Fri 9/27 @ 8PM
I don’t know if Donna the Buffalo likes being called a hippie jam band, but the shoe fits.
The band from upstate New York has that the good-vibes folksy aura and the loose, eclectic approach to music that are the mark of a band that has a lot of dreadlocked, sandal-shod, peasant-skirt-wearing, hackysack-playing acolytes.
Like the Grateful Dead and Phish, it’s even named its following: the Herd. And the Herd has been following the band faithfully over its 25-year career, flailing its arms and spinning in circles to the band’s hypnotic grooves.
The core of the group is singer-songwriter Jeb Puryear and Tara Nevins — he also plays guitar, she plays an assortment of instruments mostly acoustic instruments — while various bassists, drummers and keyboardists have come and gone. (Unlike the Grateful Dead, none of their keyboardists have died).
The group’s new album Tonight, Tomorrow, and Yesterday, on Sugar Hill Records, is their first in five years. The group recorded it in an old church without running water in the little town of Enfield, New York, here they had to break from recording on Sunday so services could be held. The results are as funky, friendly, and in the words of Puryear, “loosey-goosey,” as you might expect.
The group is back in northeast Ohio to play at the Kent Stage.
Tickets are $21-$25.
http://www.donnathebuffalo.com/
Photo by Dana Albert