My Description
“The World’s Funniest Guitar Virtuoso.”
Bio
He was born breech with six fingers on his left hand. Mike’s parents, being from a long line of glove salesmen, never saw the potential. They had the finger removed. However, what the scalpel couldn’t change was Mike’s fate to be a little odd and work with his hands. (It’s all true but the glove salesmen part).
Now, fulfilling his birthright Mike has actually been called, “The World’s Funniest Guitar Virtuoso.” (He’d settle for Cleveland’s Funniest Guitar Virtuoso but... whatever). Mike currently performs over 120 shows per year and cuts from his “Mike Rayburn at Carnegie Hall” CD are in current rotation on XM Comedy, Sirius Comedy, and on countless morning radio shows nationwide.
Concert promoter Mark Johnson described him like this: “If Victor Borge played guitar (and drank too much coffee), he’d sound like Mike.” The Aspen Daily News raves, “A comic genius... enough wit and talent to jumpstart a pacemaker.”
If you’ve never seen or heard him the only way to get it is to watch the video clips click here. First of all, Mike is an hilarious stand-up comic. His “Questions” bit and self-effacing commentaries are funny and wonderfully-warped. But what sets him apart is his masterful guitar work click here.
Mike is also known for combining musical artists and styles in ways God never intended. “Bob Marley sings Garth Brooks.” “Led Zeppelin sings Dr. Seuss.” “Dan Fogelberg sings AC/DC,” “Bruce Springsteen sings Green Acres,” etc.
Putting his guitar skills to work, Mike is taking on a new challenge: instrumental comedy. His first piece in this genre appears on his live “Mike Rayburn at Carnegie Hall” CD. Entitled “Hang The Jury,” it is a piece said to have been performed for his classical guitar juries (final exams) in college, just to find out if his music professors were really listening click here. Mike’s latest is a convaluted version of “Dueling Banjo’s” click here. Mike performs both the guitar and banjo parts as if the banjo player is from the middle east (Arabian Bluegrass?). As Mike says of these pieces, “Nothing like a joke no one can steal.”
Mike has recently been featured in USA Today, Newsweek, Billboard, Gig, American Entertainment, and Campus Activities Today magazines. He has performed at Carnegie Hall eight times and performed more than 4,000 shows worldwide. In the 90’s and early 2000’s Mike was voted “America’s Campus Entertainer of the Year” three times in four years.
Instruments Played
Guitar
