Riled Up and Wasted On Light

Milwaukee, Wisconsin— Riled Up and Wasted On Light – Buddy Wakefield’s 2014-15 World Tour (Skipping Chechnya) to slam Milwaukee March 22, 2014

• Spoken-word artist Buddy Wakefield returns for world tour after performance hiatus.
• Tour to include performances with Louder Than A Bomb, Ani DiFranco, Derrick Brown, Anis Mojgani, Andrea Gibson and dozens of other spoken-word performers and musicians from around the world.
• Touring the United States, Canada, Australia and all of Europe, as well as one-off shows in South Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
• Introducing opening artist Kaylen Krebsbach at select U.S. shows.

Spoken-word artist Buddy Wakefield is back from a two-and-a-half year hiatus where he took time to lay roots in the Northwest and write a book (HENHOUSE… based on Penthouse, but for chickens and their lovers). Now the three-time world champion is uprooting to embark on his 2014-15 world tour Riled Up and Wasted On Light.

Audiences, buckle in — Wakefield’s energetically disarming delivery and humorous knack for baptizing failure into fireworks promises to drop jaws and warm hearts. Having moved away from the competitive world of Poetry Slam in 2008 his startling command over language has continued to afford him the privilege of being himself for a living, speaking to practical metaphysics, life after survival and calling out tragedy addicts everywhere, Buddy Wakefield throws his cards on the table for a big-me-big-you experience not often offered from the stage.

“There’s a thread of disappointment or agitation that runs through everyone. I know how to dissolve it… without beer,” says Wakefield, who has been featured on NPR, the BBC, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and is signed to Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. “It’s my duty to practice dissolving it.”

Now, Wakefield is coming to our town so “get the sticky off your buns and roll with me!”

In 2004, Buddy Wakefield won the Individual World Poetry Slam Finals thanks to the support of anthropologist and producer Norman Lear, then successfully defended that title at the International Poetry Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands against the national champions of seven European countries.

Wakefield won the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship again in 2005, and has gone on to share the stage with nearly every notable performance poet in the world in hundreds of venues internationally, from The Great Lawn in Central Park and Scotland’s Oran Mor to San Quentin State Penitentiary, House of Blues New Orleans and First Avenue (think: Prince — Purple Rain).

In the spring of 2001, Wakefield left his position as the executive assistant at a biomedical firm in Gig Harbor, WA, sold or gave away everything he owned, moved to the small town of Honda Civic and set out to live for a living, touring North American poetry venues through 2003. He never stopped.

Born in Shreveport, LA, mostly raised in Baytown, TX, now claiming Seattle, WA, as home, Buddy has been a busker in Amsterdam, a lumberjack in Norway, a street vendor in Spain, a team leader in Singapore, a re-delivery boy, a candy maker, a street sweeper, a bartender, a maid, a construction worker, a bull rider, a tri-athlete and a sucker for anything unfolding. His writing, used to win multiple national collegiate debate and forensics competitions, is published in dozens of books internationally. An author of Write Bloody Publishing, Wakefield, who is not concerned with what poetry is or is not, delivers raw, rounded,  high-vibration performances of humor and heart.

“Wakefield has had a profound impact on the contemporary Poetry Slam movement, both in his performance and writing style as well as how he has conducted his career,” says author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz in her book, Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. The author named Wakefield as “the modern poetry slam role model.”

“…[Wakefield] sold everything he owned and toured the country, living out of his car when he wasn’t crashing on couches,” Aptowicz wrote in her book. “He was not the first slam poet to do this and certainly not the last, but he was definitely the most high-profile, and he really set the stage for what I like to call the ‘Troubadour Movement’ in slam, the whole desire simply to tour, to reach out and be with your community.”

Catch Wakefield live on the Riled Up and Wasted On Light tour coming to Milwaukee on March. 22, 2014 at Riverwest Public House. Tickets available at the door.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.

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