Vancouver based musician Buckman Coe is all about peace, love and making you think while you dance.
His attitude clearly comes through on his soulful new EP “ The Crow’s Nest EP,” which includes five tracks of beautiful, soul, reggae and a touch of his folk routes. He and his band, drummer Adam Parent and his brother, bassist Tim Parent will be coming to the Slice, May 16 to play with Spoon River.
“ We all sing, particularly the drummer. He can sing really well, so recording the harmonies was a lot of fun,” said Coe, taking a few days off in Vancouver.
“A lot of the great bands like the Police or Muse were three pieces. I’ll hire more people at anchor shows like festivals, when I can afford to pay them and when they will be treated well. But my music is very song based. I can deliver them on my own,” he said.
They just finished playing a five gigs for the White Crow Farm with Lynx and the Tailor.
“ It’s a farm where they blend agriculture with arts and culture,” he described the White Crow Farm.
The new EP shows further musical growth for Coe, a former school and mental health counsellor who began his musical career as a straight ahead folk singer, but has branched out and explored more reggae, soul and world music influences.
“ These are all songs I wrote on the ukulele. I spent a month in Hawaii and it was so much easier to carry a ukulele. So I wrote a whole bunch of songs on it,” he said.
“That’s how I do things, I find a new instrument like a banjo or ukulele or tuning and fall in love with it and write a lot of songs with them,” he added.
While the new songs began as bare bones ukulele songs, they took on a life of their own with a lot of different instruments including organ, horns and vocal harmonies.
While they are on the surface, catchy, toe tapping pop flavoured numbers, the lyrics have a lot more depth to them than most typical pop music.
The first track, ‘Love For All Living Things,’ is about permaculture punks in Mexico.
“I read about these people who took over abandoned Mexican factories and started to grow vegetables in them. They wanted to get closer to something real and get their hands dirty,” he explained of the first track on the EP.
He combines an array of subject matter into his songs blending contemporary issues with spirituality and catchy melodies and rhythmic hooks.
“Stubborn Man,” is about both sides of the Northern Gateway Pipeline issue.
“I think it is how Bob Marley would approach it. It shouldn’t be about creating divisions with people and being an anger based person. That’s very short sighted People should be able to meet in the middle. If you put an oil executive into the middle of nature, he’ll tell you it’s beautiful and he’ll enjoy it. Chances are he owns a bit of nature,” he observed.
Other songs like ‘Stars Over Tokyo’ are inspired by personal stories of people he has met.
“Without even mentioning the tsunami, it’s about a woman in Tokyo after the tsunami. They were having blackouts and you could see the stars over Tokyo, it was like being in ancient Japan. And they can be pretty reserved in Japan, but this woman was just so moved by that,” he observed.
He named the new Ep after the Crowsnest Pass.
“These songs were all road tested. That is where those songs became what they are,” he said.
“It’s where I really grew to love B.C. and Alberta,” he said.
He is looking forward to returning to Lethbridge. He played the Owl Acoustic Lounge last summer, but will be playing the Slice this time.
“ I’m not sure what to expect. I feel we’re still at the stage where we really need to earn an audience. But if people want to dance and party, then we’ll bring it,” he said.
