Chad Lore – Wyoming's One Man Band
Chad Lore, also known as "Wyoming's One Man Band", will surprise you with his uniqueness in every show and with every song. He is hard to classify because he pretty much does everything with his music, from acoustic folk to electric rock. If you are looking for a well-rounded musician, Chad's your man.
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Harmonicas played by the freeway – Jackson Hole Weekly
(Kathleen Anderson - Sept. 21, 2011)
Chad Lore, a Casper musician, compares his car to the sound of a swarm of bees or the tuning of an orchestra. His car’s belly isn’t scraping across the asphalt or rolling on four flat tires. Lore has attached 200 harmonicas to his blue spray-painted, four door generating an ominous noise unheard of before his invention.
When assembling the rig, Lore spent no more than $10 dollars on a bottle of blue spray paint and all of the harmonicas were his own discarded instruments he kept after they broke.
Lore intends on taking a road trip through 10 different states to go on a 24-hour musical tour. It will be a sight to see Lore on the road, but the sound may be a cause for passersby to glance over at his spectacle of a car, and then keep driving. Though his idea is inventive and keeps an old beater of a car out of the dump, along with 200 harmonicas, but I don’t believe Lore will have too many groupies on his musical tour. In fact, I question how long he’s going to last listening to a broken record of 200 harmonicas screaming along at 60 miles per hour. Nonetheless, props to Lore, whether drivers dig it or not, for taking his musical creativity to a whole new level.
'Monty Python' meets 'Hee Haw' – Casper Star Tribune
(Margaret Matray - May 6, 2011)
At the house where the filming takes place, you find yourself asking questions you never considered you'd ask.
Like: Is that a witch on your car? (Nope. Merlin doll.)
Why is the newscaster sitting in a bathtub filled with circus peanuts? (Peanuts are the free giveaway.)
Why is that guitar wrapped in tinfoil? (Punch line coming later.)
The basement smells faintly of ketchup. Streaks of yellow and red paint stain the floor. A shelving unit and clothing rack hold the props and costumes: clocks, a telephone, wigs, cardboard bricks, lederhosen.
It's possible Casper musician Chad Lore spends more time cleaning than filming. He's in $4,000, including the cost of a camera, costumes and at least 10 pounds of bubble wrap.
Why?
Well, Lore said, why not?
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Chad Lore: The man, his band – Casper Star Tribune
(Hannah Wiest - Dec. 21, 2007)
An open bottle of Miller Lite wobbles in his shirt pocket. He takes a few swigs between songs and pockets the bottle again. Two more rattle in water bottle holders secured to his microphone stand with duct tape. They go down slow, sipped only during millisecond breaks.
"Ghost Riders in the Sky" barely finishes vibrating on his guitar strings before he pulls his red bandana over his mouth like a bandit and thumps out a hyperactive beat, like a rock band does to introduce its members.
But the man doesn't stop. He thumps and slaps and taps, contorting his face all the while, until the howling laughter from the crowd in the Poor Boy's Steakhouse Pump Room is louder than his beat.
It's introduction enough. Chad Lore is the only man in his band, anyway.
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One-Man Show – Steamboat Pilot & Today
(Autumn Phillips - Sept. 9, 2005)
During my whirlwind visit to Wyoming, I stopped at a bar called Karen & Jim's to see one of my favorite performers. Chad Lore puts on the best one-man show I've seen in any town, anywhere.
Lore usually stands on a slab of wood and tap dances a rhythm as he plays his guitar and sings whatever request is yelled from the crowd.
Within the time it took me to drink one 12 oz. Fat Tire, Lore sang a song by The Cars, sang in Greek for the Greek bar owner's wedding anniversary and strapped a bicycle helmet to his head with duct tape before riding a unicycle around the room while playing a ukulele and singing "Cotton-Eyed Joe."
Casper's one-man band – Casper Star Tribune
(Zachary Schneider – July 20th, 2000)
Traveling has always been sort of a second nature to Casper musician Chad Lore. Whether it has been on the streets of Europe or in a bar corner in Casper, Lore has sought to entertain, and if that fails, incite audiences with his eclectic repertoire of country, rock and folk songs.
"I know-know about 400 songs," Lore laughed. "I can fake about 750, but they're mostly like from the 1930s, so nobody knows any of them."
Lore plays regularly at the Parkway Plaza's All That Jazz and at the Wyoming Cattlemen's Club Tavern. His take on standard drinking songs includes full accompaniment with his tap shoes, guitar, and harmonica - and to his wife Lupe's chagrin, the accordion.
With a boyish smile on his face and an Alan Alda-like twinkle in his eye, Lore delights in finding the most obscure song for the occasion, whether it be a German drinking song or a cover of "Hang on Sloopy" sung "Hang on Lupe" encouraging his wife to bear with him during the football season.
In fact, Lore draws on his family's eccentricities in his act. Several of his songs are dedicated to his parents, who regularly attend each of his performances with the best of humor.
“Today is my parents’ anniversary, so I want to dedicate this song to my mom,” Lore announced at a recent performance at the Cattlemen’s Club. “It’s hard to believe they’ve been married for 10 years.” Hard to believe, indeed, seeing as how Lore is 33.
Songs in Lore’s repertoire range from early country and Western tunes by the likes of Hank Williams Jr. or Tennessee Ernie Ford to classic rock in the vein of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. And when Lore comes up blank on what the audience wants to hear, he encourages – no pleads – for requests.
“Now it’s time for request hour,” Lore laughs. Request hour usually lasts the full four hours he usually plays. “All right,” he says when no requests are made, “I guess it’s time for some German beer drinking songs.”
Part of Lore’s charm comes from his well-travelled demeanor, sometimes singing in Spanish or Dutch. He claims that his six years in Europe trained him as a street musician.
“It took about five years of playing before I started to make money playing on street corners,” Lore said. “Mostly, I would play songs American tourists were wanting to hear. Some days, I’d make over $100. Others, I’d not make a thing.”
Lore used his earnings to fund his travels to the next city, even to pay for plane tickets back home to Wyoming.
“If you don’t have any bills to pay, you can use that money for other things,” he said. “I have earned enough to buy plane tickets several times.”
On several occasions, Lore is joined on stage by a loin cloth wearing, masked and painted character named El Capullo. The character played by one of Lore’s closest friends, Derek Green, accompanies Lore on the Australian instrument, the didgeridoo, and draws strange looks from the audience.
Although it’s not an award-winning musical performance Lore is seeking when he takes his one-man band to the stage, there is one area in which he always succeeds; he entertains the audience and has as much fun as possible doing what he loves.