Lord Buffalo

Lord Buffalo - January 2012

Lord Buffalo Session
Violitionist Sessions

Session Date: November 19, 2011
Posting Date: January 09, 2012
Artist Hometown: Austin, TX
Links: Facebook, Tumblr
Recorded by: Michael Briggs

Sycamore 1 & 2
Cold Bones
Face In The Grass
3 QUESTIONS
ONE: How did you meet and form the band?
Daniel Jesse Pruitt: We’re all from the Great Plains. Garret and I are from Oklahoma, Devin is from Colorado, and Patrick is from Montana/Texas…hm, how did we meet?
Garret Hellman: I remember meeting Danny at church. We were both in the youth group, and I was a year older than him.
Daniel: I think I was 10.
Garret: Yeah, but Danny had a beard.
Daniel: I would buy everyone cigarettes.
Garret: Yeah, he would buy everyone cigarettes. Danny and I played music together in the youth group.
Daniel: Then I met Devin at JP’s…
Devin James Fry: Then we made a Christmas record together.
Garret: I forgot about that period of time.
Devin: That was our first experience together.
Daniel: Yeah, and then Patrick…we paid Patrick in beer to put violin on our record, and then he kept showing up.
Patrick Patterson: You fired me but I kept showing up.
Daniel: Yeah, and then we started making him buy the beer.
TWO: What inspires your lyrics?
Daniel: I don’t know. I like a lot of the old spiritual stuff. I like using a lot of religious imagery and stuff. That’s tough.
Patrick: I don’t know that I know the lyrics to any of the songs that we’ve laid down, because he changes up the words pretty much every time. I know when we started, you changed the lyrics almost every show.
Devin: It was really hard to sing harmonies.
Garret: It’s not uncommon for there to be two extra verses added during a live set. I think that’s something…I mean, Danny and I have been playing together since we were fifteen or sixteen, and the four of us now for, probably, four or five years. I think it lends an interesting spontaneity, and the ability to riff off of each other when we play live.
Daniel: Yeah, and it just feels really comfortable, too.
Garret: Over the past year, we’ve ended quite a few sets with impromptu jams.
Patrick: Usually, we’ll start a song, and then Danny will just start singing stuff I’ve never heard.
Garret: Yeah, Danny gets possessed, and I think that the rest of us take note and just see what happens. It doesn’t happen every show, but when it happens, the rest of us—
Daniel: Luckily, I only know about seven chords.
Garret: It’s always in the same key, so it’s really easy.

THREE: Where do you think Lord Buffalo is headed?
Daniel: Well, we just recorded an EP ourselves, so that’s in the works. We have a Daytrotter session that’s coming out. That’s what we’ve been spending all our time on. We were playing a lot. Salesman, Devin’s project, and this project have been playing a shitton of shows over the past two months, and now we’re in the recording phase, mixing and doing all of that. So, it feels really strange, because we were so busy for so long, and now it’s like we’re in a room with a computer…but it’s good, because I think we got really tight, and it’s the right time to be doing the recording.
Patrick: 35 Denton. That’s next.
– Interview by Mary Noxon and Rosie Haney/Transcription by Dale Jones