by SCOTT C

I remember seeing Buck 65 on Mike Bullard a few months ago, when he performed "Wicked and Weird" from his new LP Talkin' Honky Blues. He was up there looking like one of the guys from Blue Rodeo, scratching and rhyming at the same time, spinning the convoluted details of some real or imagined road trip. It wasn't too long ago that the last place I would have expected to see Buck would be sitting in the hot seat beside that fathead Bullard, but things change.

MC, DJ and producer Buck 65 (aka Rich Terfry) can be considered one of this country's true hip hop originals, having worked for years in the Halifax trenches releasing indie hip hop tapes and 12-inches straight out of the basement. His work with sometime partner Sixtoo brought light to the plight of the Sebutones and strengthened the Maritime DIY hip hop ethic. Although he only just recently signed a major label deal with Warner, Buck was already a household name for years based on a relentless, self-imposed release schedule and a penchant for travelling to wherever the road took him.

His new LP Talkin' Honky Blues, Buck's rough guide to surviving on the long and winding road to nowhere, is the first in what I hope is a long line of challenging hip-hop-based music from this inspired and prolific young artist. Joined by backing band the Savant Guard, he lends his raspy take on life to lush, subterranean productions that switch from twangy midnight specials to dubbed-out sonic washes. The reference points are many, ranging from Johnny Cash to Anaïs Nin, but Buck has certainly succeeded in fine-tuning his particular point of view without completely forsaking the fundamentals of hip hop. Purists may already be grumbling, but it's nothing that a ride out to the riverbed with this leftfielder couldn't fix. The Mirror spoke to Buck 65 over the phone from somewhere on the open road.

Mirror: I was one of the guys who interviewed you when you were still hustling tapes out of your basement, so it's interesting to me to see where you're at these days.

Buck 65: Well, I don't have to go back too far to think of a time where I never would have expected to be where I am now.

M: When did you discover or realize that the music that you wanted to make was almost completely adverse to what was going on in hip hop?

B65: I probably realized it quite a long time ago. Maybe as far back as '96, but for a while I really fought it. Obviously I was having a hard time fitting in, or making people understand that this is where I come from, and this is why I do things the way I do. I really just kept trying to fight and stand up for myself as a hip hop artist, and after a few years of getting kicked in the nuts, I just decided to stop barking up that tree and concern myself with doing what I'm doing. You can't try to make friends in an alligator pit. My music got a lot better when I stopped concerning myself with outside influences. Being reactionary in music is no way to be, not all the time anyway.

M: In terms of just finding the confidence to do things, did you find that selling your own shit on the Internet, getting into things on an independent level quite early on and succeeding at them helped you?

B65: Yeah, it helped a lot, but I'll tell you what it comes down to, and I tell this to people who ask for advice all the time. Just get out there on the road. That's a hard thing for a lot of people, a real scary prospect. You're pretty safe when you're at your house making records, but you're really putting your ass on the line when you venture out with no promise of anything in return. The good thing about being on the road is that good or bad, it makes you stronger. I thinks as far as sorting myself out goes and gaining confidence, there's nothing like getting out there.

Continental drifter

M: I talked to Sixtoo and yourself about being affiliated with the 1200 Hobos turntablist community, but with the amount of travelling that the two of you have done, you both could qualify as full-on hobos! All this moving around is definitely reflected in the music you make.

B65: I used to hate it. I used to accept it as a necessary evil. My records weren't going to sell themselves. I wasn't getting played on the radio and most people didn't care what I was doing, so I had to get out there. But I hated it, and it stressed me out. In the last two or three years I've done it non-stop, to the point where I'm completely hooked on it. I love it. I don't live anywhere right now! I have no address.

M: Where are you right now?

B65: On the road! I'm not in any town for more than a day or two. If I don't travel for even a short time now, I start to go crazy. And Jesus Christ, man, a new girl every night! (laughs) I do genuinely love hobo music, I identify with all the romantic notions, with just trying to make it from town to town. I love it, and it is romantic, but it's hard as hell. Sometimes you get real lonesome, but you put that back into the music. My life has become an adventure. I haven't been bored in years.

M: Do you know a hobo song called "Jesus Blood Hasn't Failed Me Yet"?

B65: I sure do. Tom Waits did a version of that song that was never made available for sale, as far as I know.

M: The version I heard was a bum singing the song over and over again -

B65: Yeah! I think that's where Tom Waits heard it first. When you listen to hobo music and hillbilly music, it's just fascinating to listen to people who couldn't help themselves but make music. It's just real and heavy and undeniable. If you have an open mind at all and listen to that music, you can't help but be moved by it. I'm livin' it man. I am Woody Guthrie right now.

Jumping the fence

M: Do you come across a lot of people in your travels that can make the connection between Tom Waits and hip hop?

B65: No! Something that I thought would stop bugging me and hasn't is the fact that so many people who listen to hip hop have their heads up their ass. Hip hop and nothing else and everything else is wack. There's an overabundance of people who are not open-minded at all listening to hip hop. Give a badass like Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard a chance and you'll see what I'm saying! I was recently playing in Cincinnati and I got booed.

M: You got booed?

B65: Oh yeah. This one guy in particular was being really loud and I said, "How many Bob Dylan records do you have in your collection?" And he yelled back, "Fuck that shit!" I just said, "No offence taken. Thank you very much," and walked off the stage.

M: It goes both ways, man. The average Tom Waits or Nick Cave fanatic probably thinks that all hip hop is the same, and that there's nothing there for them.

B65: It's an attitude I think is pretty juvenile and it's everywhere you go. The assumption that I've allowed myself to make because it's safe and healthy to do, out of respect, and believing in the best in people, is that people like lots of different kinds of music. If you're blessed with an open mind, you'll probably like a lot more.

M: I'm a big David Lynch fan myself, and I can very easily see his influence on the work that you do.

B65: That's a big one for sure. I can see David Lynch qualities in things that have absolutely nothing to do with David Lynch. It's his ability to tap into the dark side of things that fascinates me. I think we all wish we could embrace our dark side a little more than we do. He did a one-time-only concert in Paris last year and I paid 200 euros to see it. He was speaking French in his Missouri accent, introducing his industrial blues ensemble, and he sat in a chair with a guitar and a sampler beside him, triggering all these typically Lynchian noises. I was in heaven.

M: He's a consummate artist, who's really good at taking us somewhere else.

B65: I think the appeal for me is that it kind of makes me think of where I'm from. I'm from this tiny town that's barely on the map, with a post office and a museum and a colonial plantation. A sleepy little town where some unbelievably dark and strange things have happened. Like Dinker Dash, a guy I played baseball with, who killed a guy and stashed the body at an old army base. When David Lynch touches on stuff like that, I can identify very, very easily.

With Frederic Gary Comeau at Café Campus
on Thursday, Sept. 25, 8pm, $12

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