Grant Lee Buffalo
Los Angeles, USA band comprising Grant Lee Phillips (b. Stockton, California; vocals/12 string guitar), Paul Kimble (bass/keyboards) and Joey Peters (drums). Phillips grew up in California the son of a minister, and the grandson of a Southern gospel singer grandmother, before enrolling in film school. Grant Lee Buffalo began to evolve in 1989 when Phillips joined Peters and Kimble in Shiva Burlesque, but despite existing critical acclaim they soon realised that the band's impetus was stalling. The trio became the only ones turning up for rehearsals, and sacked the other two members to concentrate on a new band. Mouth Of Rasputin, Rex Mundi, Soft Wolf Tread and The Machine Elves were all rejected as names, choosing Grant Lee Buffalo after their singer's Christian names and the image of a buffalo to symbolise all ‘that had gone wrong in this country’. It had previously been employed by Phillips for a set of solo country standards he would sing before his then band King Of The World came on-stage. Their influences were ‘the music of America from the '30s to the '60s that's based on story-telling and improvisation, blues, jazz or country’. By the autumn of 1991 the band had recorded 11 songs in Kimble's home studio, a tape of which was passed to Bob Mould, who released Fuzzy as a 7-inch on his Singles Only Label (SOL). A month later they had earned a deal with Slash Records, primarily because the band felt an affinity with several other acts on the label (X, Los Lobos, Violent Femmes). A debut album was recorded in two weeks in San Francisco, with Kimble again producing. The songs attacked modern America's complacency and pursuit of material wealth, harking back to a golden age of American optimism. Phillips' acute observation and lyrical poignancy, which earned comparisons to Neil Young and Mike Scott (Waterboys), was steeped in a grainy, cinematic sweep which saw the set lauded by Michael Stipe of REM as ‘1993's finest album, hands down’. America Snoring, released as a single in both the US and UK, symbolised the faithless, faceless climate of the US so despised by the author, and was written as a response to the Los Angeles riots. A companion piece, Stars N' Stripes, was Phillips' evocative homage to Elvis Presley's Vegas period, and offered another passionate chapter in his thematic dissection of modern Americana. MIGHTY JOE MOON proved more restrained, with its anger at the vulgarity of characters and situations tempered by greater texture and guile. The keynote spirituality implicit in earlier recordings was maintained by Rock Of Ages, one of the few dramatic gestures on offer.