Music Without Borders: the Buddha Magoo

By Tucker Petertil

You always hear that Olympia is a small town but maybe it’s not really that small. Take for instance Peter Tucker, a local singer/guitarist who has a name almost opposite of mine. We’ve known about each other since the early 80s when we were both involved in music scene here, but somehow we always missed connecting in person.

It was as if he was a mysterious doppelganger. And after having been mistaken for one another for years, when we finally did meet I’m happy to report that the world did not explode.

I meet this mysterious doppelganger, along with his buddies in the band The Buddha Magoo, on a day when the air is filled with the sound of chainsaws whining their way through the victims of our recent ice storm.

The Buddha Magoo seems to be a democracy and so everyone is present, everyone except for keyboardist Denny Hoffer who is in the hospital. The room is filled with familiar faces, veterans of the Olympia music scene: songwriter and bassist Galen Martindale, songwriter and keyboardist Joe Cason, backup vocalist Patti Scherer-Abear, drummer Tom Shoblom, and of course Peter Tucker who also writes songs.

The various members have all been musically active in local bands since 1979 and the list of the bands that they play or have played in reads like a page out of Olympia’s punk and post punk history: Pet Products, Milroy Holler, No Toy Boys, Mr. Right & The Breadwinners, Endangered Flakes, Test Pattern, Vacations, Factory Girls, Conch, Detention, Dr B & the Prescriptions, Electric Ballroom, Out Patient, Stiff Legged Cat, Twice Baked, Dark Angel and Geezer.

Ex-Heliotroupe singer/guitarist Danny Kelley is also an adjunct member. Peter says “Since there are two keyboards, there doesn’t have to be a rhythm – lead guitar thing going on, so we (Danny and Peter) kinda split it and play parts, taking turns on rhythm and lead.”

Patti is also a graphic artist and has produced posters, t-shirts, buttons and even mugs for the band, which has been playing together for about 3 years. In that time they haven’t yet released a record though they’ve tried and they tell me frustrated tales of drunkenness and cruelty, and those are just about the recording engineer. But they do slip me a disc of demos that they are working on and hope to have a full-length record out this summer.

The demo disc’s songs are tight and very dance friendly, the vocals very strong with most of the band adding harmonies to melodies which are stretched over dynamic changes from instruments that are coiled and ready to strike. And strike they do, “sometimes we’ll just get ferocious on the songs,” says Tom.

Trying to sum up the band’s sound, everyone has a different view and piece of the puzzle. Peter says, “its post punk psychedelia.” Tom says, “we’re kind of a loose jam band we never play the same song the same way.” Joe adds “we could be playing Sousa and we’d try to open it up.” Galen sums it up “We’ve got like 150 years of musical experience altogether, I’m 57 and I’ve been playing since I was 9 and when you bring all of that from each of us there’s a fuck of a lot of possibilities.”

They’ve all done time in cover bands and see The Buddha Magoo as a vehicle for their original song ideas. Joe says “I’ve been in a Grateful Dead museum band forever and I just like making up songs and that’s what Buddha Magoo does, we don’t play many covers.”

Since they all have day jobs (such as radiographer, cabinet maker, lawyer, environmentalist, and human resource manager) they see themselves as a not for profit band. They played a lot of benefits last year and they plan to do more benefits this year.

Galen says, “the more people who see our music the better, live shows are where it’s at for me, we want to get out and make the people dance.”

Peter concludes, “It’s a long trip from 1980 to here, we’ve lost some friends along the way and we all feel lucky to be still kicking it up, still rocking it.” ◙

The Buddha Magoo plays the Royal Lounge on February 15 at 8 PM with their buddies Lungfish.