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”. This, would you believe, is an entertainer who was too shy to join his high school drama club.

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. His parents and his neighbours were from the small coastal communities of Newfoundland and spoke many different dialects, depending on which bay they had emerged from.

Entertaining for a living was the most unlikely profession for this young lad who began his musical career as a member of a Catholic choir, where the penalty for going off key was a swift twist of the ear by the closest Nun.

Kevin’s musical roots came from his mother who loved to sing old Irish songs. By the time Kevin was eight he had memorized many famous Newfoundland traditional songs by scouring the Gerald S. Doyle Songbook.

Glovertown in Summer Splendor – Photo by C. Falk

The first evidence of his comedic abilities was his propensity for making faces to draw laughter from family members.

When he finished high school Kevin met an entertainer named Chris Lorne Elliot and they formed a musical/comedy duo known as Free Beer. At this time the inner madman in Kevin began to emerge and complemented by the Lorne Elliot brand of comedy, the Free Beer act made a great name for itself playing bars from Newfoundland to Montreal. Their stock-in-trade was novelty songs and routines laced with sarcastic and witty dialogue.

From his days in Gander, Kevin would pull the Newfoundland dialects he learned from his neighbors and use them in his stage act. Coincidentally his body language also took a turn for the better and his animation on stage developed into something like a cross between Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis and Jim Carey. In the early eighties Kevin gave up the Free Beer gig, got married and settled into Glovertown. Shortly after this he met the two Other Fellers, Ray and Wayne, and they formed the Buddy Wasisname and The Other Fellers Act.

Kevin is now known as the funniest man in Newfoundland and his portrayal of cultural caricatures regularly reduces his audiences to tears, literally cracking them up. His weapons are song, dialogue and facial contortion. He is as hilarious in his singing mode as he is in his stand-up routine. His banter with The Other Fellers on stage has developed into the style of an old fashioned concert that has authenticity and brilliant acting from all three players, who interact with professionalism and ease.

Although still reserved in his own personal life, Kevin has well and truly converted to the art of comedic exhibitionism. Living in an outport community (Glovertown), he regularly steals characters off the street and places them on stage, transforming them into exaggerations that are totally hysterical. With his amazing abilities, Kevin can erase any thought of worldly woes from the minds of his audience and beam them into comedic Shangri-la.

Kevin and his stage partners continue to delight audiences with their mixture of song and buffoonery, flavoured with themes that are unique to Newfoundland and at the same time possessing universal appeal.

Carry on Kevin and the Other Fellers!!