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 Rich Ferguson and lap steel guitarist, Jett Soto (known together as fuzzy doodah), met one
godforsaken day in Drain, Oregon,
while touring proctology and taxidermy conventions across the country as demonstration assistants/groupies. Even
though they had no prior experience with writing, performing, or playing musical instruments, they were drawn to
each other because of their mutual interest in
cross-dressing, bounty hunting, and yodeling. After their tour bus died in Los Angeles, the two of them,
at the insistence of a palm
reader at Venice Beach, pawned off their belongings, bought Jett his first lap steel guitar, and started performing
around town together
as a duo. It was during one of these performances that they met Royce Craft and Chris Camacho who were two out
of work wedding band musicians looking for free drink tickets from the band and their next gig. And so it came
to be, after plenty of practice and de-programming Craft and Camacho of all the wedding cover songs they had played
for so long, they collectively became to be known as, fuzzy
doodah.
Photo Credit- Roger Burns
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fuzzy doodah is poetry blown off it's pedastal. It's the
shotgun marriage of music and spoken word producing a new breed of expression. It's the forlorn wail of a lap steel
punctuated with stream-of conscious intensity. But at the gritty center fuzzy doodah
is Rich Ferguson. After graduating from New Jersey's Rutgers University, Ferguson packed his drums and his stereo
and headed west to San Francisco. In the fertile grounds of the Beat Poets and the Merry Pranksters, he shaped
his singular brand of performance/poetry/music, honing his art with the band, Blue Movie.
 Over the years, Rich Ferguson has written hundreds of his
signature spoken word pieces. His "tiny movies for your ears" paint vignettes populated with hapless
underdogs, disenfranchised, and natural born killers. Live, Ferguson channels his characters with an unsettling
delivery. fuzzy doodah has mesmerized audiences across the nation from the South by Southwest Music Festival in
Austin, the North by Northwest Music Festival in Portland, the San Francisco Poetry Festival, to other venues from
North Carolina to New Orleans to Amsterdam and beyond. As part of its recent East Coast tour, fuzzy doodah opened
for Patti Smith at an historic evening of spoken word and music at NYC's famous Knitting Factor. fuzzy doodah has
also been heard on radio stations WBAI in New York City, KCRW and KPFK in Southern California, and World Radio, as well Galinsky's
Go Poetry! cybercast
site. Ferguson's stories have appeared in such publications as, Oyster Boy Review
and Gargoyle and on the Internet at, Poetry Superhighway and Zuzu's
Petals. Rich Ferguson
was also the first emerging artist t be featured on Chris
Whitley's New Machine
web site.
Photo Credit- Dawn Laureen
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 World Without Dogs, fuzzy doodah's Sugar Fix Recordings debut,
is a testament to Rich Ferguson's range and innovation. Heightened by the sound of lap steel guitar, Ferguson weaves
a dark tapestry of monologues and rants, short stories set all across America's psychopathic nderbelly, from Abilene
to Asbury Park. The CD also includes some of his pop songs, spanning a spectrum of styles, from the Southern spoken
word tradition of, "The First Temptation of Moonlight Mary," and the title song, "World Without
Dogs," to the Americana of "Billy the Kid at the Women's Clinic," and the haunting refrains of,
"Up From Your Down," and "Free Heaven." On World Without Dogs, fuzzy doodah's songs and the
rantchants are enhanced by the musical colorings provided by the lap steel guitarist Jett Soto, bassist Chris Camacho,
and lead guitarist Royce Craft, as well as the contributions of other seasoned musicians.
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