GranolaBox

A very diverse group of people suggested I check out Donna the Buffalo the next time they came to town. Two of my sixteen year old students, one a hippie chick and the other a metalhead; my retired colleague, now in his mid fifties, and a couple who must have been in their mid to late sixties I met while we were both grabbing for organic alfalfa sprouts at the local grocery store. He had a Donna the Buffalo T-shirt and we struck up a conversation. The sheer force of all these recommendations, and my neighbor finally agreeing to go with me prompted me to go see this band I’d never heard.

As we waited outside in the freezing climate change cold, we were huddled with people of all ages and sizes trying to keep warm. All were comparing previous DTB shows and discussing this summer’s festivals. All were loyal members of “The Herd,” the name adopted by their large and still growing legion of local followers. As the band set up, I found in the audience former students from my first year of teaching, so students who will graduate in my twentieth.

I thought with this much buildup that I’d be hooked on the first song. It took until the third song, when the groove from the crowd finally hit me in the rear of the hall to get me hooked.

The first thing I try to do when I listen to a new band is to figure out who they sound like. Usually it’s a combination of a couple bands, but with Donna the Buffalo, I finally narrowed it down to four or five. Okay… try Dire Straits (guitarist Jeb Puryear picks like Mark Knopfler, and kind of sings like him) + Creedence Clearwater Revival (they have an infectious “chooglin’” groove, especially with Tara Nevins’ washboard) + 10,000 Maniacs before Natalie Merchant got all full of herself (Tara Nevins sounds a lot like her) + Bob Dylan when he’s playing one of his faster songs with a good band and he’s not too hammered. If I thought about more I could probably go on, but the bottom line is that they have a sound that ends up being completely their own that you have to hear for yourself to really appreciate.

While DTB is categorized correctly as a “jam band” their songs don’t devolved into the kind of long, dissonant, self absorbed digressions that leave listeners, and probably band members, trying to remember what song they started with. They’re a jam band for people like me, who have short attention spans, which I think is the key to their success with both spastic teenagers, and twenty to seventy-somethings.

In my two day exploration of their recordings, I found that their studio work is wonderful, but pales considerably to their live performance. They have several shows available through their website at a very reasonable price, but even the one I downloaded doesn’t do justice to the infectious groove of their live shows.

Check out this footage from one of last year’s shows for a glimpse. This song brought the house down at Friday’s show.

Technorati Tags: Donna the Buffalo, alfalfa sprouts, climate change, Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, Creedence Clearwater Revival, 10, 000 Maniacs, Natalie Merchant, Bob Dylan, jam band

Filed under: Music on April 7th, 2007