MuzicNotez: First off, it’s an honor to be doing this interview with you, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us.

What motivated you to start creating music? What age did you begin?

• joybuzzarD: Watching my parents and their friends practicing and recording, there were always instruments around and it was just the thing to do. As a teenager and in my early 20s I was in and out of bands and trying to pursue a career in music, but I knew people who had worked with major labels and their experiences were very disheartening. I didn’t want to end up hating music like some of them did, so I didn’t pursue it as a career once I had kids.

Website: www.Joybuzzard.com
Facebook.com/joybuzzarD
Instagram: @joybuzzardx
Twitter: @joybuzzarDx

MuzicNotez: Who were your musical influences, idols, or bands growing up that have helped mold you into the musician you are today? Or helped mold the music that you create?

• joybuzzarD: My parents mostly listened to rock, so at home I heard a lot of Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. But my parents recorded a lot of different musicians, so I heard everything from country and folk and gospel to thrash metal. Then I started going to local shows and started listening to punk and death metal, but I was already in the habit of listening to every kind of music and I never really liked the artificial divisions between genres.

  But the biggest influence came discovering I couldn’t play any of the music I was listening to.
  When I was about 5 I fell on a broken bottle and it destroyed the tendons inside my left hand. After several surgeries I could use my left hand normally for the most part, but when I was trying to learn to play guitar, I discovered that I could only use 2 fingers on my fretting hand. I could type and play piano normally, but not guitar.

  A guitar player told me about Django Rheinhardt, a Romanian jazz player who had his hands smashed by Nazis in the 1930s and only had 2 fingers as well. I found tablature of Rheinhardt’s 2 finger style and it enabled me to play more than I thought possible. That got me into jazz and classical.

MuzicNotez: What’s the ultimate goal you want your music to achieve, or for you to achieve in your career as a musician? Any particular message you wish to send?

• joybuzzarD: To create a new genre of music, to create something that nobody has heard before. I’ve failed so far but I’m having fun trying.

MuzicNotez: What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been to or performed?

• joybuzzarD: Hard to answer. Slayer with their arena shows in the 90s on the one end of the scale, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom Of The Opera was impressive a different way, but one of the best was just Joey Keithley from the punk band DOA performing a free acoustic set at the Occupy Regina camp in 2011, he used my mom’s guitar, there was only about a hundred people, but it brought everyone together and was one of the highlights of that year. I’ve always preferred small, intimate shows to large crowds.

MuzicNotez: You grew up around music with your father owning a small studio, but then took a break to raise your family. What brought you back to music?

• joybuzzarD: I’ve always played open stages and I’ve busked off and on for extra money on weekends and evenings for years, but once my kids were grown up and having kids of their own I found myself watching interviews with musicians talking about the music industry and confirming things I had already known, and seeing the collapse of the old industry system, it seems like it would be a fun time to really push it and see how far I can take it.

MuzicNotez: You’re a multi-instrumentalist, whats your favorite instrument to play? What instrument don’t you play yet but you’d like to learn next?

• joybuzzarD: Guitar. Mostly because it’s the instrument I’ve been playing the most, but it’s legitimately the most versatile instrument in the world.

MuzicNotez: Your new album is ‘The Sun Also Burns’ dropped last month, what was the making of this album like for you? What’s it mean to you?

• joybuzzarD: All of my previous recordings were completely home recorded and mixed, not properly mastered, I used to just burn CDs on my computer to sell out of my case or at shows. When I tried to upload them, I found that the sound quality was lower than I had thought it was. I wanted to avoid that, so I booked time at a decent studio and started recording, but then covid happened and I reverted back to home recording for most of the album. It was mixed at a decent studio, and then I spent the extra money on getting it professionally mastered at Abbey Road in England.

MuzicNotez: What else are you working on? What can we expect to see and hear from you in the future?

• joybuzzarD: The next album will be a party album. I kind of decided that when weeding out songs that didn’t fit this one, realizing I had done the same for Nihilist Hymns, realizing I was releasing only darker themed material and leaving out most of the fun music I write and play for parties and such.

MuzicNotez: Anything else you wish to say about yourself or your music? Any message for your fans?

• joybuzzarD: I am on a search for new sounds, new instruments, new musical worldviews. I’m looking for something I’ve never heard before.