Chronicle Article

Rising star chose music over corporate America
Reggie Buie making name for himself on local music circuit
By Layla Farmer
The Chronicle
At age 53, it has been a long time coming, but pianist Reginald Buie is finally on his way. His jazz group, known as the Reggie Buie Trio (RBT), just released its debut album to favorable reviews, and he has finally been able to achieve his dream of becoming a full-time musician.
"I'm just blessed and fortunate to feel healthy enough to do what I've wanted to do," Buie commented. "I feel like I've got plenty of time to just sit down and practice everyday and really devote my energy and efforts into improving."
Although he has known for some time that he wanted to be a professional musician someday, Buie admits he has not always been as passionate about the craft as he is today.
"I've played music since (I was) about eight years old, starting with some private lessons that my folks made me take," he said. "I didn't really care for music too much back then."

While in high school, Buie joined the band as a clarinetist. After high school, Buie received a music scholarship to FAMU (Florida A&M University) and became part of the institution's illustrious Marching 100. He says the lessons he learned as a college student have stayed with him throughout his life.
"That whole year, with the discipline of having to be in that organization, and all things that (band director) Dr. (William) Foster taught us about performance and practice and perfection and execution ... just stayed with me," he remarked. "No matter what I did in life, I've always remembered the training that I got from the Florida A&M Marching 100 way back then."
Buie graduated cum laude and pursued a career at Xerox Corporation, where he spent the subsequent 31 years - first as an electronic technician and later as a management tech instructor.
As time passed by, Buie's musical aspirations took a back seat to the demands of his job and his role as a family man and father of three.
"When you're management in a major corporation, they own you basically - you have to go where they tell you when they tell you - the hours are not yours to pick, so it's kind of hard to book gigs," he explained. "Besides, my children were ... very young and I thought it was important to spend a lot of time with them."
Nevertheless, Buie says the idea of becoming a self-sufficient musician remained in the back of his mind.
"I almost (pursued music full time) back in the 1980s," he stated. "I wrote a tune, I co-wrote with a vocalist I was working with and the tune, for some reason, sprung up on Billboard. It went up to (number) 53. That was the first time I had written a tune, and to have that kind of success on my first venture writing music, that was the moment in time that I started thinking, ‘This is what I need to be doing.'"
Buie's children grew, and he began to feel that he needed a change. He relocated from Florida to Winston-Salem and took a less demanding position at Xerox. He then had time to pursue his music in earnest. He worked with various local artists, including Joe Robinson, Melva Houston, Janice Price and Cle Thompson. Then, in 2004, Buie ventured out on his own, founding the Reggie Buie Trio, with Nathan Scott on the upright bass and Michael Fowler manning the drums.
"I've been working a long time, but not on my own particular music," he said. "I've always had that idea that I wanted to be a trio player - piano, bass and drums trio."
The group released its first album, entitled "The First Time," last year, and continues to play in a smattering of venues statewide. Tower Records, which recently went belly up, even picked up the record for a spell, stocking it in each of the company's seven locations in the Philippines.
Though record sales overseas were not what Buie had hoped for, he says he is content with his current status as a musician.
"I don't have any visions of being signed to big record labels, but you don't really need that to make a living as a musician. You can do weddings and parties and make a very good living doing that if people have heard of you and like your music," he said. "You can stay right in the region and make a comfortable living doing it."
As for the future and what it may hold for the RBT, Buie says he'll be happy as long as he can make music.
"What I want to do as a person is develop my own personal style and interpretation. I'd like to be to the point where somebody could hear something I've done and say, ‘That's Reggie Buie playing the piano,'" he said. "To me, that's the ultimate compliment to a musician, when you've developed your own style and its recognizable. If it makes you famous, that's just icing and it's real nice, but to be able to express yourself in a way that reaches and touches people is the gratification of being a musician for me."