Buddy Tabor

Buddy drives his country-blues-influenced original compositions like a man driving his pickup truck through the Alaskan wilderness. Which is only appropriate, since Buddy has called Alaska home for the past thirty-some years. He's worked the canneries and fishing boats, hunted on the Arctic tundra, and lived among the many diverse cultures that co-exist on the "Last Frontier."

His songs spring from those experiences, sometimes like joyful cries, sometimes like aching wails. Here's one reviewer's impressions of a recent Tabor CD:

"Blinding Flash of Light" is a CD poised so evenly on the knife-edge between hope and despair that it takes several listens just to determine where Buddy Tabor stands on the big questions he has chosen to tackle. Fortunately, it's worth every spin. Gifted with a gritty, honest voice and a solid grasp of country blues guitar, the Alaska-based Tabor plies his talents to weigh in on topics ranging from love (he's all for it), to the exploitation of child labor (against it),to the nuclear annihilation of our planet (he disapproves, but deems it an inevitability). Consider "Mr. Basketball Shoes," Tabor's heartfelt rant against the captains of industry who profit by the mistreatment of workers: "Mr. Basketball Shoes owns a factory/in China and Vietnam/where a 12-year-old girl works for nothing/he don't give a damn." Tabor piles on images of poverty, abuse and inequity until we feel we might drown in the unfairness of it all. Just in time, though, he throws us a lifeline: "Justice is a wheel/turns slow but it grinds fine/my mama says that wheel will turn/full circle in good time..."

--Bob Barlow, efolkmusic.com

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