Singer/songwriter, The White Buffalo released his album Once Upon a Time in the West today via Unison Music Group. The White Buffalo is the apt alter-ego of Jake Smith, a southern California native who has been making waves with his powerful live performances. Already a fixture on west coast's live music scene, the buzz on The White Buffalo is spreading, thanks to the intensity of the band's shows, including a much-talked-about appearance at Bonnaroo this year.
When a bootleg tape of The White Buffalo's music made it into the hands of pro surfer Chris Malloy, one of his songs, "Wrong," was featured in Malloy's popular surf movie, Shelter which earned The White Buffalo a burgeoning fan base in the Southern California surf community. Since then, The White Buffalo has toured Australia, Japan, Europe and the U.S. with acts like Donavan Frankenreiter, Gomez,
Jack Johnson and
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, among many others.
With the release of Once Upon a Time in the West, The White Buffalo is poised to reach a much broader audience. The influences of story-tellers like
Bob Dylan,
Waylon Jennings, Elliot Smith,
Leonard Cohen,
Tom Waits and Bad Religion shine through on the new album. The songs are rooted in everyday struggles, on both epic and personal scales, with elements of blues, country western, folk, and classic rock. The album ranges in themes from slices of life in
The Shadows ("The Bowery") to coming out of a battlefield ("Ballad of a Dead Man") to dark heroic fantasies ("The Pilot") from putting the concepts of family and country under the microscope ("I Wish It Was True") to etched childhood scenes ("BB Guns and Dirt Bikes," "The Witch").
It is exactly the kind of thoughtful storytelling that had USA Today saying "... I had to stop and listen. What a memorable voice...." and ARTISTDirect.com boasting "The White Buffalo possesses a mystique that's been absent from modern popular music for so long. That's the real brilliance of what he does. Soulful and strong from start to finish, Once Upon A Time In The West is one of the best albums of 2011."
The White Buffalo recently performed a stunning live, solo acoustic performance of "I Wish It Was True," off the new album for ARTISTdirect.com.
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