Joe Buzzelli

Joe Buzzelli is the guy kind of guy that breaks convention by following convention. It's OK if that doesn't make sense at first because one listen to any of his songs and it will all come together.

Buzzelli was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, home of The Pirates. At age 12, he began taking guitar lessons from a piano teacher... which proved disastrous. He spent some time in Washington, DC playing with a few bands before moving up north to Rockville, MD. There, he earned a certificate in Audio Engineering and later attended the University of North Carolina where he earned a degree in Music with a concentration in Jazz Drumming. With these newfound skills, he began working as a professional musician around town before packing up and heading back to D.C.

Buzzelli has written/recorded/produced six solo albums in the past seven years, each one different than the one before it. His 2002 debut, Buzzillion's of Styles, is a collection of improvised experiments while its 2003 follow-up, Welcome to the B-Side, was heavily influenced by Romanticism and Impressionism. "I had learned classical music's expectations," he explains, "as well as romantic tactics to mislead the listener."

2004's Jo Beam's Listen Too? was written when Joe had a fascination with lengthy song numbers while 2006's Take a Bath with the Buzzman "voices a lot of anger and frustration towards the academic establishment of music theory as well as the music scene." These releases led to 2007's A Farewell to Asheville. The album is direct Pop music with a sentimental twist. As evidenced by the title, the album features a host of songs about leaving his past behind in order to forge a new path.

Buzzelli's latest release, 2008's I Don't Do Too Well with Women, draws on his experimental side again while doing away with some of the bombast and eccentricities of his previous albums. The music is stripped down to bare essentials whether it be an acoustic guitar, a Casio keyboard, vocals and a drum machine.

"I take pride in the eclectic nature of my catalog," he says. "I've always found stylistic homogeneity boring."