Buffalo Blood will give a world premiere live performance along with Leith’s own Dean Owens at Celtic Connections this Friday.
An international collaboration of three US musicians, Buffalo Blood – Grammy nominee Neilson Hubbard, Joshua Britt and Audrey Spillman – and UK musician Dean Owens, with sound engineer/photographer Jim DeMain, have all worked together previously on various projects.
Collectively they were inspired to decamp from their cosy studio spaces in Nashville TN and Leith (Scotland), following the Trail of Tears over 1300 miles to spend 2 weeks living and recording way out in the desert, to create the music – songs of displacement, immigration, refugees and the power of the human spirit – for Buffalo Blood.
The album Buffalo Blood was born in the heart of the New Mexico desert, recorded on location at the stunning La Plaza Blanca, Echo Canyon, and around Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu (the setting for much of the TV series Breaking Bad).
The songs and music of Buffalo Blood are the musicians’ response to the area where it was recorded: of living and working with the heat and dust, spectacular beauty of the canyons and red rocks and thinking about the people, especially the Native Americans, who lived there before.
The musicians are all established, and highly respected in their field. Neilson Hubbard and Joshua Britt (collectively known as Neighborhoods Apart Productions) have won awards for their music video work, and have most recently collaborated with John Prine and Jason Isbell, as well as being talented musicians in their own right. Their recent work as The Orphan Brigade takes a similar starting point to Buffalo Blood, in transporting musicians to evocative locations and recording (as audio and video) what transpires.
Much travelled Scottish troubadour Dean Owens is recognised as one of the country’s finest singer songwriters. In 2017 he became the first Scottish musician to officially showcase at Nashville’s Americanafest. The title song from his recent highly acclaimed Southern Wind album (his 7th solo release, produced by Neilson) – is shortlisted for UK Song of the Year Award at the Americana Music Awards UK next week.
The world premiere live performance of Buffalo Blood (including location film footage), and album launch, is at Celtic Connections, Glasgow – the UK’s premier roots music festival – on 25 January.
In Scotland I attended Dunfermline High School from 2010 to 2016 and Edinburgh Napier University from 2016 to 2020, emerging with two Advanced Higher and five Higher qualifications from the former and graduating with an undergraduate bachelor of arts honours degree in journalism from the latter. After two years away from further education due to the coronavirus pandemic, I'm going to be studying the MFA Photography course at York St John University in England from 2022 to 2024. I've achieved The Duke of Edinburgh’s (Bronze) Award and received grade five level certification for electronic keyboard from Trinity College London. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, writing, watching television series, listening to music and going to the cinema as well as catching up with friends, travelling by railway and hostelling overnight and overindulging in food and drinks in a pub or restaurant then having to go to the gym to burn it all off again.
By studying journalism and photography, my aim of practicing photojournalism professionally will hopefully be once step closer. Both are partial artforms requiring the rest of the work to be undertaken by the audience, the specialism of photojournalism, however, providing each of its two parts with greater context. Exploring photographic techniques (aerial, timelapse, editing) through a variety of journalistic styles (features, poetry, songwriting) will allow me to develop my portfolio, hone my camera skillset and narrow my focus further in anticipation of working life. Without a global pandemic to deal with this time. Fingers crossed.
