Adam Busch's talent for acting reared it's head in High School when he stole the leads of all the plays and took part in the Theatre Guild. He is also a talented musician and plays four instruments: alto sax, piano, harmonica and drums. In February 2000 his band, Common Rotation released their first CD. Adam is best known to Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans as Warren Meers. Keri Allan caught up with him as the final volume of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about to be released on video...

Keri Allan: Do you see yourself foremost as an actor or a musician?

Adam Busch: Both. I don't really categorise it like that. You know what I mean? I think of it as expressing myself and trying to communicate something specific to the audience whatever the medium is. With Common Rotation, our live shows are very much like a play. They're very theatrical and are based on whatever is happening in that room, in that moment with the guys on-stage and the people in the audience, so it feels like theatre to me. It feels no different than anything I do, it's just the medium that changes and I'm just trying be as honest and truthful and expressive as I can.

KA: How do you juggle both, do you have to make time for the music, or make time for the acting?

AB: Sometimes. I mean, when I was in Buffy and I was touring it was very, very hard because they'd write the scripts at the last minute and I'd be on the East Coast and at the last minute they would release a script and I'd be in it and they'd call and say: "You need to be at work tomorrow." And id be like: "I'm playing at a college in Georgia, I'm not gonna be available!" It become fairly difficult and once I had to cancel a show, and another time they had to move around the schedule. So, it would be very difficult, but it always worked out - especially here in the UK. It's broadened our audience, we were very big in the States before Buffy, but we never had the invite to come over here until the show really broke and then we're doing our second European tour and its going really, really well, its been really exciting.

KA: So do you actually get a break soon?

AB: No, no I don't. I'm sorry, not till I get back to LA and then I have a good week, then we play a lot of shows on the West Coast, then play some shows on the East Coast and tour up and down there for a while. Its gonna be great.

KA: Do you have any favourite highlights from your travels?

AB: We had an amazing time at our gig in Belfast, Ireland. Playing there, it really felt like - with the political climate - all the high emotion going on there, they seemed very grateful for us. You know its folk music ultimately, you know its timely and current and we do make a bit of a statement and it was nice to have it felt and expressed so strongly from an audience that had never heard of us before as Americans coming here. It was really wonderful.

KA: While working on Buffy, what was your most memorable scene to film?

AB: I loved working with Jeff Kober, who played Rack, who dealt with the black magic stuff. He really is an amazing actor and I learnt a lot working with him and he'd been on Buffy for a while and he got a lot of respect from the crew and from the people because they know to leave him alone - let him do what he does and he'll do it. We got to rehearse for a long time which is very rare over there. There's really not a lot of time for rehearsal, so anytime he was there we always made time to really work things out and try a lot of things. It was really wonderful.

KA: What was it like on the set? Was it solid work or is was there time to relax?

AB: Oh there's always time, that's how I got to know James [Marsters] because we're both musicians, we both like a lot of the same music - Bob Dylan, Tom Waites. He always has his guitars on the set, so I'd bring my harmonica and he's bring his guitars and we'd just hang out and play. That was always fun but that was rare, because most of the time it really was a lot of work. It's like shooting an independent movie once a week because there's so much to cram in. It's an hour show so not the most frivolous set, but its definitely one where the quality of work is so high it makes up for it.

KA: Will you be keeping in touch with any of the guys you worked with?

AB: Oh yeah. I mean we're all friends. I'm friends with a lot of the cast members, and, you know, I live a block away from Danny [Strong], and Tom [Lenk] lives a block or two in another direction. We're very close, and I keep in touch with James [Marsters] all the time and Amber [Benson], just a lot of the people - its like a whole world. I keep in touch with a lot of the crew, and people like Jamie Drew - one of the photographers for UPN who took a lot of the Buffy pictures, took pictures for the inside of our record. And They Might Be Giants are a band that are popular in the States, been around for a while, and they produced our record and Joss is a big fan of theirs so he likes to come and play with them so its very cool.

KA: What are you up to at the moment?

AB: Well I'm going to be touring for the next three months so I wont be able to look at any projects until then. We're gonna be going to the West Coast and then the East Coast, its gonna be straight through the summer, and in the fall I can concentrate on getting back to television. It's just there's been no time - it's been non stop since I stopped Buffy. And we've just released a new record which we're really proud of, and we're gonna have a fourth one out probably by the Fall.

KA: Thank you for your time.

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer season 7.2 is available to buy on video from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment from 08 September 2003

You can buy this video now by clicking here. You pay £25.99 (RRP: £34.99)

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