They say all metal-heads turn to jazz once they grow out of heavy metal. Jake Smith is the poster boy for the flipside of that coin, which is that all punk rockers turn to country music once they grow out of liberty spikes and Napalm Death. Having spent his teenage years on a strict diet of The Descendents and The Circle Jerks, Smith didn’t even pick up a guitar until he was 19 years of age. He soon realized that he didn’t have any potential band mates around while at college in the San Francisco Bay area, so he started writing songs influenced by folk and country music and began performing them live anywhere that would have him.
After picking the name The White Buffalo as his stage moniker, Smith continued writing and performing until, in 2002, he self-released his first album “Hogtied Like A Rodeo”. After following that up with an E.P in 2005, he re-recorded his whole first album in 2008 himself and released it again as “Hogtied Revisited”. This re-release was massively acclaimed and saw Smith form a full band around The White Buffalo and hit the road supporting the likes of Gomez and Ziggy Marley. During the rest of the decade The White Buffalo were the best kept secret in Americana, playing massively acclaimed gigs almost completely independently.
Tracks of his appeared in TV shows like Sons Of Anarchy, who used six songs of his over the course of the series, always in pivotal scenes, and in 2010 his E.P “Prepare For Black And Blue” finally got him signed to his first label Unison Music. Ever since then, Smith has finally been getting the acclaim he richly deserves, with his concerts getting ever bigger and his following getting ever more devout with every day. Highly recommended.
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