They call me Buck 65.

I grew up on a dirt road in a small town called Mt. Uniacke in rural Nova Scotia.

That’s on the east coast of Canada. When I was a kid, there was a ferryboat that

ran between Nova Scotia and Boston, if that helps.

I mostly kept to myself as a kid. I did well in school but all I really cared about

was baseball. I tried my hand at scratching on the family stereo system when I

was 13 years old. Around the same time, I started writing little raps to impress

the girls in my homeroom class. For some inexplicable reason, I demonstrated an

innate ability in both disciplines right out of the gates. I was a natural. I was also

a nerd.

In 1990 I lost my virginity and baseball broke my heart. I overreacted by

recording an album and inflicting it on the public. The effort was largely ignored.

But those who took notice were split evenly among those who hated it and those

who loved it. Since then, I have had numerous sexual encounters and my music

still divides people evenly. I don’t play baseball much anymore because I

wrecked my shoulder. But I still follow the professional game closely and I collect

baseball cards like an idiot.

Having been a confused hip hop fiend-slash-fascist as a teen, my attention

began to wander sometime around the middle of the 1990s. At that point, I began

to aggressively seek inspiration in cinema, weird art and other kinds of music -

mostly that made by losers and pariahs with an eye for beauty. These perverted

pursuits began to corrupt my own creative emissions. I deluded myself into

believing that it would be a good idea to apply sundry art theories to hip hop

boneheadedness. I took a post-punk philosopher’s approach to b-boy-ism. I

decided to try to break the world by making the most beautiful rap song ever

heard. After a few years of perfuse bleeding to the beat, I came to realize that

only mutants go for that kind of thing. But there were just enough of these

deviants to keep me going and I haven’t looked back.

Recently I came to realize that I’ve been getting weird on tape for 20 years. I

decided to celebrate and invited a bunch of my fellow sub-normals to the party.

We ate paste and pretended we knew what each other was talking about. It was

uncomfortable a lot of the time, but lots of exciting music was frankensteined.

The first person I called was Jenn Grant. She’s from Prince Edward Island and

was Anne of Green Gables when she was a kid. She’s a capital ‘O’ weirdo, but

has the most beautiful voice you’ll ever hear in your life. We made a handful of

songs together. Some you’ll hear now, some you’ll hear later.

Gord Downie is one of the most successful oddballs in the history of Canadian

whimsy. When I thought to invite him, I never imagined he’d actually show up.

But he came early with a bag of cheese puffs and a box of blank Valentine’s Day

cards. We made a waltz for people to dance to alone. It’s called “Whispers Of

The Waves”. I’m still amazed by how fast it happened.

John Southworth arrived by hot air balloon, wearing a paper hat. Safe upon the

ground he removed the hat and on it we wrote a song about estranged fathers

and sons, computers, democracy and Christopher Cross. It’s called “BCC” and is

the only song on the album that features both flute and marimba. It’s accidentally

exotic.

Once upon a time, Nick Thorburn had a band called The Unicorns and made an

album called “Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?” He came to the party

with craft supplies and we made a song called “Gee Whiz” out of popsicle sticks,

macaroni, sparkles and pipe cleaners. These days, Nick has a whole bunch of

bands, it seems.

Olivia Ruiz came all the way from France and brought scary movies. We made a

fort out of cushions and blankets and we made a song about vampires called

“Tears Of Your Heart” in our sleep. We woke up in the morning and there it was!

Neither of us has any memory of making it.

When all was said and done, an album called 20 Odd Years was constructed.

Flip through its pages and see photos of beautiful faces like that of Hannah

Georgas and Marie-Pierre Arthur. We cut out a picture of Leonard Cohenʼs face

from a magazine and pasted it on my face. We played dress-up and spun the

bottle. When the party was over, we agreed to never do that again.

Undoubtedly, I’ll make another album in a year or two. And one of these days I’ll

throw a party to celebrate 50 years! But in the meantime, please enjoy 20 Odd

Years.

Buck 65