Folk Bands and Artists
The Buffalo Skinners
www.facebook.com/TheBuffaloSkinners
In their debut album, The Buffalo Skinners, the Skinners mesh and layer a complex pastiche of sounds that could be immediately mistaken for American in origin—here, you´ll hear Texan foot-stomping, Louisianan enthusiasm, and a framework of Los Angeles-style contemporary folk. The themes are big, and it´s easy to imagine this band under a big Oklahoman sky, playing to the cattle in a tongue-in-something retro-video—even before you consider the band´s delightfully absurd name. Their slow songs are sweet, their fast songs are fun, and I could think of a dozen great Dixie music venues where they´d fit in perfectly.
But although folk music often aspires to be “simple but not simplistic,“ it is not simplicity that is its cornerstone, but rather sincerity. And this is where, on careful listening, the Buffalo Skinners´ peculiar origins merit consideration. Greyhounds buses and West Virginian country roads, after all, appear in songs only as symbols—familiar ones to a poor Southern boy, perhaps, but ultimately no more related to a song´s meaning than is the description of a rose.