat if it did, you know? Never rle it out, that's for sure.

Q) It looks like you alone have the distinction of playing two sets.

A) Yeah, it's pretty neat. I'm pretty excited about that ... I'm gonna try to mix it up for sure. One, I think we're gonna have a big light show and a big projection thing, so ... I don't know, I definitely mix them up though, that's for sure.

Q) Your style is sort of a convergence of different styles and genres. You also seem to be a fan of vivid, imagery-laden words and phrases. Do you have a phrase to describe your style?

A) Yeah. It's really vague because I want it to encompass everything, but I call it rhythm and sound. It's my genre. It's sort of a weird take on rhythm and blues, but when I describe the fundamentals of what I do, especially to someone who's never seen me before, it's very rhythmic and it's very sonically dense. It's the two big elements to what I'm doing. It's super vague, just the same as "That 1 Guy" as a really vague title doesn't really mean much. But it sort of says it all at the same time. I think rhythm and sound sort of says it all. And it's always best to hear it yourself to come to your own conclusions.

Q) It sounds like the running joke is that you went to Home Depot to get materials to piece together and make your instrument, the Magic Pipe. How many different stores did you actually have to go to to make it?

A) Home Depot was the main one, mainly because it's such a big place and I could walk up and down the aisles and find stuff, just pull stuff off the shelves and design it as I build it, really. But since then, I've rebuilt the thing out of custom machine pieces that are all made specifically for the instrument, so it's it's own design now, it's fully fabricated is.

Q) So you went through a few prototypes before coming out with the one you have now.

A) Yeah, I had one main prototype that I rebuilt about three times in terms of fine-tuning it and redoing sections of it. But a lot of the components were thr original components I had made in 1998, so it's come together really slowly.

Q) Is it an ever-evolving machine, or is it pretty much where it's at now?

A) It's ever-evolving. I'm pretty content with the design and the feel and the shape and the concept of it. That's not gonna change and it hasn't changed. But the details and the fine-tuning of it is where things have evolved a lot and will always continue to evolve. Like the electronics, and the sampling mechanism, and the audio-switching system ... That all kind of comes together piece by piece. I sort of let that evolve very organically, and that will always continue to evolve.

Q) Did you have to learn a lot about electronics to build it or did you already know that stuff?

A) I didn't know anything about electronics. I knew a little bit, I had taken electronics in high school and I could sauder and stuff, but I eally didn't know anything about components. All that stuff I learned trial-and-error by just doing it. It was actually pretty simple. Mostly it's just the sensors all over the instrument and the wiring, and I did all that myself. And by kind of piecing together all the sampling and all that stuff and signal routing and signal processing, that's all just been trial and error through experimentation.

Q) Do people ever approach you wanting to know how to build their own, or wanting to buy the design and market it to the masses?

A) Yeah, I get a lot of people wanting me to build them. Not too many, but a few, and I just always say it's such a custom instrument for what I'm doing, I just don't think it would make sense. And I have the design patented and everything, so it's something that I might down the road think about doing, but in terms of mass-producing them ... I really like keeping it a custom piece for what I'm doing, cuz it's such a unique thing to my style of playing music. I was talking to a kid the other night at one of my shows who was asking about building an instrument, and I said, "Start with what you have, and try to think about what you wish it could do that it can't do and make it do that, cuz that's what I did. And that way when you build your own instrument, you'll be playing your own strings and it will make sense for you. Because what I'm doing is very unique and it really makes sense for me. I don't think it would make sense for a whole lot of other people, because it's  much based on this really weird style of bass-playing that I had developed that was already pretty out of the box.

Q) Are there any others out there floating around?

A) The original Magic Pipe is floating around. The original prototype is somewhere, I don't know where, because my van was stolen a while ago with it in it. It's s bummer. It's somewhere, though. Somewhere.

Q) Probably on the Rainbow Circuit somewhere.

A) Yeah, somewhere in Quebec because I was in Montreal when my van was taken.

Q) What was the biggest, or best, show you've played?

A) I can answer both with one answer. I played at Woodford Folk Festival this year. It was my fourth year playing there and I got my own headlining set on the ampitheater stage. Everyone came to see my set, it was 15,000 people and the whole place was going crazy. It was the best energy audience I ever played for, and probably the best sound I've ever had. It was just such a magical experience. I'll never forget that one for sure.

Q) Is there a particular city or state you always look forward to coming back to?

A) Yeah, in the U.S. there's so many. I love being in New York, it's just a fun city. Not always the best gigs, but I just love being there. The best gigs, I do great in Minneapolis, I do really great up in Boston, I do great in Austin, Texas... Portland, Oregon's incredible, Seattle, Washington, is incredible. Eugene, Oregon is really good for me these days... Colorado's been real fun, I do really well out there in Ft. Collins. Lawrence, Kansas is always fun, I love playing there, it's one of my favorite places to play... Those are the big ones.

Q) Is there anybody this season you're looking forward to sharing the stage with?

A) You know, I don't know. I'm playing a bunch of great festivals this year, and I'm not even sure who's on them. I haven't even looked at the lineups yet just cuz it's always so busy. Half the time I don't get to see anybody. I just show up, I play, and I leave. Most the time, really. Which is fine with me. I'm really there to play and really focus on my set and really hit it as hard as I can, not to be too distracted. Sometimes I may have a little extra time after I'm done and I'll walk around a little and try to check out some other music, but most the time I'm sort of in my own little world.

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