Chris Buck Interview & masterclass

When a player goes on to win Best New Guitarist in our sister magazine Total Guitar’s online poll, it’s time to sit up and take notice. David Mead is your guide.

- David Mead

The above was the case with Chris Buck, whose soulful bluesy Strat tones ripple tonefully throughout his band Buck & Evans’ debut album, Write A Better Day. The album is causing a stir, with singles receiving A-list play on radio and live dates creating a buzz at venues across Europe. He’s even got his own set of signature Strat pups from Radioshop Pickups and we hear that they’re the company’s top-seller. He’s still in his 20s, and Chris’s reason for starting to play guitar is laced with juvenile cunning.

“I guess I’d have been about 12 or 13 when I started and, hand on heart, it was an excuse to get out of maths lessons in school, because I realized the guitar slots coincided with my maths lessons,” he tells us. “A mate of mine started playing and, suddenly, come 2 pm on a Thursday afternoon, he was buggering off for guitar lessons, so I thought, ‘I’ll have a bit of that action too.’”

And thus, a career in music had, albeit unwittingly, begun. Retrospectively, his choice to pursue guitar was a natural progression, as Chris remembers.

“I’d always been surrounded by guitar music I guess, looking back, whether it was The Beatles or Stones or Dylan…”

After the maths-dodging guitar lessons had begun to bite, a few guitarists first captured Chris’s imagination.