Myers and Weavers

Singing and instrumental music.

Everybody yawned when they came out, but they stopped the show before they quit, and bowed out after a single encore, when they could legitimately have taken a dozen. This was Myers and Weavers, who ambled out without much makeup in the characters of a couple of hicks— village hicks. They sang a song about Arkansas, and there was some- thing of James Whitcomb Riley about it that started them off beautifully. Then the tall member of the team (both men) came out with a pitchfork, a cigar box and a thingamajig, which proved to exercise the functions of a violin. The pitchfork was a camouflaged single-string violin, and the cigar box was used to graduate the tones, which proved tone of surprising strength and sweetness. The boys owned the theatre now, and when the short baby came out and did his eccentric dance, they had the mortgage on the audience that couldn't have been foreclosed by Sarah Bernhardt. Then the long fellow came out with a. plain carpenter's saw and a kitchen chair. He sat down and began to pound on the saw with a sort of xylophone hammer, holding the end of the saw with the fingers of his left hand. He got his register by bending the end of the saw up and down. He lured the most bewitching sounds out of that saw, notes which trembled and sang ecstatically, and they wouldn't let him stop. For an encore he let his partner do the pounding with the hammers while be made the melody by bending the saw up and down. These men have no business on small time. They should have a good spot on the big time.

Variety, 54:9 (04/25/1919)