by Jenna Krysloff


Buck 65’s music is probably best described as Americana hip hop. It’s always been pretty far from the rap norm. He first fell for hip hop as a baseball obsessed kid from Nova Scotia and quickly picked up every Sugar Hill record he could find. He’s more recently gotten deep into blues and country, and his new loves affect, not only the sound of his music, but his overall creative aesthetic. He’s interested in the origins of hip hop and has turntables on all his songs. Yet, he’s a strict innovator, too, always making beats unlike any he’s ever heard and using an incredibly diverse collection of samples. He’s a music historian almost as much as he’s an original musician, and it’s from here, perhaps, that his interest in making records as albums rather than singles comes. His music sounds like movement, not like quick movement or dancing movement, necessarily, but it’s going somewhere for sure. It’s shifting and loping, like a road trip or some galloping mess of buffalo. He’s released shittons of music, some of it long out of print, but there’s a compilation of some of his older material (re-recorded with a live band) coming out in January on V2.


I understand that you’re in France. Are you living there now or just playing shows?
I live in France. I love it there. It’s been a place I’ve considered home for the last two years. I love it for lots of personal reasons, but it’s also my strongest market so far. And, you know, you go where the work is.

Do you wear a Canadian flag on your backpack over there?
I don’t wear the flag. The French are a bit notorious for being, shall we say, less than welcoming to visitors. So I try my best to blend in. I wear a wig and a scarf and a stripey shirt instead.

I seem to read a lot of interviews with so-called “underground” or “indie” rappers that are forever praising French audiences. What is it about shows in France that elicits this kind of reaction?
I’ve expended much thought to trying to figure that one out myself. I’m not sure. But the French love hip hop. I hear it’s the second biggest hip hop market after the US. But if you look at French music and what’s always been popular there, it’s always been lyric driven. They seem to have a real zest for words.

Are you planning to live anywhere else outside of [France and] Canada?
Well, I was also living in London for a while and right now I have a secret home in a dark corner of America. I have no running water or a stove and I only eat marshmallows. Most of my friends have four legs.

I always think living in the woods sounds fun because you could go totally ballistic and yell and chop the shit out of logs, etc., with no one around to think it strange. Do you go out there in the fall? Jesus, there’s nothing more invigorating than crisp fall air (unless this corner of America is in Mexico or Florida).
I chop the cord. No one needs to know. Brisk air in one’s lungs adds years to your expectancy and aids the scalp. My dad used to live in Florida. He came back with hyper-active tear glands.

You’re sort of notorious for not staying in a single place for very long, mainly because you’re constantly touring. If you weren’t making your living as a musician would you still be wandering?
I think I’d still be adrift. Baseball players drift. Writers drift. Drifters wander. And everyone wonders.

Maybe this is sorta cheeseball to try to explain your music as nomadic, but it’s always moving somewhere. I can almost see you writing the songs as you walk from place to place. They don’t seem to come from a studio, but sound as if they’re inescapable, like you’d be writing these songs even if they’d never be recorded. (If this were a spoken interview, I’d just pause here and hope that you’d begin responding.)
I’ve written stuff while actually walking down the street, bumping into stuff and getting hit by cars. I write on airplanes and in train stations. I’ve recorded outdoors. In a song I do what I can to capture the feeling with which the song was originally inspired. And I don’t like to draw conclusions or fill in all the details, because that allows a song to keep traveling forever. It’s good to make a world where you can invite people in to have a walk around.

I understand that you’re a fan of Woody Guthrie. Woody basically believed that music was for everyone. He encouraged people to play for themselves and didn’t believe musicians should be idolized, as this would create ranks and divisions. First, do you agree with this idea, and second, is it possible to do this with hip hop?
I agree with those sentiments whole-heartedly. I don’t really believe in idolatry in any form. Originally, one of the main ideers behind hip hop was that you should do it yourself. It was seen as a bedroom/basement type of music. That’s a nice idea. But now it’s mansion music. Woody would hate hip hop I betcha. It’s mean. It’s rich. It’s hyper-materialistic. We should all ask ourselves at key moments, ‘What would Woody reckon?’

How silly do you think Bob Dylan is these days?
I’m a Dylan fan to a point. I shouldn’t admit this. I pretty much stop at John Wesley Harding. Maybe one day I’ll learn to appreciate further. I hope so. It seems important. But a few years ago he was seen riding a bike in my hometown and that’s not silly–it’s awesome. My friend Aaron saw Leonard Cohen yesterday at a hardware store. How awesome is that? Picture Leonard Cohen hammering stuff today…

Wow. Leonard Cohen’s about the coolest person you could run into. I imagine him making an altar for his new favorite lady.
Yeah. An altar. Exactly. Or maybe he was buying sand paper because it’s quite zen to just sand some wood. It’s a nice sound and makes for a nice aroma.

If you could have Calvin (of “Calvin and Hobbes”) peeing on anything, what would it be?
Did the kid ever actually pee on anything in the news-paper? I have a problem with peeing outside of the toilet bowl. Call me a princess, but I’d like to see him pee in the toilet and wipe that smirk off his face.

Son of a bitch! We were gonna make a t-shirt with Calvin peeing in a toilet. Now it’ll look like we stole your idea.
Just cut me in for half the proceeds and I won’t say nothin’.

(This interview was conducted via text messaging. Check out Buck’s
website for news and shit: www.buck65.com)