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Donna The Buffalo:
"Friends And Folks Who Just do This"

by Dean Budnick

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Ithaca-based Donna The Buffalo has been out there, collectively crafting its particular, eclectic brand of socially-conscious music for more than ten years now. The group's latest disc, Rockin' In The Weary Land is Donna's best seller yet as the group continues to garner critical praise and a burgeoning fan base. In July the group's GrassRoots Festival took on Woodstock and won (well sort of, read on...). The sextet is currently out west, embarking on its first tour of the California coast. Multi-instrumentalist Jim Miller took a few minutes to reflect on all of these developments as well as the band's origins. For Donna The Buffalo's tour schedule, CD info and other news visit www.donnathebuffalo.com

DB: So you took on Woodstock. Did you know that you had chosen the same weekend when you announced this year's GrassRoots Festival?

JM: No. We've settled ours on the third weekend of July. We bounced around the first couple of years and then we had just settled on that one. In fact we were just happily going along and then I think we just looked in the paper one day and there was a back page, full color ad. We thought "Hhmmm, this could be bad." But as it turned out it didn't matter at all.

DB: How many people came out this year?

JM: Ten thousand paid. The site is about as full as we'd want it to be. It could take a little more but not much more for it to be comfortable and for everybody to have fun. I think people are addicted at this point. In fact attendance was noticeably higher than any year before. It was amazing too, the crowd was way mellow, it was like the complete opposite of Woodstock. The next day I picked up the Syracuse paper and they had this big expose with pictures of burning semi-trailer trucks and everything. I didn't want to gloat or anything...(laughs) Seriously though, it's not good to wish badly upon people who put on festivals. Festivals are the greatest thing you could ever go to or participate in at least from my standpoint. There are just different ways to go about it and going for the dollars is the worst motivation possible. It just doesn't lead to good things, I don't think.

DB: The proceeds from the festival are donated to charity. How have the specific recipients changed over the years?

JM: They've grown. The very first one we did was in the State Theater in downtown Ithaca. It was a direct AIDS benefit which was aligned with Act Up which at that time was a strong activist organization. At the time that was a pretty controversial alignment but we just went for it. Since then Act Up has disintegrated but we've continued on with AIDS as an issue. We've also added stuff like arts education, and the local high school gets to sell parking and they use that money for a trip to Washington. They made around ten grand this year so they'll be taking most of the class down there and having a good time in Washington, so that's cool.

DB: The festival offers a range of genres and sounds.

JM: Our interests as a band have always been what we think of as the roots music scene. So we've always tried to have a good reggae band, a zydeco band and a Cajun band. That's to us what the mix should be, plus bluegrass and old-time, along with the stuff that we all listen to, basically. Some of the bands we got hooked on from their very first time at the festival. We fly up two band from Louisiana, a zydeco band and a Cajun band. We have to have them back, we just couldn't think of doing it without them. Other stuff changes each year. To me it is similar to the Jazz and Heritage festival- we have a strong local flavor, some things you can hear every time you go and then another portion that varies every year. Next year will be the tenth annual and I think we'll go with some of the faves over the past ten years.

DB: You had Ani DiFranco a couple a years ago?

JM: No she was at the second one. She showed up early and she had nothing to do, so she helped set stuff up. At that time she was completely unknown, and I think she probably played to like twenty-seven people on the main stage. Then the following year we couldn't even get her back. I think even now we're not able to get the huge, huge people, or least those we think of as the huge, huge people. It's still kind of an offbeat event. It's not viewed in the mainstream of festival world. GrassRoots is still slightly off the beaten path for a lot of people.

DB: How has the effort involved in organizing the festival changed over the years?

JM: It's still definitely a lot of work but the number of volunteers has grown every year, so it gets better and better. This year we started setting things up on Sunday [the music began on Thursday], and on Monday everything was done. There are four stages and every stage has a crew that shows up each year. They know exactly how to put that stage together, get the lights set up and get everything done. It just happens. It used to be that the band was out there with sledgehammers and screw guns. Now I don't even have to lift a finger (laughs). I'd just assume just show up and start partying. Figurehead status, that's fine by me.

DB: We'll you've earned that status in my book after working so hard and sticking with it for so many years.

JM: Thanks you so much for saying so (laughs)

DB: Then again maybe nobody agrees with me on that one...

JM: Yeah, right. "Why isn't that guy working?"

DB: Let's talk about your band. One thing I've noticed is that you have some particularly rabid fans. Where do most of your listeners come from, what scene or community? I know that jam band fans enjoy your music but you certainly have bluegrass and zydeco boosters as well.

JM: I couldn't tell you. Our crowd is so eclectic. Our fan base is a bunch of nuts. If you were to go into a town and find out who is a nutcase in that town then those would be our fans. I don't know how you market to that crowd (laughs). There are certain things we do real well. Like at the Merle Watson festival, I don't know what it is about that crowd, but we just rage there. We don't do anything different but somehow it just connects. The same at Telluride, whatever that crowd is. There is also sort of a jam band following to some extent. I don't see us having the same crowd as the moe. crowd but I can't be entirely positive, never having gone to a moe. concert. Some of our fans seem to love String Cheese Incident but I am unfamiliar with their music. I basically listen to George Jones and zydeco. Nothing against anything, that's just what I listen to. I connect to it. It's something that has grown slowly over the years and keeps going in this funny way.

DB: You've told me before that Donna The Buffalo emerged out of fiddle conventions. From my understanding it seems that there's this secret society of fiddle players out there who come together every weekend and just play, without a stage or necessarily an audience beyond each other. Joe Pritchard of the Recipe was describing this event down in West Virginia where all of these eighty year old pickers were lined up on a lawn, raging.

JM: The fiddlers things are insane. There is not one person who is not absolutely equal to every other person. There are no stars or anything, there's nothing close to it. It's just everybody gathered in a freaking field. That's the scene. To me that's the roots of the jam scene. A lot of the bands that are popular out there who are playing bluegrass, well that came from old-time music. There is a direct line from old-time music to the jam bands playing out there. If you checked out those scenes you'd say "oh yeah, this is familiar."

DB: Are you surprised that you have such a fervid fan base within the jam band community?

JM: Well we definitely jam, I'll give us that much. Every night is different. We could play the same songs every night but they won't come out the same. That might be a part of it. I think the other part is that people might be sick of formulaic music or contrived music. I'm not giving us any credit there, we wouldn't know how to do that. We're simply friends and folks who just do this. I think that people like to see that- natural music being made and created on the spot. That's why I think the jam band thing is almost becoming a genre. It's something for people who are really sick of hearing the same shit.

DB: Donna The Buffalo has been together for ten years now. How has the band's sound evolved over that time?

JM: It's definitely improved. We've all gotten better at playing together. Our rhythm section is only about two and half years old and they're really kicking ass. The four of us who started it have matured as musicians. I believe that music is not a youth oriented thing. I find that as a musician you only get better doing it, so why should you quit when your hair falls out?

DB: Well I know you're really committed to the band. You used to have a pretty interesting day job as an entomologist in New York City, right?

JM: Yeah, I had a big fat job down at the Museum of Natural History. I was a curator. If you could be a famous entomologist, I was one. But it was starting to get to the point where I couldn't do them both. Music is just way cool. It's a great way to make a living, and it's a great way to hang out with people that you really love.

DB: This is the band's first extended trip west?

JM: We've played at Telluride, so this a return trip to Colorado, but we've never played on the west coast.

DB: What expectations do you have regarding your reception?

JM: I have no idea. They tell us there's lots of hippies out there so we're kind of hopeful. (laughs) We'll go out, hope for the best and if we make a bit of a splash, with any luck they'll have us back.

DB: Are there any specific shows you are looking forward to?

JM: The Colorado dates are really nice. We have two theater dates, and we're really thrilled to be back doing that. Plus we're playing on E-Town which is a really cool syndicated radio show which goes out over public radio stations. It's broadcast live out of the Boulder theater, and we're doing it with Odetta who's an incredible musician. High Sierra Festival ought to be fun. We're also doing a bunch of gigs with Peter Rowan which we're excited about.

DB: Final; question: what would you say to entice those people out west who may have heard of Donna The Buffalo, but can't quite decide whether or not to come check you out?

JM: It's dance-oriented, you get to dance a lot. Great songs. Heartfelt music. All sorts of instrumentation: accordion, fiddle, rubboards, wailing guitars. Plus you get so see some true hosers from the east (laughs).