Great White Buffalo | Culture Collide | 10/11/13

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013

Earlier this year, I went to a friend’s birthday party in the valley. My friend is a musician, so I anticipated some of her friends would also be musicians or otherwise working in the music industry in some way.  Jessica Huebner, an expert on acoustic guitars who values them for McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica was there. While talking about her job, the birthday girl pulled out her Martin 000-18 acoustic guitar which Ms. Huebner valued at around $10,000. Amidst the oohs and aahs from the attendees, the guitar was passed to one of the guests, Stephen Johnson, and he started to jam on it.

It turned out Stephen happened to play in a band called Great White Buffalo. We exchanged contact information, and I took some time over the weekend to check out his band’s music. I liked what I heard.

I finally got to see them perform live at Culture Collide. I got there a few minutes early, and bumped into Stephen talking to some friends. He seemed glad to see me come out for their gig, and  before I could offer to buy him a beer, he beat me to the punch and slyly handed me an “artist” beer (free booze for artists from one of the sponsors of the festival). That was cool.

When the four piece band was setting up for their 11:10pm set on the small stage at the quaint venue, Lot 1 Cafe,, I started up a conversation with a couple of girls who came to see the band play. They were sorority gals from UCLA, who took a taxi, on a Friday night, all the way to the Echo Park to see Great White Buffalo perform. Now, THAT is some dedication. I asked them what they liked most about the band. Assuming they would give me the “the singer is really cute” line, they said that the music was really good and rattled off the names of  some of their songs. I was impressed.

They powered through a short, but energetic, set, playing almost all of the songs that got me interested in them in the first place: “Thanks for Nothing”, “Likely Story” and “Teeth”. Exactly what I wanted to hear (check out the video below to hear what I’m talking about).

There are a lot of indie rock bands out there, but the good ones are the ones that write good tunes. It seems to me, at least based on the handful of recordings that they’ve released thus far, that these guys are capable of writing songs that rock out and have catchy hooks … and you don’t have to take my word for it. You could have asked the two college gals who were there too.

Follow them on Facebook to listen to tracks from their last album and keep up with updates on their upcoming gigs.

Unfortunately, the Flickr slideshow below is not currently available on mobile devices. If you are on a mobile device, please click THIS LINK to get redirected to the set of photos.

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013