Buck 65
Date: February 11, 2009 Why For You Put Flowers On Your Bicycle? With Buck 65 taking on a weekday radio slot on CBC, his touring opportunities have naturally been limited. However, he found the time to make the trip down the highway towards the capital on the Easter weekend, playing a pair of shows at the Blacksheep Inn in nearby Wakefield, Quebec. I caught the Saturday evening affair, in which Buck made the most of his visit, treating the sold-out crowd to a lengthy grab bag of stories and songs. This was my first time making it over to the Blacksheep Inn; and I was initially surprised by the setting. Although the web site described it having very limited seating, an array of tables and chairs stretched from the stage through at least the front two-thirds of the club, leaving me standing back near the bar, far from the action. In most venues, such a location would be inviting chatter and distraction; but I was happy to hear people quickly shushing anyone who spoke when opener Kyrie Kristmanson finally took the stage. The 20-year-old Kristmanson came in on a striking note, with her sultry, jazzy vocals backed only by an upright bassist. She played acoustic guitar for most of the remainder of the set, aside from a brief burst of trumpet punctuation, but her vocals remained the focal point. Although sometimes the yelps and affectations in her singing were not entirely my cup of tea, I liked much of what I heard when her freak folk stylings remained a bit more grounded. Similarly, while her banter about the spirit of the land was about what you would expect from someone wearing a ridiculous shaggy hat on a hot stage, she certainly knew how to engage the crowd. Above all, I would describe her performance as confident, both in how she utilized her voice and playing, and in how she had the Blacksheep Inn participating and singing along. Buck took the stage shortly after 10:00, leading not with a song but with a story about his father. He seemed relaxed, letting the story gradually unfold to its inevitable conclusion, a rendition of "Roses and Bluejays." This laid-back approach set the mood for a night that saw Buck in prime storyteller mode, perhaps more so than in any of my previous fourteen times seeing him perform. Many of these tales were familiar to me, from a list of his mother's top exclamations of anger to the motivation behind "Indestructible Sam," but all worked well interspersed with songs such as "Old-Time Stuff" and "Blood of a Young Wolf." Buck talking about his reaction to Easter set the stage for the first curveball of the evening, as he set "Dang" against a choral, hand-clapping piece of backing music. Late last year, Buck released three hours of free music as part of his Dirtbike series. Part of the motivation behind that decision could be encapsulated in "All There is About Love." I first heard him play that song exactly two years prior, and the Bike For Three album on which it will appear has only now been given a release date. With his full-time radio job, it would have only gotten more difficult to release and support a major label album. Buck offered a different rationale for flying under the radar, though, noting that he is making music for the love of it, not for the critics. In particular, he introduced "She Said Yes," a song he wrote after proposing to his fiancée, by saying that he didn't need to hear some eighteen-year-old kid who listens to Kanye West saying it sucks. While most of the earlier stories were familiar to me, asides such as that put context to Buck's newer material. He was so free with his banter that he preceded "The Rambler and the Free Spirit" with an explanation of its title (a reference to the bicycle models that he and his fiancée recently acquired), only to follow it up with a breakdown of the chorus (a reference to a kid's reaction to his boyhood attempt to camouflage his bike). Perhaps the highlight of the concert, though, was an a cappella cover of "Enter Governor Bolts," also found on Dirtbike, a song so bizarre that Buck decided to dissect the lyrics in the midst of delivering them. As the night stretched on, Buck noted the time and announced his intention to go into high gear for the home stretch. Although I always remark on Buck's showmanship and personality, I sometimes overlook his vocal delivery; but there was an obvious increase in his intensity from that point forward that matched his stated goal. A set-closing version of "Kennedy Killed the Hat" paired against Devo's "Whip It" had the crowd roaring its approval. "Craftsmanship" marked the start of an encore that would stretch the concert to the two hour mark. Buck has really found his stride with this song, elevating it to the point where it absolutely killed in such a prominent placement in his set. He ended the night with a hambone version of "Wicked and Weird," further illustrating that he always brings something new to his performances. My first trip to the Blacksheep Inn was a great one, with Kyrie Kristmason warming the crowd with an impressive set before Buck delivered another knockout. This was one of the longer sets that I've seen from Buck, and he really seemed to settle in to the Blacksheep atmosphere, casually spinning entertaining stories as easily as he dropped his great music. <--Prev (Ruby Coast/Winter Gloves) | Next (Black Mountain)-->Return to Concert ListReturn to Main Page |