Donna the Buffalo has stood the test of time in the music industry. They have an incredibly loyal fan base and play to packed houses all over the world. The group has been playing strong for 17 years, and if you think they are going to slow down, forget it. They currently play 100 gigs a year and continue to sell thousands of cds.
It all began in 1987 with six friends who played old-time music fiddle, banjo, guitar. Then Puryear (guitarist/vocalist) and Nevins (fiddle, accordion, scrubboard, guitar and vocals) started writing original tunes. “Jim Miller and Jeb and I would sit around and play these songs together on acoustic guitars,” Nevins recalls.
Nevins’ father bought her an electric five string fiddle not long after Miller and Puryear decided to pick up electric guitars. A mandolin-playing friend started playing drums. “We were just old-time Appalachian pickers and because Jeb and I started writing songs that were more suited for the electric thing, we all sorta transferred over,” Nevins says.
After months of jamming privately, the musicians were offered a public gig at the now defunct Cabbage Town Coffee House in Ithaca, not far from their hometown of Trumansburg. Promoting the show proved troublesome, though. They’d been playing without a band name and suddenly the pressure was on to come up with one. Palmakartney was nixed because of potential legal repercussions. Dawn of the Buffalo was suggested and misheard. Donna the Buffalo was born.
“That was a real special moment because we never had played any of this kind of music in front of anybody and we had no idea how anyone would react,” Puryear says of that first outing. “People danced and it was a joyous thing.”
The joy continued as the group kept playing out, finally putting out a recording in the form of the 1989 cassette-only release “The White Tape,” followed in 1991 by the cassette-only release “The Red Tape.”
In 1990, the group made a huge leap in its live presence. In response to finding out a friend had been diagnosed with AIDS, Donna the Buffalo concocted the Grassroots Festival as a benefit for AIDS research. In the years since, the festival has turned into a four-day event featuring such acts as the 10,000 Maniacs, John Anderson, Patty Loveless, Los Lobos, and Ralph Stanley and has raised more than $300,000 for local arts and charities. Though Donna the Buffalo still headlines and has some say in the line-up each year, Grassroots has taken on a life of its own, requiring separate staff to coordinate it.
With a strong following to satisfy, the band went into the studio in 1993 and made its CD debut with an eponymous release, commonly known to fans as “The Purple One.” The following year, they started venturing further for live shows, going out on tours, taking a week at a time and traveling the East Coast as far as North Carolina.
As the geography and demographic grew, so did the demand for new tunes. In 1996, the band self-released “The Ones You Love.” For their next album, they worked with Sugar Hill Records. “Rockin’ In the Weary Land” came out in 1998 and won the AIM award for Best Rock Album.
Through all these accomplishments, the band had actually stuck to a fairly conservative touring and recording schedule. That all changed in 1999 when Jim Miller quit his full-time job as a curator at the Natural History Museum in New York City to dedicate himself full-time to DTB. The group more than doubled the shows they played in a year. They traveled as far as Italy, ventured to Colorado and Texas and became regulars at annual events like The Leaf Fest and Merle Fest in North Carolina, Harvest Fest in Georgia, Magnolia Fest in Florida, Great Blue Heron in New York, and Rhythm Roots Fest in Rhode Island.
Continuing their relationship with Sugar Hill, they released “Positive Friction” in 2000 and started to make a showing on national radio charts. In 2001, the group turned back to their own Wildlife Music to release the double-disc “Live from the American Ballroom,” which showcased some of their best performances from sold-out theater shows across the country.
All this activity attracted national touring company Monterey Peninsula Artists, who picked up the band in 2002 and the affiliation immediately paid off as the group opened for the Dead in Alpine Valley that year. The following year, they acted as the backing band for alt-country musician Jim Lauderdale on “Wait Til Spring,” released on Skycrunch Records.
Photo credit: Jordy Risk, 2005
Saturday November 12, 2005
Tickets $18.00 adv., $20.00 door
Doors Open at: 7:00 PM
Show Starts at: 8:00 PM
All Ages
Tickets available at all Tops locations, Home Of The Hits and New World.