Pugsley Buzzard!  The piano wonder from Down Under… He’s back on tour, and returns for his fourth Bird & Beckett appearance, an occasion that makes us gleefully happy!

Pugs is at once a rollicking stride piano master and a gravelly voiced singer, plumbing the extremes of dark fate and wry, whisky-soaked self-reflection. He plays barrelhouse blues & boogie woogie, growls his dark & titillating songs, and pumps out magnificent Harlem stride with a monstrous left hand and a dextrous right one.  A Sunday evening of good company, good music & a glass of wine… add a book to that mix, and, why, it’s magic!  Or voodoo…

Pugsley will undoubtedly draw from his recent album, “Chasin’ Aces,” recorded in New Orleans and Wentworth, New South Wales with fantastic musicians in both locales.  From here, he flies on Monday morning to Alabama, Tennessee, New Orleans and other stops before heading for dates in France, Belgium… Catch him now at Bird & Beckett!

Check Pugsley’s website at http://www.pugsleybuzzard.com/ for sound files and more.  And read below a rave review of a 2013 show by Pugsley in Perth.

ELLINGTON JAZZ  CLUB
25 January, 2013 

Built like a barrel, sporting a  jet-black goatee and moustache and a waistcoat with watch chain, Buzzard could  have stepped straight out of the Deep South. Indeed, he has spent time in New  Orleans and its surrounds, though he hails from Perth and now lives in Sydney.  In this instance, first impressions turn out to be on the money because the moment Buzzard growls good evening and plinks the piano keys, we are in honkey  tonk, gravelly jazz heaven.

Buzzard  is equal parts pianist and vocalist, and it is hard to know which to be more  awed by. Buzzard turned out jazz standards such as Dinah, which in boogie style  was hardly recognizable compared to Dean Martin’s mellifluous rendition, and  Fats Waller’sThe Viper’s Drag.  His own numbers however, and a  couple he picked in the US recently, were Buzzard at his dirty, bluesy, rag-time  best. Black Dog was a musical education in the underbelly of  depression; a talking blues number called Rag-time  Monkey elicited audience participation and was rollicking good fun;  and in Bad Attitude, Buzzard’s snarling, petulant vocals declared  he was in need of a double – one for him, and one for his bad  attitude.

–Rebekah Barnett