Lord Buffalo roams to OKC
Austin-based rockers talk Stillwater roots, Spanish explorers and lizards
Daniel Pruitt and Garrett Hellman became fast friends.
Both had been transplanted from the East Coast to Stillwater at a young age and bonded over a shared appreciation for making noise after meeting at church. Songwriting helped conquer the boredom of living in a small town.
“The ability to go to your buddy’s basement and set up some drums and start playing music and creating something, I think that’s how we fell into it,” Hellman told The Oklahoman.
“I wonder if growing up in a town with more happening I would’ve just been happy to go see the bands that were coming through town.”
Both stuck around Payne County performing as Shiloh Fivecoat and eventually graduated from Oklahoma State University.
Today, the duo front Lord Buffalo, an Austin-based band known for creating rock songs as cinematic and dusty as a double feature of Sergio Leone films.
The band formed in 2012 and currently features Pruitt (vocals/ guitar), Hellman (guitar) Patrick John Patterson (violin), Yamal Said (drums) and Brockett Hamilton (piano/baritone guitar).
The group’s first full-length record has been in production for years but will finally get celebrated Friday when the self-titled effort lands via Clerestory AV.
“Lord Buffalo” is awash in mood and might. The LP offers up plenty of elegantly arranged sinister moments but it’s always trudging forward in hopes of finding some light through all the darkness.
“We’re in the middle of recording the next record right now,” Pruitt said. “It feels good to be putting one album out and having another one almost done recording.
“We’d released a couple songs already, but I forget we’re putting out half of a record that no one’s ever heard before. I’m really excited to get it out in the world and share it.”
Pruitt and Hellman spoke with The Oklahoman about each song on their new LP.
‘Xochimilco’
This song was one of the last pieces added to the record and was created as a preamble. The track’s less than two minutes long but sets a haunting tone for what’s to come and softens the hard-swinging punch of “Axolotl.”
“There’s something to be said in being deliberate about recording something that’s meant to put you into a head space and have you listen to the music in a different way,” Hellman said. “In some instances, this is us sharing the way we like to experience music.”
‘Axolotl’
Pruitt and Hellman are fans of Western movies. “Axolotl” demonstrates the band’s cinematic side as it slowly builds into a bombastic and menacing swirl of sound. Remove the lyrics and it could soundtrack the climax of a dusty gunfight on the top of a speeding train.
The duo named “Twin Peaks” composer Angelo Badalamenti (specifically his baritone guitar arrangements) as an inspiration along with Spaghetti Western great Ennio Morricone, whose compositions for “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” remain as harrowing as ever. Lord Buffalo also namechecked Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for their film scores and dark balladry.
Lyrics come last for Lord Buffalo, which might explain why the music could stand alone on a soundtrack. The band whittled down hours of rehearsal ideas into studioready songs at Cacophony Recorders, but recording engineer Erik Wofford’s schedule was so packed that there was a month between recording instruments and vocals. Pruitt spent time listening to the instrumental tracks on his daily commute and got the chance to test a lot of his lyrics.
“I’m happy with how a lot of the songs turned out,” Pruitt said. “I think it’d be very different if we would’ve tracked vocals the day after instruments.”
‘Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca’
The album’s second instrumental track is named after a Spanish explorer who got shipwrecked and traveled throughout the U.S. A couple of years ago, Pruitt and Hellman went on a weekend trip to Mexico City that ended up informing the record’s south of the border/Western theme.
“I became obsessed with Alvar story for a while,” Pruitt said. “When we were making that instrumental, I felt for his strange trip through this wide-open place where this guy didn’t think he’d get back to anyone who even spoke the same language as him.”
‘Indian Summer’
This story song marks an uplifting high point for the record. It shifts from a monotonous opening and grows into a bright, uplifting swell of noise.
“One thing that’s unique about this band is that we all listen to records as records,” Pruitt said. “We’re obsessed with it. We’ve made a record that’s intended to be listened to from Side A to the last part of Side B. Obviously you don’t have to do that, but that’s something we do think a lot about”
‘Saxifrage’
At nearly 10 minutes long, “Saxifrage” started as an
experiment in songwriting that combined three time signatures throughout three sections.
It became a monster. It was nearly scrapped until it finally clicked for the band.
“There’s things that you can pull off in a live show, like stretching a song out and getting every ounce of worth out of it, that doesn’t always translate to a record,” Pruitt said. “But now, our violin player loves that song. He wants the B Side to our next record to be one long song.”
‘Cimarron’
The track nods to growing up outdoors and to the river that runs near Stillwater. Pruitt was fuzzy on the song’s initial inspiration but remembered “Cimarron” went through a lot of incarnations before landing on the record.
That’s not too different from Lord Buffalo, the product of multiple music projects Pruitt and Hellman have collaborated on.
“We stayed in Stillwater for so long because we were playing music and felt like we should keep doing that. Why wouldn’t we?” Hellman said. “That’s the continuity between our move to Austin. It just kept making sense to make music.”
Pruitt added: “And people kept letting us do it.”