Mr. Tambourine Guy

If you’ve been to a live rock show in Spokane even once in the last year, there’s a fair chance you’re familiar with the Tambourine Guy.

Everybody knows the Tambourine Guy; he’s become a fixture in the local music scene.

He’s the tall guy on the dance floor with long hair, often wearing a sleeveless button-up shirt with silver flames crawling down the chest.

And he’s almost always beating the snot out of a tambourine and shakin’ his butt like it’s the fastest way to nirvana.

I’ve seen him at so many shows that I finally had to meet the man behind the tam.

The Tambourine Guy is actually Mike Ransford, a 53-year-old rocker who runs his own shrub pruning business.

But it’s music that gets him out of bed in the morning. And it’s live music that keeps him up at night. He lives for it.

“If the ladies come along and want to take some photographs, that’s icing on the cake. But I’m there for the music and to dance. That’s what I do. Then if it’s alright with the guys onstage, then I bang my tambourine. That’s when I’m happiest,” said Ransford.

The spectating spectacle says he goes to as many as five shows on an average weekend night.

The first show he tammed out at was a Too Slim and the Taildraggers concert about a year ago in Soap Lake. He learned the blues community doesn’t seem to dig his moves.

“Old Tim Langford got tired of it and he said, ‘Why don’t you park that, partner.’ So I set my tam down,” Ransford said. “Later on I found out word is around the blues community, some blues musicians don’t like my antics on tambourine. Maybe it’s an inferiority complex because I’m taking a little of the spotlight.”

Ransford said the response is mixed. He gets everything from toddlers wanting to dance with him to grown men wanting him to stop dancing with their wives or girlfriends.

Either way, he tries to keep it positive and if someone doesn’t like his flow, he tries to just walk away.

He’s learned to have a thick skin, especially when he’s showing a lot of skin. For certain outdoor shows Ransford been known to don little more than a loin cloth and a pair of moccasins. People call him Jungle Man, Tarzan, Tonto, and Pocahontas.

At some shows Ransford said people have placed bets on what kind of drugs he’s on, but the Tambourine Guy says he has been sober since June of 1996.

“I didn’t like waking up in the morning 15 years ago. I would come to from drinking or getting stoned all night. I drank to numb myself and pass out. I passed out rather went to sleep and came to rather than woke up,” Ransford said.

These days, Ransford’s drug of choice is music.

“People ask why I do this. Is it for the women? For the attention? I do this to make myself happy in order to live,” Ransford said. “I need the music to look forward to something each day and keep on breathing.”

Check out video of the Tambourine Guy in action at spokane7.com/blogs/ soundwave.