Buffalo Gospel takes listeners to a dusty, forlorn, but strangely familiar place that simply gets sweeter with time.
Thursday for 414 Live, we welcomed them to our stage at Radio Milwaukee to play songs off their new album “On the First Bell.”
Listen to the full session and interview below.
At the heart of all great music is a story, and for that matter, a storyteller. The stories behind Milwaukee-based Buffalo Gospel begin with its founder Ryan Necci and his early introduction, through his father’s record collection, to the country music of John Prine and Townes Van Zandt. Growing up in a small, lower middle class farm town, the songs of love and loss and broken blue-collar dreams seeped into him. When he started writing his own music over a decade ago, it was inevitable that the timeless quality of Country/Western and Americana arrangements would profoundly inform his art.
Over a period of a few years, he experienced the dissolution of a marriage and the death of his close friend and writing partner. The immediate response was to quit music and live with his demons, yet as time moved on, writing about the darkness was the only way to keep going. These crystalline bits of bleary, haggard, emotion shine through Buffalo Gospel’s debut album, “We Can Be Horses,” which came out in 2013 to rave reviews. Critics called the work “minimalist and masterful,” “musically arresting,” and “Milwaukee’s Best Kept Secret.”
Fast-forward to 2018, where “On The First Bell” was recorded with Grammy award-winning engineer, Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Indigo Girls) at The Hive, nestled quietly in the rural landscape just outside Eau Claire, WI.
Buffalo Gospel delivers through a virtual “who’s-who” of crack Midwest musicians who have assembled around Necci’s heartfelt and heartbreaking songs – including Kevin Rowe (bass), Nick Lang (percussion), Michael Rossetto (multi-instrumentalist) and Andrew Koenig (guitar).
414 Live is presented with support from: Hi Hit Lounge & Garage, The Prairie School and Dave’s Guitar Shop.
