1. Eric Pyle
2. Horsehead Accordion Guy
3. Pan Flute Guy

Eric the Great is no fairweather busker. On any given day, he’ll be out somewhere in Winnipeg, greeting passers-by with a song and his bright, distinctive smile. He’s been regaling the streets with song for 10 solid years, averaging about 16 hours a day, he estimates.

Eric can usually be found outside the Osborne Village MLCC, and he also posts up around the MTS Centre to entertain Jets fans on game days.

“With the hockey game, I used to play ‘Burning Ring of Fire’ when people came out, and overwhelmingly that’s what people wanted, and it never - it still hasn’t stopped, so I just play it in an endless loop”, he explains.

When he’s not endlessly looping, Eric mixes his own original material in with the covers. “It’s 50/50. I’m not consciously trying to do that, I’m just playing music to make people happy in the street”, he explains.

In local lore, that one Johnny Cash tune has become almost inseparable from Eric himself, and is one of his top three songs (along with “Wagon Wheel” and “People are Strange”). People will even request the song while he’s in the middle of playing it. 

“I don’t say anything, I just stop. ‘Ring of Fire? Oh yes, ok,’” and it begins anew.

While he wouldn’t exactly quantify how many times in a day he plays the song, he quips “A lot more than Johnny did.”

Quick to laugh and to greet friends and acquaintances with a smile and nod mid-song, Eric brings much more than rote performance to the city, and receives it back in-kind.

“People have been incredibly beautiful to me, and I’m blessed to be able to truly experience what’s in people’s hearts and souls. And those are the facts.”

Part of the series: The Uniter 30

Published in Volume 69, Number 15 of The Uniter (January 7, 2015)