Buck 65 debuts Neverlove and Laundromat Boogie (CBC Youtube taping)

Buck 65's kept busy of late.  With a renewed vigor, softened by the blow of a by all accounts hard divorce, the man born Rich Terfry has softened like naugahyde leather.    In the lead up to the release of Neverlove he's been doing a flurry of promotional activity including fulfilling a childhood dream: throwing out the opening pitch at the Chicago Cubs game.  Twenty odd years ago Buck used to do an amazing version of the seminal baseball poem Casey At The Bat interlaced with the drama of his provincial baseball finals.  Rich of course, as many know, was so good at baseball - pitching in particular- that he was signed to the New York Yankees only to blow out his knee spoiling his prospects of an international career at least in that field.

Buck 65 came to international acclaim in part through the endorsement of Thom Yorke who was originally introduced to his obscure Language Arts series (including Weirdo Magnet, Vertex, Man Overboard, and Synesthesia) when Kid Koala gave him a copy of Man Overboard (the original run of which couldn't have been over 500).  All of these legendary underground Hip Hop albums were re-released 'as part of the contract that eventually spurned his “breakthrough” (i.e. “charting”) album Talkin Honky Blues'.

While Buck 65 has stayed fairly constantly in the public eye with a slew of releases and a stint as a CBC Radio 2 host (well suited to his Tom Waits style persona which is something like an ossified version of one of the characters from the Language Arts series named Uncle Climax), somewhere along the line the bloom came off the rose a bit and Buck may have lost some of his evolving fanbase.  Neverlove seems like a bid for new attention or 'fresh laundry' as he puts it in So Fresh (from Laundromat Boogie).  If Neverlove is Buck 65's bid to be taken seriously, to sing and to process his life's transition, Laundromat Boogie the Jorun Bombay produced album that came out the day before (Sept. 29) is running straight in the opposite direction.

The set itself opened with a Bike For Three! (a side project with Greetings From Tuskan) song from this year's So Much Forever but the set was drawn largely in reverse chronological order from: Neverlove, Laundromat Boogie and 20 Odd Years (2011).  Buck opened with his usual spritzing with the audience, possessed with innate comedic timing and the storytelling abilities of a Garrison Keilor his sets are a joy to behold.  Beat for beat he was actually funnier than Dave Chappelle's pop-up show he did in Toronto a couple years back on a sheer cheeks hurt level.  Buck opened with some schtick which seemed to be largely based on reality about something bad that he ate but quickly got over his dyspepsia.  He quickly got up to cruising altitude peppering his set with obscure references to his greatest love: Baseball and the 'fundamentals' as taught by Coach Kent Murphy.

On many songs Buck was joined by a stunning vocalist Maya who he needed to lean on at times for difficult songs both in terms of delivery and lyrically.  Since Maya was such a force to be reckoned with, his set veered towards torch songs including Paper Airplane originally written and performed with Jenn Grant.  Maya had her finest moment on Only War which would have given Alicia Keys a run for her money.  Buck's real chokers were his ode to his hometown of Mount Uniacke, NS - Heather Girl - and Superhero In My Heart.

Buck 65
CBC Youtube taping setlist

Legendary
Gee Whiz
Laundromat Boogie
She Fades
Paper Airplane
Heather Girl
Only War
So Fresh
Love Will Fuck You Up 
Superhero In My Heart
Heart Of Stone
Wicked and Weird
Super Pretty Naughty (with pantomimed 'cock lasers')