Greg Bucking – Thanks for Asking!

Greg Bucking – Thanks for Asking! – by Liam Sweeny.

RRX: Every artist’s first song is a milestone. But so is the latest song. Describe the first song/album you recorded, and also the latest song/album you recorded; what are the differences?

GB: The first song of mine that I recorded in a pro studio and released was in 1999 with my band at the time, Mother Freedom. It is called “Arrival”. It’s a sprawling jam in 6/8 time that we did mostly live in the studio and then overdubbed vocals and solos. It was a ton of fun to record and I put my guitar through an old Leslie rotating speaker cabinet for a killer psychedelic sound. The song itself is almost a sea shanty feel, talking about a young man and an old man gazing out into the sea contemplating life. It still holds up all these years later, and has new resonance now that I’ve lived as both characters.

The most recent song I’ve recorded was on guitar with The Bluebillies called “Run Daddy Run”, written by Mel and Mark Guarino. It’s a haunting tale about lost love, jealousy, and revenge. My main guitar part has a sort of Spaghetti Western tone, with lots of reverb and vibrato through the Fender Vibrolux amp I’ve used for years. I’m a lot more confident now, but even when I started out, I realized I loved creating sounds and feelings in the studio.

RRX: We have to play somewhere, and sometimes those places have more going for them than a stage and a power outlet. What is a memorable place you played, and bonus points if it’s not a well-known place.

GB: So many choices but one that stands out is when I was playing with a neo-swing band called The Jumpers. It was sort of like the Brian Setzer Orchestra, with lots of horns and vocals, and me as the lead guitar doing the Setzer-type stuff. We got a gig in Dearborn, MI for the opening of the Henry Ford Museum. It was not too long after the auto industry bailout around 2009, so they were having this celebration with the governor of Michigan and the Secretary of Transportation giving speeches and then we played. The gig was good but the thing that stuck out was seeing Secret Service guys walking around in black suits, sunglasses, and earpieces like in the movies. Weird but cool.

RRX: My singer punched my drummer out. Memorable moment, though nothing to brag about. But we have these things that, when summing up your endeavor, an incident comes to mind. What do you got?

GB: We were playing a multi band show in Chicago about three years ago with The Scofflaws and we were the last band on the bill. As happens with these kind of gigs, things were behind schedule and the solo artist playing before us was going way over his allotted time on top of that. So our fearless leader Sammy Brooks got up on stage while the other guy was doing a song and went up to the other mic and started riling up the crowd: “Do you wanna hear The Scofflaws?” It was hilarious and awkward and kind of surreal. Needless to say, the other guy (who shall remain nameless) was very much pissed off and eventually stormed off the stage. We did our set and then after that, Sammy and the other guy got into a little fistfight. No one was hurt but I don’t think they kissed and made up.

RRX: With the exception of singing, everyone has an instrument, an inanimate object that has the distinction of being a lifelong friend. Smooth or temperamental, these objects have a character. So pick someone to answer, can you tell us something special about what you play, your technique, your instrument?

GB: My Martin acoustic is the instrument I’ve played more than any else. I bought it new and I’ve had it for over twenty years, and I would always tell people that it took about five years before it was broken in and started to have the tone that I connect to and feel more than any other guitar I’ve played. I basically beat the crap out of it for six or seven years straight with The Vine Brothers, where we would tour relentlessly and also do a lot of street busking where possible. The other guys played mandolin and upright bass, which both project a lot more sound acoustically, so I would have to play extra hard and loud to be heard. But it still sounds amazing.

RRX: Sometimes you gotta go on the road. Miles can build up, and it can stretch the comfort level of any travelling act. What do you bring on a road trip, or tour? What will you forget to bring?

GB: With The Vine Brothers, I had the packing down to a science. We would tour in a Subaru Outback, which had just enough room for three guys, an upright bass, and our instruments and bags. A lot of times, I would fly to the first tour date and/or back home. First,I would wear a suit or whatever was the nicest jacket/pants combination on the plane. I would usually have only one pair of shoes, usually boots or sneakers, though sometimes I would pack flip flops if it was summer. I’d pack a carry-on backpack with whatever other clothes I’d need for a week with the expectation that I would do laundry once or twice a week. And my acoustic, which would go in the overhead bin. I also made a point on the road of going to thrift stores or vintage shops to pick up something cool that I might not otherwise find at home.

RRX: Let’s talk about your next project, your next few. Just not the ones you’re working on now. The ones you have your eyes on for the future. What’s coming to us?

GB: After my last solo album that I released in 2022, I spent the next couple of years doing live shows with a primarily electric band and wrote an album’s worth of new songs that we’d play live and that I wanted to get into a studio to record. Because of everyone’s lives and schedules, it became more and more logistically difficult to move forward on that project, so for now it’s on the back burner. Then this past September/October I got on a little songwriting spree and wrote six new tunes that I absolutely love that are acoustic guitar and vocal based. So, looking forward, I aim to get all those new acoustic songs recorded and hopefully get them out sometime next year. Then when the time is right, I want to get back to the electric band and record all of those songs.

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