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Nine months after our last interview with an exhausted, jet-lagged and somewhat muddled Rich Terfry, a.k.a. Buck 65, the Edmonton Sun caught up with him last week in Halifax, riding a wave of inspiration while celebrating the arrival of his new niece.
Buck 65 is hitting Myer Horowitz Theatre, on the U of A campus, tonight with his spontaneous new trio Le Film Noir.
This tour's taking them to several Canadian festivals, including the world-renowned Montreal jazz festival before continuing Down Under with Parisian chanteuse Claire Berest, featured on 2005's release Secret House Against the World and on stage at Buck 65's last Edmonton concert.
Terfry first made a name for himself during the mid '90s, putting together cassettes of his hip-hop songs and eventually graduating to the genre's underground Canadian clique. Although his work saw him affiliated with hip-hop collectives like Anticon (alongside Halifax's Sixtoo) and 1200 Hobos, Terfry confesses to having lacked a solid work ethic.
"I basically just made a promise to myself back around last Christmas that I was just going to start working a lot harder and working to be way more prolific and to try and write a new song every day, which I have pretty much been doing," explains the hip-hop artist, who's released two full-length recordings since the New Year, and who this week is releasing an ITunes single called Temporarily in Love and a film short.
He's also working on three new albums, one with a bunch of friends, a film soundtrack and Buck 65's followup to last year's Secret House Against the World.
But Le Film Noir, which is kicking off this tour with its first performance ever, is his immediate focus and, according to Terfry, "There's going to be a whole lot of rotating and switching of instruments and in some cases people will be playing several instruments at once. It's going to be quite the circus.
"Some new and much-needed breath has been breathed into the songs. I'm shaking with excitement," continues Terfry, while admitting a little nervousness about playing a stage like Montreal's with a group that's only had four days to rehearse.
"When you're there going a little bit by the seat of your pants, you kind of bring a certain energy to your endeavours because you're on your toes," he says. "I actually kind of look forward to being nervous for the first time in awhile. As a downside to that nervousness, like I've found from my experiences how it usually manifests itself for most musicians, you get this horrible feeling in your stomach before you go on.
"But there's an excitement about it too, you know, a standing up of the hairs on the back of your neck, and you certainly feel alive in moments like that. So I mean, it's better than being bored."
Far from bored, Terfry is actually finding, "something new, it seems, every 15 minutes.
"Even having a new niece is a source of ideas and inspiration," he says. "I haven't had those feelings of just being that smitten in that way with this perfect little creature that is a part of my family now.
"I really want to let those things filter in and be a part of what I'm doing and the music. I don't want to step into the rehearsal stage or into the studio or on stage and leave my life behind 'cause I think that's valuable. That's what's going to inform and hopefully enrich your music a little bit. I mean, that's what's going to make it human and hopefully what will give people something to respond to," Terfry explains.
One of Terfry's greatest sources of inspiration has been his hometown of Mt. Uniacke, Nova Scotia.
"To the point where I've even described my music as Mount Uniacke music," he says. Two days before we spoke, Terfry was honoured by and given the key to the tiny community.
"It's just like a reciprocation of love, which always feels good and you don't always get that," he says of the surprise ceremony. "They did so many nice things and I just saw so many familiar faces from my past and it just felt really good and there were a lot of laughs, I mean I'll never forget it for as long as I live."
Although this tour will be chock-full of performances between now and the end of July when Buck 65 winds things up in Ireland, he's actually got an extra day free here in Edmonton.
"I'll just be kind of bumming around," says Terfry. "So if you see me hitchhiking on the side of the road, throw a chocolate bar out the window."