Juneau singer/songwriter Guy “Buddy” Tabor died in 2012. He started playing guitar at 14 and had his first paid gig at the Red Dog Saloon in the 1970s. Throughout his life, he wrote hundreds of songs and was a perennial performer at the Alaska Folk Festival. His discography includes nine albums.
Now, a group of Southeast artists is working to ensure Tabor’s music endures and finds new audiences via online streaming platforms.
A single, “Texas Blue Radio,” was released on Thursday. The single comes from his 1998 album “Blinding Flash of Light,” which will premiere on all streaming platforms on April 11 — fittingly, smack dab in the middle of the 49th Alaska Folk Festival.
Music producer Justin Smith and musician Collette Costa visited the KTOO studios on Juneau Afternoon to share Tabor’s music and chat with host Bostin Christopher.
Here’s an excerpt of that conversation. Listen to the full interview at ktoo.org/juneauafternoon.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Justin Smith: This project was actually born the day that a friend of mine told me that he couldn’t find any of Buddy’s music online because, you know, he switched to streaming. He had the CDs, you know, packed away in a closet somewhere. He went online to try to find one of Buddy’s records and he couldn’t. And I thought that’s, I mean, that’s not good because everybody seems to get music through streaming these days, for the most part. And so, if he’s not there, he’s going to be forgotten about when people like us that bought our CDs out of the trunk of Buddy’s car, you know, and we’re gone, you know, the music wouldn’t be around.
I played with him one time at, it was called Valentine’s Coffee House — people remember. And I was relatively new in town, and the room was full. It was my first clue of the strength of Buddy’s art when the audience room was full, and the audience was calling out songs for a long time — his songs — asking for songs of his, and everybody in the room knew all the words.
He had an amazing, rich, gravelly voice, and he was a character, and he was always around Folk Fest. He was sort of a pillar of the, you know, Folk Fest community.
Collette Costa: He was always sort of an anchor for, like a song circle. Which I had never, from Detroit, we didn’t have song circles. And we show up to have dinner, and all of sudden, there’d be seven, eight, 12 people in a circle and doing a song and passing it along, and this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. But he was always sort of an anchor of that, and he would, you know, Buddy would play music anywhere, anytime with anyone, just about.
I mean, he was a mentor to, again, untold number of musicians and particularly songwriters. And really, one of the reasons he liked these song circles is because he wanted to hear other originals. What else were other people writing and how did it reflect on what he was writing and you know, that exchange of music.
Justin Smith: The goal of the project is really just for people to be able to listen to his music — people that already love it or, you know, people that haven’t heard it yet. And so when the record goes, if a lot of people go online and listen to it again or for the first time, then it will be a success.
Collette Costa: We set up a little Instagram account, @buddytaborproject, just perpetuating it and I think this is the goal of any artist, writer, singer, songwriter, is that their work doesn’t die, that their work lives beyond them. And I think particularly in a community like this, that is pretty tight, we can make that happen. And I think with the work that Buddy did, it is definitely worth preserving and worth perpetuating.
