Tony Buggins

Sep 6

Chipewyan musician, Tony Buggins found his passion for music at house dances and fiddle parties in his home community of Fort Resolution, NT in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

One of the founding members of “The Native Cousins”, he toured throughout the NT and western Canada.

Settling back in the north, Tony worked as a Chipewyan interpreter and through the years, has always kept his guitar and his music close to his heart.

Tony Buggins, 1970, Yellowknife, NT. (Photo courtesy Tony Buggins)

with “Sounds at Heart” L -R: Tony Buggins, Phillip Constant, Robert Beaulieu, Ricky Mandeville. 1967 Yellowknife. (Photo courtesy Tony Buggins)

Musicians of the Midnight Sun · Tony Buggins audio interview

Interview Transcript

From the Host:

“Tony Buggins is another player that I remember as always being on stage at those all ages dances I mentioned before in the late 1960s and 1970s. Tony is a soft spoken, very gracious man off stage and carries himself the same way on stage.

I find myself listening to the different players and the parts they are playing and the one part that is just there, right where it should be in terms of volume, tone and rhythm is Tony’s.

I’ve always appreciated the understated, subtle characteristics of people and music in my life. Tony reminds me of the late Jesse Ed Davis who’s guitar playing was a seminal influence for iconic musicians of the 1970s such as; Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jackson Brown and many others.

These unsung musicians say so much through their music without saying much at all.

I really enjoy Tony’s playing because he plays in the Chet Atkins finger picking style, not a style you hear a lot of these days. The style demands clean articulation and good rhythm that takes a lot of practice and years of experience to pull off. It also asks of the player to think and hear the guitar in more of an orchestral role in the band, beyond the basic rhythm and lead roles.

Tony has all of that in spades from his early years learning from Angus Beaulieu, Leandre Beaulieu, Lloyd and Allan Cardinal with “The Native Cousins” and from George Mandeville who shared a similar tutelage in Fort Resolution and mentions the influence of guitar player Peter Lafferty of Fort Simpson.

As if I needed to be reminded of Tony’s prowess on guitar, when we launched the Musicians of the Midnight Sun website in late September, 2018, we arranged for Angus and Dorothy Beaulieu, George Mandeville and Tony to perform on the CBC North afternoon show, “Trails End”. I even joined in on the upright Bass.

When we were rehearsing and getting warmed up for the show, we were playing through one of the old time hits and I heard this subtle, muted guitar picking rhythm line that just seemed to glue the whole song together. I looked over to see Tony looking over at me and smiling.”