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Brody Buster has by far the best resume of any Kansas City
musician. At age 10, Brody was featured on The Tonight
Show with Jay Leno.
Brody grew
up playing the harp on Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee at
BB King's nightclub. BB King personally invited Brody
to open up his new nightclub in Los Angeles.
One night while performing at BB King's in Los Angeles,
Brody was discovered by The Tonight Show - and the rest is
history. On January 25th, 2008, Brody Buster shared the bill with BB
King for one of his final shows at The Uptown Theater in
Kansas City.
Brody with BB King in Los Angeles
In 1996 at
the age of twelve, Brody was invited to perform at the
prestigious "Montreux Blues and Jazz Festival" in Montreux
Switzerland with Quincy Jones, Isaaac Hayes, Oleta Adams,
Chaka Khan, Phil Collins, Keb Mo', Richie Havens, and Melvin
Taylor.
Brody can be
seen today performing all over the Kansas City area as well
as special performances in Los Angeles, Chicago and other
regional venues.
Check out this CNN Report on Brody
Buster!
PAST REVIEWS
By
Phil Cauthon
RockKansas.com
Think back to when you were 7 or 8 years old.
Maybe you'd mastered reading and writing a la Dick
and Jane. Or you might have been embarking on
cursive or memorizing multiplication tables. If you
were 'gifted', it's possible you could handle long
division no problem.
If you were Brody Buster, you were jamming with
old-guard blues masters, blowing them away with your
prodigy-style skill on the harmonica.
By age 10, Paola-born Brody Buster had already
earned perhaps the highest praise possible -- the
blessing of the king of blues himself, B.B. King.
As Brody's father Curtis Buster recalls, "That's
when the phone started ringing off the wall." Well
before he hit puberty, Brody had appeared on the
Tonight Show, VH1, the Jon Stewart Show,
Entertainment Tonight, the BBC and a slew of other
major media programs.
A decade later, 17-year-old Brody says he doesn't
feel any pressure to prove he's moved beyond being a
harp prodigy.
"I know I can take it to another level," he said
with perfect self-assurance. "I can do just about
anything with that thing.
"I think the level I'm going to have to take it to
is not making it sound like a harmonica," he said.
"I've been trying to make the harmonica sound like a
horn section so I can play horn parts."
He said the next level also involves less of the
instrument that put him on the blues map and more
guitar and vocals.
"If anything is going to make me famous some day,
it's going to be the guitar with the harmonica. I
can't do it just being a harmonica player," he said.
"And no one's going to go see Brody and the Blues
Busters if Brody ain't even singing. You gotta have
the vocals in there."
Brody said a glimpse of what's to come is in a song
he wrote called "Trinity," a tune off his third CD
-- Live from the Grand Emporium -- which will
be available at his upcoming shows.
On "Trinity," Brody's blues harp plays a supporting
role to his vocals and to his guitar, both of which
have moved decidedly away from any standard blues
sound.
"It's stretching a little bit from blues partially
because of a band called Pomeroy," said Brody. He
said he hooked up with the trip-hop-pop band from
Manhattan after his keyboardist played some shows
with them. The Brody Buster Band later opened
several shows for Pomeroy.
"The Pomeroy crowd doesn't know who we are, only the
blues crowd does. But the kids are diggin' it.
They're diggin' it, man. We're takin' blues to the
kids. But we're takin' it to 'em in a new way."
Brody and his band, the Blues Busters, are likely
going to take their music to Los Angeles, too --
just as soon as he graduates high school.
"We want to take it national, maybe even worldwide
someday. That's the goal. I think we could. I really
think we could," he said.
"We can't really get big from Kansas though. It's no
place to be in music. Once you've been to LA, man,
you can't get enough."
BORNwiththeBLUES
Brody's ascent to the bigtime traces back to his
mom, Janet, who played harmonica in a KC blues
outfit called Cotton Candy until her son came along.
She introduced him to the blues harp quite
unintentionally one day when the two found one while
cleaning out a closet at home in Paola, Kansas.
"I taught him about keys and some basic things, but
pretty much he's learned as he's gone along," Janet
told the BBC in a 1995 interview. She now lives in
Ireland.
"There's not a lot you can teach about harmonica.
It's kind of an instrument where you can't show
someone where to put their fingers or anything. It's
a feel."
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Brody on stage, 1994
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Brody and his mom began frequenting jam sessions in
the K.C. area. At one of those jams he met Eugene
Smiley, whose band was the first to play behind
Brody.
"Though the rest of the guys in that band have left,
he's stuck with me," Brody said. "He's gone through
all the ups and all the downs."
The first big 'up' was opening two nights for Jerry
Seinfeld at Caesar's Palace when he was 8.
That break came thanks to some attention he got
playing sideshows on Beale Street in Memphis.
Brody's mom took him on an unusual, extended summer
vacation to Memphis during his first break from
school after he picked up the harmonica.
There for two months in the cradle of blues, they
rented an apartment. But Brody didn't spend much
time there. He spent most of his days and nights out
on the town, playing in pick-up jam sessions on the
street for tips.
Eventually he hooked up with Rodriguez Bonds, a kid
with amazing back-flip skills who would later appear
briefly in The Firm doing flips down Beale Street
alongside Tom Cruise.
The very visible Brody/Bonds duo routinely earned
$300 a night in tips from huge crowds. Before the
summer stint ended, bands had invited Brody to join
them inside the clubs.
One such invitation came from Ruby Wilson, lead man
for the house band at B.B. King's original club on
Beale Street.
MEDIAblitz
That gig led to the next big break in Brody's
career: getting on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
After the Buster family was back in K.C., Brody got
a call inviting him to come help open the L.A.
version of B.B. King's.
So the family moved again, this time for two years
to Los Angeles.
While Brody went to grade school there, he played
every Sunday at the club's Gospel Brunch and sat in
on as many jams as he could swing. Eventually he
hooked up with a band and opened every Friday and
Saturday as Brody and the Blues Busters.
On an otherwise unremarkable night at B.B.'s, the
cast for the Tonight Show threw a going away party
for Brantford Marsalis there. Brody was on stage.
"I was in the right place at the right time, man,"
said Brody. The Tonight Show was just the beginning
of a media chain reaction that has left Brody's
resume loaded with national TV appearances.
Flipping through one of his son's photo albums --
which is loaded with page after page of Brody with
celebrities -- Curt Buster recalls those days ...
"I look back and I try to remember the timeline of
everything. He was busy, busy. And still is," he
said, pausing on a page with Brody posing next to
Jimi Hendrix's dad. The next page shows Brody with
Charlie Mussle White, an elder top harp player. Then
there's one with Isaac Hayes, Janet Jackson, Duran
Duran, Steve Allen and too many more to name. Oh,
and of course, many shots with B.B.
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Brody with Leno, 1995
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"It wasn't any big deal to him," said Curt.
"He'd go out to dinner with Billy Crystal and no
problem. Me, I'd choke. I wouldn't know what to say
to Billy Crystal. And Brody would just climb up to
the table and eat off B.B.'s plate. I remember
seeing that and realizing, that's what celebrities
like. Somebody that's not ga-ga over them."
"He's not a little kid anymore. But he can still go
out to L.A. for nine nights and play eight in the
top clubs," his dad continues, referring to Brody's
spring break tour. The March trip marked Brody's
first time in L.A. since he lived there over five
years ago.
"That's hard to do. Hard for anybody to book that
kind of tour."
Small wonder Brody's set to move out to L.A. as soon
as he graduates high school next year.
"Out in LA, you're playing in a bar, a record
producer could walk in there, an actor could walk in
there and if an actor walks in there, who says he
couldn't get you a deal doing a soundtrack for a
movie or something.
"Or just someone that works for NBC or even some
little thing that needs a jingle for a commercial.
You know how much more money there is in a jingle
for a commercial than playing in a bar in Kansas
City til 2 in the morning?
"A lot," he said.
RUSHhourRENDEZVOUS
Until the imminent departure, Brody can still be
found every Friday at 5:30 for the Rush Hour
Rendezvous at the
Grand Emporium in Kansas City -- a gig he's
played every week for the past three years with
Smiley's band.
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Brody and Smiley, 2002
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He's learned a lot playing at KC's well-known blues
spot, and a lot of the lessons have come from
Smiley, said Brody, "Everything from how to handle
rotten club owners to how to handle groupies, all
that stuff.
"He's shown me how to survive in the music business
without getting my head lost in the temptations out
there. A few temptations are okay, but you gotta
keep your head straight in the music business and he
taught me how to do that.
"He's my main man, and I'm his main man. We're
family. We're family. We're in it together, wherever
it happens."
And whatever music they're playing, he said.
"Lately I've been writing a lot of songs. I've got a
whole other CD of all originals for the next one.
"Our next CD won't be blues, but people are still
gonna categorize it as blues. It will be
blues-based, though."
He said Smiley and the rest of his band -- Scott
'Shag' Rundquist on keys, Kevin Easterwood on drums,
Dave Grey on bass and Bobby Carson, the band's new
guitarist -- are completely cool with youngest
member steering the band's creative development.
"You know how long Smiley's been playing blues? He's
probably sick of it," Brody said. "Smiley's down for
anything. The coolest thing about having him in the
band is he keeps everything real. He makes
everything blend together and have a little more
soul to it."
For his part, Smiley said he's blessed to have been
able to play with the talented Buster all these
years.
"Brody's a natural," said Smiley. "He doesn't know a
lot about the technical aspects of music. He just
plays what he feels."
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