Flavoring the chili

It’s working-class grunge meets gospel. It’s blue grass meets hip-hop. It’s soulful acoustic rock that makes you dance without reserve.

Members of local band Pufferbilly say that they haven’t found anyone quite like them in Reno. So do their fans and fellow musicians.

“You guys are gonna have 10,000 moshing hippies at your shows,” Mama’s Trippin’ guitarist Eric Stangeland once told the band.

It’s not hard to imagine Pufferbilly inspiring a fervent but folksy communal dance, whether they’re playing for the usually mellow coffee-drinkers at Deux Gros Nez, the artsy post-grungers at the Zephyr Lounge or the college crowd at the Little Waldorf Saloon, where they plan to hold their CD release party late next month. They’re one of the few—perhaps the only—bands in Reno that play their sets unplugged, have harmonizing lead vocalists and aren’t afraid to rock out with a big crowd.

The lead vocalists, Dave Berry and Jackie McDonald, are brother and sister and grew up singing in church. Bassist Dave Sidley, who went to that same church, was a childhood friend of theirs. The three started Pufferbilly last October along with drummer Mike Wortman, who says that he started playing the drums when he was 6 months old, and guitarist Mike Ford—or “Fozzy,” as the band calls him—who began playing Johnny Cash tunes in bars when he was 7 years old. McDonald says that she calls Ford her “little mariachi player,” since he loves to serenade audiences.

McDonald says that the band draws it name from a color of paint that Berry, a professional painter, bought. The name on the label said “pufferbilly.”

“It’s the weirdest color,” McDonald says. “It’s a grayish, purplish tan. It’s very light.”

Their name and their music aren’t the only things that make Pufferbilly stand out in the Reno rock scene. They also have the maturity and stability that come with family life—big family life. Four of the five band members are married and three of the five members have kids. Berry has five kids; McDonald has four. Neither of them are 30 yet.

Day-to-day family life seems to work its way into Pufferbilly’s music. Berry says that the band’s songs are simple and real, yet spiritual.

“They’re about real life, just as far as I know it. That’s what interested me about bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam in the ‘90s. They had heart. [Pufferbilly’s] music is from the heart. It’s not so sharp-edged.”

Berry says that he writes about spiritual struggles, but not in a preachy way.

“I ain’t one to tell somebody how to live their life,” he says simply.

While Berry—who draws inspiration from R&B, grunge and, in recent years, from Ben Harper—writes all of Pufferbilly’s songs, by practice time the songs belong to everybody in the band.

"[The songs] are all my style, but these guys all bring their flavor to the chili,” he says. “We just all have a good time together, so it ends up being a good meal.”

And it’s a good, hearty meal that audiences of all types can eat up. But it’s not a meal that’s too heavy or sweet, so you’re bound to have plenty of energy left for dancing.