Biography
Richard Buckner sings and writes in a husky country-folk style that places him squarely among the independent-minded artists who emerged from Lubbock, Texas, such as Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Although he lives in San Francisco, his ties to Lubbock run deeper than geography. His first record, Bloomed, was cut there under the guidance of producer Lloyd Maines, whose résumé already included sessions with Hancock, Allen, Joe Ely, and Uncle Tupelo. Maines contributed multiple instrumental parts, while additional Texas players, among them Hancock on harmonica and Ponty Bone on accordion, completed the lineup.
Buckner’s core audience has always been alternative-rock listeners rather than traditional country fans. His lyrics, rooted in personal experience and larger ambitions, sit outside the Nashville mainstream, drawing instead the interest of open-eared rock enthusiasts and curious general listeners—the same crowd that gravitated toward Allen and Hancock. That connection was reinforced when he led the San Francisco country-rock group the Doubters, a band that never appeared on his albums, and when he opened shows for Son Volt in early 1996.
Bloomed appeared on a modest Texas indie label and earned strong reviews; the subsequent move to a major imprint for the widely praised 1997 album Devotion + Doubt promised broader reach. Since arrived the following year, and in 2000 he released The Hill, a song cycle drawn from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. Impasse, recorded in 2002 at his Canadian home studio, marked his first collection of entirely new material in more than four years. A self-titled set limited to two thousand copies followed in 2003; until then it had circulated only as a tour-only item. Merge Records issued Dents and Shells in 2004 and Meadow in 2006.
Five years passed before Buckner returned. Attempts to record were repeatedly thwarted—first by an unproduced film score, then by a brief detention and questioning during a murder inquiry in the small upstate New York town where he was then living. After relocating, he resumed work only to lose his analog tape machine. Fresh recording methods were found and pedal-steel player Buddy Cage along with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley were brought in, yet the laptop holding the final mixes was stolen. Eventually the nine songs that comprise Our Blood were finished and issued by Merge in late summer 2011. The 2013 album Surrounded encountered fewer obstacles; Buckner composed every track on an electronic autoharp, an instrument he had never used for songwriting before beginning the project.
Buckner’s core audience has always been alternative-rock listeners rather than traditional country fans. His lyrics, rooted in personal experience and larger ambitions, sit outside the Nashville mainstream, drawing instead the interest of open-eared rock enthusiasts and curious general listeners—the same crowd that gravitated toward Allen and Hancock. That connection was reinforced when he led the San Francisco country-rock group the Doubters, a band that never appeared on his albums, and when he opened shows for Son Volt in early 1996.
Bloomed appeared on a modest Texas indie label and earned strong reviews; the subsequent move to a major imprint for the widely praised 1997 album Devotion + Doubt promised broader reach. Since arrived the following year, and in 2000 he released The Hill, a song cycle drawn from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. Impasse, recorded in 2002 at his Canadian home studio, marked his first collection of entirely new material in more than four years. A self-titled set limited to two thousand copies followed in 2003; until then it had circulated only as a tour-only item. Merge Records issued Dents and Shells in 2004 and Meadow in 2006.
Five years passed before Buckner returned. Attempts to record were repeatedly thwarted—first by an unproduced film score, then by a brief detention and questioning during a murder inquiry in the small upstate New York town where he was then living. After relocating, he resumed work only to lose his analog tape machine. Fresh recording methods were found and pedal-steel player Buddy Cage along with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley were brought in, yet the laptop holding the final mixes was stolen. Eventually the nine songs that comprise Our Blood were finished and issued by Merge in late summer 2011. The 2013 album Surrounded encountered fewer obstacles; Buckner composed every track on an electronic autoharp, an instrument he had never used for songwriting before beginning the project.
Albums
