Did Buckethead Quit Making Music?

Ben Jammin Kraft
Feb 3, 2016
3 min read

It's one of those names you don't forget after hearing it, and even more so.. It is one of those sounds you don't forget either.

I have been a fan of Buckethead since I was about 16 or so (now 26) and have witnessed several what I would consider to be some pretty amazing feats for a lonley guitar player.

He has made music with some of the most prolific artist's of our time including:

Brain the drummer from Primus, Jonas Hellborg an amazing bass guitar player from Sweden, Viggo Mortensen one of the founding fathers of synth music, Les Claypool the front man from Primus and many many more.

It would take me a very long time to get all that information in one blog post, so that just goes to show.

Buckethead has the world record for most studio albums released at a baffling 255 as of right now, and has also worked on more than enough colaborations to be part of the infamous wrecking crew.

Including his "Pikes" project which includes 225 albums, he has released 4 special releases, 1 extended play, 5 demo tapes, 3 solo DVD video releases, 2 DVD video releases with Cornbugs, 3 music videos, 3 unreleased albums, 3 solo videography releases, and 16 videography releases with other artists. Since 1994, he has released 6 studio efforts under the anagram of Death Cube K.

He also filled in for Slash in GnR for a short stint while the band was going through some band drama, and coincidentally the original band is getting back together with the original line up to do another tour... YA!

But back to the man...

Buckethead has done many many live performances, but in the past few years he seems to have gone off the radar. It has been over two and a half years since his last live show which took place Dec 31, 2012. At that point he was already owning the scene with his 40 studio albums released since 1992.

But since 2013, the Bucket has entered perhaps the most prolific stage of his career and released over 150 albums as of Aug 1, 2015, bringing his total number of records to a staggering 250+

On August 1st, 2015 the dude released 2 30-minute projects, "Land of Miniatures" and "Bats in the Lite Brite".

Bucketheads huge chunk of albums in there is what's known as his "Pike" series, which began shortly after 2011 with "It's Alive"

So to put things into perspective, Buckethead has released 58 albums between 2011-2012, with an averageof around 8 releases a month.

I will admit, that special feeling you get when you hear something new for the first time started to vannish after a certain amount of time, but this was only because there is no change in quality, it was just all epic as can be. It didn't seem like he was just throwing music out there, these songs seem to have had a lot of thought put into each and every one. So of course I wasn't able to stop listening.

Aside from the ton of music released, the Pikes series also gave the Buckethead fans a chance to gaze upon his face for the first time ever. On the front of the "Pike 13" album featured a picture of a young Buckethead (Brian Carrol) at the time, Hugging a man presumed to be his father.