One-man band rolls around the Grant County Fair

MOSES LAKE — Drums, horn, banjo, whistles – Eric Haines plays them all. At the same time. On wheels. 

“I think it’s about 30 (instruments) but I’d have to sit down and count them,” Haines said. “Sometimes I pot stuff on right before a tour, and sometimes I take stuff off. So it’s anybody’s guess.” 

Haines is a regular strolling performer at the Grant County Fair, but in past years, he’s done his act on foot, with a bass drum on his back attached to a foot pedal and a harmonica and assorted horns on a face rack. But that apparatus weighs about 60 pounds, he said, and lugging it around the fairgrounds takes a toll on his back and knees. So he built a three-wheeled contraption he calls the Ford Gramophone. 

“I wanted to have something where I could sit, but I also wanted to keep the visual element,” he said. “There's not anything else like this out, so I looked online and tried to find anybody who had done anything similar. And this is it, since I built it.” 

The gramophone looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss drawing, with horns and pipes sticking out at odd angles, drums fore and aft, a hi-hat and a set of cymbals played by a stuffed monkey, as well as half a dozen headlights and an umbrella for when the sun gets aggressive. With a banjo in his hands and at least eight horns and kazoos on a neck rack, he can put out an astonishing array of sounds to accompany his strong tenor voice. 

“You need something to provide the back beat, so that would be the bass drum, hi-hat combo.” he said. “And then you need a rhythm instrument (like the banjo). Then you need something to carry melody when you're not singing. When I first started, it was a harmonica. Now it's all these instruments put together.” 

All those instruments are voice-powered, he added, so when he’s not singing, the music that comes out of them is still his voice. 

Haines travels most of the year, he said. The Ford Gramophone can be rolled into a van when he travels by road, or broken down into manageable pieces if he has to fly or take a smaller vehicle. 

“It’s also designed to fit through a standard doorway, so I can get in and out of buildings,” he said. 

Haines is a lifelong performer, he said. 

“I learned to juggle when I was a sophomore in high school, and somebody paid me $10 to juggle for a kid's birthday party,” he said. “That took off because I didn't have to shovel walks or mow grass to make money. So I started putting together shows, and started doing juggling shows and singing telegrams and did juggling shows for birthday parties.” 

He worked briefly for a farm supply store while he was finishing up college, he said, but even there he ended up walking on stilts in a cowboy costume in front of the building. 

“There are worse gigs,” he said. “I love what I do and I do what I love, so I can’t really complain about anything.”