A dead-serious chat with Kevin Blackmore about Buddy Wasisname, busting guts and being funny

Laughter has followed Kevin Blackmore over the years.

As titular front of Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers for the last 40 years, Blackmore has made a career of poking fun at the world around us.

Weekend AM's Heather Barrett reached Blackmore in Glovertown for a chat about the dead-serious business of being funny for a living — and how at the time he was preparing a talk earlier this week in Corner Brook. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did this talk come about?

A: When they opened up the Laughing Heart Musical Society at 62 Broadway in Corner Brook, they wanted me to come in and do a speaking segment on humour and music. But as for my availability, I couldn't. It was just a conflict of dates, but I said to them that I would gladly come in at a later date and do something more substantial than a 20-minute guest speaking spot. Because the subject of humour and music is too big. I've been making my livelihood from it my whole life. Humour and music has been my raison d'etre, my study, my expertise, if you will.

What do you want to present? 

What I wanted to look back at was all the influences in my life which have led me to humour and music. YouTube is a wealth of these things. You can find everything there. So that's where I started.

And then I wanted to speak about how the various pieces and artists I'm going to talk about have influenced me. And then I wanted to speak extensively about how humour and music is both approached by various people, and also utilized by artists to get laughs. And then I wanted to speak about how humour has influenced people who are Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers fans. I have a bunch of letters and testaments from people from over the years, some of them very heart-rending. So that's the basis of what I want to do. 

You and Buddy Wasisname are very different people. I find it hard to think of both of you in the same body, to be honest. I'm wondering, where does Buddy come from?

Buddy was never singular. Buddy was anything that I wanted to bend the character to. And, of course, having a funny man and two straight men in an act — like, that was just a good formula that worked for us. But years ago, before Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers, I accidentally slammed into Lorne Elliott. And he and I had three years of playing in a duo called Free Beer. That was never something I could have foreseen nor planned. It just sort of happened. But it was entirely insane and very much over the top, like two young fellows in their 20s are apt to be at. And that's where humour and music started really as a performance art for me.

But later, when I started with Ray and Wayne, we had very deliberate ideas about how we were going to approach it, and it was almost planned. The whole Buddy moniker was just something that occurred to me one day when I was driving, the idea of Buddy Wasisname being its own sort of paradox. By forgetting my name, you would automatically reach for something that made you remember.

What do you get out of being Buddy?

I got a livelihood. I've really enjoyed it. I find an interesting artistry in it. I love the humour.