Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists (Series Three) #1: Buggy Jive

Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who He Is: Buggy Jive is a Soul Rock Singer-Songwriter based in the Albany, New York metro area whose third person biography describes his work and influences thusly: “Equal parts Zeppelin and D’Angelo and Prince and Joni in sound and sensibility, his lyrics often mine the literature of the past to make sense of the present – from Ellison to Morrison to Eliot to Didion.” He’s been recording and issuing albums since the late 1990s, originally under his given name (Bryan Thomas) before adopting his “Professor Buggy Jive” persona via a series of online songs and videos recorded in his fabulous basement studio (which often features in said songs and videos), followed by a house concert set and 2018’s The Buggy Jive Mixtape. He’s been quite prolific in the years since, with an incredibly solid stream of singles, EPs, albums, and videos, including last year’s “Don’t Quit Your Day Job,” a song about NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, that was entered into NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, and received heavy exposure as a favored finalist on NPR. It didn’t win in the end, but it was magnificent and deserving nonetheless, like his full catalog at large.

When I First Heard Him: Late 1990s sometime, though I can’t say exactly when and where I first encountered his music, and him. I was working back-of-house on Time Warner Cable’s Sounding Board show when he did a set there in 1999 to support his debut album, Radio Plastic Jennifer, though I don’t remember whether I was doing my man-on-the-street music bits at that point or just working crew. (I started on-air hosting the show soon after his performance). Jennifer is an album that I would have received in my parallel music critic mode at Metroland, though I didn’t actually write a review of his work until his 2002 album, Ones and Zeroes. We got to know each other at some point through mutual friend and fellow stellar musician-singer-songwriter Jed Davis (who featured in an earlier installment of this series, here), and there were various good hangs at Justin’s and Denny’s and other late-night dining establishments, along with a fair number of shared show experiences until I moved from Albany in 2011. One of the last fun adventures Buggy and I had together was right before I left Albany, when we went down to Jerry Marotta’s Dreamworld Studio for sessions by Jed’s then current band, Sevendys. The day we were there, legends Chuck Rainey (a member of Sevendys, along with Marotta) and John Sebastian (a guest brought in to add autoharp) were recording their parts, and it was a joy to watch and interact with them as they did so. There’s a too long to tell here anecdote about Mister Sebastian’s insistence on a proper Italian meal, and how the rest of us ended up paying for it, as well as a sublime moment in the control room when Buggy picked up an old book about “Legends of Rock” or some such, randomly opened it, amazingly enough to The Lovin’ Spoonful’s page, with John Sebastian standing right in front of us:

Why I Love Him: Buggy Jive offers a truly complete musical package in terms of the things that I most value in my music. He’s blessed with an extraordinary voice (I get shivers remembering the time that I asked him in to sing “Mary Don’t You Weep” during a service at the Chapel + Cultural Center when I was its director), he’s equally capable of massive shred and subtle, nuanced textures on his guitar, and he’s positively McCartney-esque in his abilities to handle every other instrument necessary to make the music he wants and needs to make. His lyrics are smart, steeped in literary references that open ears and minds alike, often funny (and equally often self-deprecatory), and occasionally anchored in the deep Biblical texts that we both grew up with coming from solid Church-focused families. He’s also capable of extraordinary emotional impact in his music, and I can think of two cases where he literally moved me to tears with his songs, first with “Shine” (about a boy losing his God-loving father, soon after I lost my own God-loving father), then with “Another Song About The Moon” (about the tragic loss of two mutual friends, well before their time, in rapid succession). It takes exceptional artistry to make such powerful and beautiful points in music, and to do it in ways that still allow the songs to make you sway, or sit, and shimmy, or stand up and shout, as necessary and applicable. He’s a musical force with something to say, a potent artist working at the peaks of his powers, continually and consistently, and his work moves me deeply, in all of the very best ways that music can inspire us. As if that’s not enough, Buggy Jive is also a brilliant video director; among my Ten Favorite songs below, I’ve included links to some of his best visual work atop his musical genius, and they’re all well worth checking out.

#10. “I Don’t Understand How The World Works,” from I Don’t Understand How The World Works (2022)