Don’t Quit Your Day Job
I entered the Tiny Desk Contest with a song about entering the Tiny Desk Contest.
Encyclopedia Black and the Case of You
This is a funky recounting of the first time I listened to a certain Joni Mitchell record. From the new album “The Ghost of Alexander,” coming Dec. 1.
Make Me Water (LIVE at the Eddies)
Buggy Jive performs a solo-electric version of the new song “Make Me Water” at the fourth annual Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards — “The Eddies” — on the MainStage at Proctors, Schenectady, NY, April 24, 2022.
Heartbeat on the Five
Existential 5/4 funk from the new EP “I Don’t Understand How the World Works.” Premieres Tuesday, Jan. 18, 7 p.m. EST.
Ain’t Going Anywhere
Title track from the new album, shot in one take in the buggy basement bunker.
Tiptoes (Acoustic Live Version)
Hey, y’all, I’m getting the band back together. This is the acoustic live version of “Tiptoes,” from the new album You Won’t Like the Answer.
Swing Along
This is “Swing Along,” one of the many amazing and somewhat subversive songs by turn-of-the-20th-century genius Will Marion Cook.
The Reach
Because there is so much sadness in “The Reach.” Stay safe and be well.
The Jungle Line
This is my take on “The Jungle Line,” Joni Mitchell’s wild little ditty about the, ahem, white gaze of kooky primitivist painter, tax man and jungle fetishist Henri Rousseau.
About
Who is Buggy Jive?
PROFESSOR BUGGY JIVE is a soul rock singer-songwriter quietly uploading music from a basement somewhere in Upstate New York.
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.
“Literary Kravitz,” as some say.
On rare occasions, he will come out of the basement to perform his songs live – armed with a Telecaster and a pedalboard that’s a bit too big.
But Buggy Jive does not come out of the basement often.
It’s a problem.
“I don’t play out,” he says. “I play in.”
This mantra has played out for the reclusive artist over the years, but never more so than now.
Hence the EP Ain’t Going Anywhere: The 2020 Diaries and its four accompanying videos.
But wait: he did come out of his hole in the spring of 2022 to perform a new song, “Make Me Water,” as part of a rare, live appearance at the Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards, as a love song to Zen and water and the city of his birth, Schenectady.
But as expected, he went right back into his hole to record several more new songs, recently released as The Ghost of Alexander.
He has no plans to leave said hole in the foreseeable future.
As he proudly proclaims in song: “My black ass ain’t going anywhere.”
We know, Buggy.
We know.
The Buggy Jive House Concert
THE BUGGY JIVE HOUSE CONCERT is just that: a video document of a short set of Mr Jive’s trademark solo-electric soul rock songs, filmed in his home studio in front of a small audience of some of his oldest and dearest friends. The video premiered on Facebook Live May 11, 2018.