Bing Futch is a musician whose primary instrument is the mountain dulcimer. In 1986 he co-founded Christian techno-punk trio Crazed Bunnyz along with Marc "Gadget" Plainguet and Sean "Shaka" Harrison. He relocated to Orlando, Florida in 1993. Futch has composed and produced soundtracks for film, theater, television and themed attractions. In 1994, he wrote and recorded music for The Castle of Miracles at Give Kids The World Village in Kissimmee, Florida. In 1999, Futch formed Americana band Mohave, featuring the mountain dulcimer as the main instrument. The group has performed at the House of Blues in Walt Disney World, Hard Rock Live at Universal Studios Florida and has opened for Molly Hatchet, among other acts. Futch performs using a special dual-fretboard mountain dulcimer as well as a custom resonator and is one of only two mountain dulcimer players to compete in the history of the International Blues Challenge, advancing to the semifinals in the 2015 edition of the competition. During the 2016 edition of the International Blues Challenge, Futch made it to the finals and was awarded "Best Guitarist" in the solo-duo category, despite performing solely on the Appalachian mountain dulcimer. He is the grandson of the late boxing hall-of-famer Eddie Futch.
On June 14, 2009, Futch was en route to a show in Ft. Wayne, Indiana on Northwest Airlines flight 2363 from Detroit, Michigan. During that time, baggage handlers damaged his double-necked mountain dulcimer. Encouraged by fans to write a song about the incident, and after seeing Dave Carroll's "United Breaks Guitars" on YouTube, Futch penned "Only a Northwest Song" on July 10, 2009, and posted it to the service, hoping it would help to avoid a "lengthy reimbursement battle." Within a day of the video's posting, Northwest Airlines contacted Futch to offer their apologies along with compensation.
On February 16, 2011, during the finale of a three-day Jeopardy! pitting returning champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter against IBM's Supercomputer Watson, Futch's name appeared as one of three possible questions for the answer "Nearly 10 million YouTubers saw Dave Carroll's clip called 'this friendly skies' airline 'breaks guitars.'" Watson offered up "United Airlines" with an 81% probability of being correct, "United Breaks Guitars" was the second choice with a probability of 13% and "Futch" was the third choice with a probability of 7%.
