Kevin grew up in a place known as the crossroads of the world – Gander, Newfoundland – a community built in the war time years of the 1940’s. This, would you believe, is an entertainer who was too shy to join his high school drama club. Kevin Blackmore, aka Buddy Wasisname, is a madman on stage and according to Billboard Magazine writer Larry LeBlanc is famous for “leaving audiences breathless with laughter”. On stage Kevin is fond of playing the clever fool, delivering his lines in classic Newfoundland dialect. Home Hardware’, ‘Thank God For Drugs’, and ‘Chain Saw Earl’, to name just a few, have come from the same fertile mind that brought you ‘Saltwater Joys’ and ‘Song for Newfoundland’. ‘The Pits’ has become the theme song for that great Newfoundland tradition: the May 24th weekend camping trip. As many have observed, he has the knack, and the result has been a collection of lyrical gems, many of which seem destined to join the handful of best-loved songs of Newfoundland. In the twenty years since then, the act has prospered, in large measure because Wayne turned his affeĬtion for rural Newfoundland and its people to the craft of song writing. Some said, “They’ll be back.” They couldn’t have been more wrong. The boys wanted to bring the act to stages all over, see what happens. It wasn’t long before Wayne and Ray applied for a leave of absence from their teaching positions. When Kevin Blackmore moved to Glovertown, the die was cast. When Ray Johnson came to teach art at Wayne’s school in Glovertown, an interest in music and all things traditional led to friendship, jamming, rehearsal, and finally performance. He’d always had to be careful of looking out the classroom window, lest he lose himself in the shimmer of the sun on the snow or the sight of a soaring eagle. Hallways and staff rooms you couldn’t catch a salmon at the water fountain. He had always chafed at the notion of working indoors all day every day. John’s or on the mainland, Wayne would return to the bay, the only place he felt at home.īy the mid-80′s, the rigours of Special Ed teaching were beginning to take their toll on Wayne. Family and friends began to see a pattern emerging: while many contemporaries would leave to ‘make it’ in St. When it came to building a house, he pickedĪ spot high on a hillside overlooking Clode Sound right there in Charlottetown. Falk Fotoįor the next fifteen years, he devoted himself to his teaching career. Charlottetown, Bonavista Bay, in Winter – Photo by C. John’s, at least there was the odd strum on the guitar to keep up the connection to music.A qualified (and married) teacher by 1972, Wayne returned to his beloved Bonavista Bay to teach, hunt moose, build a cabin up Terra Nova Road with his father, Hector, and Grandfather Dwight. Through the five years that he toiled at getting two degrees, complaining all the while about the scarceness of partridgeberry jam in St. Throughout high school, Wayne and various members of numerous bands rocked the Saturday night dances in towns all around Bonavista Bay.It wasn’t by accident that he showed up at Memorial University’s student residences in 1967 with the battered black Roy Smeck guitar among the luggage. Watching Uncle Elias Penney crack up a packed Orange Hall.After saving for and buying a $35 Roy Smeck guitar, and teaching himself C,F,and G, Wayne fulfilled the dream of every teenage boy: playing in a band. Catching conners off the wharf, copying pans out in the cove. Like most youngsters who grew up in such outports, his childhood was filled with the exploration and enjoyment of the place itself, and its people. He was born in Charlottetown, a fishing and logging community in Bonavista Bay. You can bring non-Newfoundlanders to the show – a translation service is provided.įor Wayne Chaulk, becoming a writer and singer of songs that celebrate Newfoundland has been a lifelong journey.You can also bring your grandparents to the show – they won’t hear anything they’re not supposed to.You can bring your kids to the show – they won’t hear anything they shouldn’t.These guys change their stage show for every major tour keeping it fresh, fresh, fresh as fish just pulled from the ocean.Important Things to Note: Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers.They are Newfoundlanders and they are (left to right) This is Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers as they were in the early days of their career, circa 1985. Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers …… who and what are they?
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