PUGSLEY BUZZARD
Boogie Nights

Pugsley Buzzard will be performing his Chicago Typewriter show at the Perth Town Hall as part of the Fringe World Festival 2012 from January 27-31. Tickets are available from fringeworld.com.au. Buzzard will also be returning to WA for a special one-off show at The Ellington Jazz Club on Sunday, February 26. Visit ellingtonjazz.com.au for more information.

Pugsley Buzzard’s face is the kind you can carve on an orange; squeeze it one way and it laughs, another and it howls and another it bawls. Like many eclectic jazz and blues performers before him, this battery of expressions is part of his stock-in-trade as an entertainer, for, as the self-described “grizzly bear in a porkpie hat” attests, he is in the laughter business as much as the jazz business.
Buzzard’s self-described “whorehouse blues with fancy piano” style draws from a rich vein of piano based music – from New Orleans funk, Swampshack jazz and Barrelhouse blues to modern improvisations. “It’s like a cantankerous mule towing a speakeasy full of drunken gorillas through a glass factory,” Buzzard jokes when describing his sound.
A lifelong music aficionado, Buzzard’s current style places a special concentration on jazz, which reflects his enduring love of the genre.
“I’ve played music since childhood. I started on piano and violin then moved onto trumpet and later on to guitars and bass,” Buzzard reminisces. “I played around Perth in indie bands as well as jazz and blues bands. I ran a chamber orchestra for a while that got its start at the Artrage Festival. I also composed music for other film and theatre projects. Ten or so years ago I started traveling overseas and around Australia. It was in Europe I really started refining what I do now. Folks there liked my singing and piano playing. I’ve been pretty much focused on that since.”
One of Australia’s finest consummate artists, Buzzard has performed all over the world from the smoky jazz cellars of Berlin to downtown New Orleans. Buzzard has also enjoyed an unprecedented burst of success over the last few years, not least of which included taking out top honors in the Jazz/Blues Category at the eWorld music awards last year.
“It’s nice to be appreciated, even by a bunch of remote music industry execs in California. But I’m a pretty stubborn kind of mule. I follow my instinct [and] I know when I’m on the right course. I can’t be deterred. Awards and such things don’t mean that much to me personally but I guess it is some kind of validation,” he says.
Buzzard is set to dazzle and delight local audiences during a series of rollicking live shows as part of the Fringe World Festival later this month.
“I’ll be spinning some yarns and cracking some tunes open with the band,” Buzzard concludes, “So hipsters, flipsters and finger poppin’ daddies and mammas come on down to the Perth Town Hall and get yer funky selves booglarised.”

_JENNIFER PETERSON-WARD