Avening Hall will be the first stop on a Buck 65 tour in promotion of the new album Neverlove, to be released Sept. 30.
Buck 65 is Rich Terfry, Canadian east coaster, rapper and CBC Radio 2 host.
Terfry is playing Avening Oct. 4 as part of the Small Halls Festival before embarking on a two-month tour. From Avening, he is heading to Australia, Paris and the United Kingdom before continuing across Canada.
Terfry has a unique rap style, sometimes crude, sometimes sentimental, ranging in style from urban hip hop to spoken word.
The musician grew up in Mount Uniacke, Nova Scotia.
“Through the years, I played some of my most memorable shows in small town halls. Small towns need places where people can come together, meet, share ideas and experiences… I know that where I grew up, we only had one such place. Without it, you could hardly have called us a community,” Terfry told The Echo.
He said his first exposure to hip hop was on television in about 1980.
“I was hooked right away. In the next few years, I heard a lot of it at the roller skating rink where I spent most of my weekends,” said Terfry.
He said his babysitter’s boyfriend was the DJ at the rink, 30 minutes from his home, and taught him about records.
“Growing up in a small rural place, I consumed hip hop music in a different way from my friends who grew up in cities. For the most part, especially after the roller rink closed, I was listening in my bedroom. I was analyzing it. I wasn’t dancing to it in clubs. It wasn’t part of a social activity. For that reason, I think I interpreted the music in a different way. And I gravitated to different aspects of the music. I didn’t know what the singles or hits were and I didn’t care. I was drawn to the songs that challenged my imagination most. I was drawn to the weird and dark songs. I liked the weird songs. They made me feel like less of a weirdo myself. So I went I started making music, I wasn’t trying to be different. I was trying to make music the way I had been hearing it all along. My take on things was skewed and I had no idea. I’m grateful for that.”
Being the only hip hop fan among his friends, Terfry said he felt a bit lonely. He said he eventually found a community through music and online.
Terfry said it wasn’t until he left his hometown and moved to the city – Halifax and later Paris – that he started writing about his rural roots.
“I didn’t realize how much of an influence it was on me until I started living in the city,” he said.
The new Buck 65 album Neverlove is an album about divorce, penned after his wife left him three years ago.
“I’ve come a long way. But I still have bad dreams sometimes. I still wonder if I’m really ready to move on sometimes. I’ve made a few feeble and failed attempts at relationships in the last few years. In some ways, I figure I’ll never really be the same. But I also hope that I’m stronger and smarter and better than ever,” said Terfry.
Out of the cathartic album comes Super Pretty Naughty, a light-hearted dance song.
Terfry said it is the silliest, happiest song he could possibly write.
“I was really at rock bottom when I wrote this one and when you are at rock bottom something’s gotta give. So what choice do you have? Either you just start to switch off the lights altogether or you start to say okay, I gotta turn this thing around,” Terfry says during an online narrated tour of the album. “You just gotta look in the mirror and try to figure out a way to smile again after not laughing for a very, very long time. It’s something that I needed to do and I gotta tell you, it felt good.”
He said the song almost didn’t make it onto the new album but it has been well received and now he is glad it was included.
To see the video for Super Pretty Naughty, visit www.buck65.com.
Tickets cost $30 in advance and $35 door. Purchase tickets at http://aveninghall.com/