Interview with Donna The Buffalo 2/4/12

Donna the Buffalo is a band from Trumansburg, New York. They play both originals (primarily written by Jeb Puryear and Tara Nevins) and covers. The band plays primarily in the Midwest and on the East Coast of the United States.

The band name was suggested by a musician friend of the band; they liked it, and over twenty years later they are still “Donna the Buffalo”. The followers of the group are called The Herd, a self-organized “tribe” of people who met at the group’s festivals.^[1]

Donna the Buffalo is one of the founding and host bands of the annual Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance along with the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival and headliners at The Great Blue Heron Music Festival in Sherman, New York. Donna the Buffalo was featured in On The Bus, a documentary co-directed by Dave Sale and Bud Selig.

Donna the Buffalo has performed and/or recorded with a variety of musicians, including such prominent folk/roots performers as Jim Lauderdale, father and son Zydeco masters Preston and Keith Frank, Bela Fleck, Mamadou Diabate, Claire Lynch, David Hidalgo, The Duhks and Amy Helm, to name a few. In 2009, Tara Nevins toured with former Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann‘s band BK3.

Surrealist artist Yanni Osmond and his partner Spanky the Woman Tamer licensed some of Donna the Buffalo’s music for their upcoming cartoon Living Evil.