Head, Hands, & Feet: A Victoria Musician’s Book about One Man Bands

By George Jamieson

How many times have you watched Dave Harris performing on the Lower Causeway and wondered, "how many people do that?"

Dave is easy to spot. He's the One Man Band at the northeast corner, down the steps from the Visitor's Centre. Throughout the tourist season we see him singing and playing drums, pedal bass, guitars, banjos, harmonicas, in various combinations, by himself.

Now we can see another side of his talent. Dave Harris has just written and published "Head, Hands, & Feet" -- a book about One Man Bands throughout history and around the world.

The first thing you learn is, there's a lot more to a One Man Band (abbreviated as OMB) than Jesse Fuller's version of "San Francisco Bay Blues". To be sure, this book celebrates Fuller as the greatest OMB of his era, a musician of wide influence, and an inspirational person. Harris's profile of Fuller runs to 20 pages, the longest and the best entry in the book.

However, the whole book is 400-plus pages, and it tells a wider story. We learn about some of the earliest references to OMBs in the 13^th century. And about street musicians in London, the "Band in Himself" and the "blind performer on the bells," who could play four accordions (!) with his feet.

There's a history of OMB pioneers from North America and Europe. These musicians are important, not just for the songs they played, but also for the instruments they developed. Back rigs, foot drums, the "Nelsonian," which controlled up to 32 instruments, and the most famous invention -- Jesse Fuller's fotdella, made with piano strings and imagination.

The tone of the book is joy and celebration. Dave Harris clearly enjoys the music he plays, and he wants readers to know more about where it comes from. He also has a long-time interest in writing. He comes from a family of academics and writers, and he's contributed articles to music magazines from time to time.

The book project began three years ago, with a simple search on the internet.

"I started looking for stuff about myself at first," he said. "A lot of the online entries included the names of other OMBs. When I looked them up I found more names of more bands. That was the germ of the idea."

Dave knew of one magazine that published an entire issue about OMBs, around 2003. However, he hadn't seen a book on the subject, so he set out to make one.

He searched the internet and libraries for historical references. He sent messages to all the one-man-bands he knew of, asking for biographies. As the information came in, he organized the entries according to geography and musical styles.

With the help of two local collaborators, Benjamin Madison and Dale Hitchcox, he turned a mountain of bios and photos and historical background into this book. During the winter season, when he was home instead of busking on the Inner Harbour, he was spending up to twelve hours a day on it.

At fifty dollars (taxes included, postage extra if required), the book is not cheap. That said, I think it is a bargain. Hard covers, glossy paper, hundreds of colour photographs. It is almost certainly the largest volume ever published on the subject. Still, Dave Harris doesn't call it an encyclopedia, because it is not complete..

"I know there are lots of OMBs who aren't in the book. I wrote entries on every one I found, but I heard about more in the very last few days before we went to print. I have discovered a few more since then."

That's one of the lessons of "Head, Hands, & Feet." One Man Bands are everywhere. Wherever you live, there are performers who figured out a way to play two, three, four instruments at a time. They all have basements or garages filled with gear, and they're always adding or modifying, tinkering and tweaking their setup to make the most music. In Victoria we're lucky that one of the best of them is on a corner of the Inner Harbour, at the end of one of the nicest walks in the world.

Head, Hands, & Feet, by Dave Harris. Editors, Benjamin Madison and Dave Harris. Design and layout, Dale Hitchcox. Price, $50.00 plus shipping.

Available from Dave will sell copies at his spot on the Lower Causeway this season.