Veteran Folk-Rocker Still Writing His Own Story
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Knoxville Voice, October 2007
A well-traveled troubadour if there ever was one, Richard Buckner is a much funnier guy than his shadowy, rural melodies might suggest.
“I just want to stay out of my midnight shifts at Home Depot as long as I can,” he quips, feigning bitterness in a gruff but affable, alt-country accent. Even after fifteen years with his nose to the grindstone and his “scene” in perpetual flux, Buckner knows how to spot the silver lining in some of his most frustrating experiences.
Exhibit A: His brief and highly tumultuous tenure as a major-label recording artist with MCA in the late ‘90s.
“I learned some valuable lessons,” recalls Buckner, 40, speaking from his latest temporary residence in Upstate New York. “You know, we’re talking about New York and L.A. business ethics, where they look at you strange if you try to be fair with people. So, with MCA, it was an interesting couple of albums. We were mutually hateful to each other,” he laughs. “I wanted to get off the label, and luckily, they dropped me.”
Though MCA had released the acclaimed LPs that helped Buckner earn his cult following (1997’s Devotion +Doubt and 1998’s Since), he was happy to soldier on without them, admittedly disgusted by the business side of making records. After putting out his next three albums on microscopic Overcoat Recordings, Buckner re-emerged in 2004 on the beloved Merge label, home to indie titans like Robert Pollard, Camera Obscura, and the Arcade Fire.
“Merge has been great,” Buckner says, “because it’s a step up in way from a small label, but they’re also just normal, cool people from North Carolina. It’s about the best I could do, as far as getting a cool, powerful label, without dealing with a bunch of stupid, business crap. Because they’re fair-- they’re musicians and artists themselves and they know what it’s like to be a musician and artist. Plus, they’re one of those few labels where you pick up an album and see the Merge label, and you’ll just buy it sometimes, because you think, it’s got to be good. . . . So when Mac from Merge called and said he was interested, I was really fuckin’ honored. It was a big deal to me.“
For the past year, Buckner has been touring in support of his second Merge release, 2006’s Meadow, which was recorded in Brooklyn with help from Guided By Voices veterans Doug Gillard and Kevin March, among others. On the road, Buckner adopted the Kent, Ohio, chamber-country collective The Six Parts Seven as his backing band, continuing a tradition of collaboration that’s been a Buckner calling card in each of the many cities he’s called home over the years.
“Man, I’ll tell you, when you get the ideas and you send out the invitations, and a few of the people you really admire respond back and want to work with you, it’s a real, real good feeling,” says Buckner, who can count diverse acts like Gillard, Calexico, Destroyer, Texas country legend Lloyd Maines, and the Mekons’ Jon Langford among his collaborative posse. “There’s no better compliment than to have other artists appreciate what you do.”
The critics have been quite appreciative of Buckner’s work, as well, particularly his lyrical craftsmanship. While his music can vary from stripped down folk balladry to somewhat more raucous country-rock, his tonality and themes are slightly more consistent, with images of lost loves, long drives, and Econo Lodges helping to reflect Buckner’s own famously nomadic nature (San Francisco, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Edmonton, Phoenix, and Lubbock, TX, are just some his career pit stops).
In the late ‘80s, Buckner actually earned a BA in Creative Writing from Chico State University, near his hometown of Fresno, California, although he admits he would still be writing today with or without the experience.
“I didn’t think I was going to get a creative writing degree,” he says. “For me, writing is kind of a private thing, so I hated taking stories into some group where people comment on it or where they make you write something based on some pointless prompt. It was really a pain in the ass.”
Still, when informed that his interviewer is also, in fact, the holder of a Creative Writing degree, Buckner kindly cites at least one positive consequence of his collegiate days— thus providing exhibit B in the case for Richard Buckner as a glass-half-full kind of guy.
“It does give you a thick skin,” he laughs. “Having to defend yourself in front of a dumb professor who’s been there 20 years and isn’t willing to move or think in a different way—it gets you ready for things like all the punk ass bitches who work for the Village Voice.”
OK, so positivity doesn’t always include unconditional love for those who review your work. Nonetheless, Buckner is considering a foray into even deeper, shark infested waters, as he eventually hopes to take a break from music and put more time into his first love, writing.
“It’s hard switching horses,” he says. “I don’t know if I could put out a book that’d be worth anything. I thought I wanted to do it, then I read the last book by David Berman (lead singer of the indie band Silver Jews) and it freaked me out-- it was so good. Then, I kind of didn’t want to write a book,” he laughs. “I got a bunch of stuff I’m working on and trying to put together over the next year, so we’ll see. But, you know, there are also a lot of really bad examples of musicians putting out books, too. So there’s that whole fear. I mean, you don’t want to do the Jewel thing or something.”
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