The March entry in our 25th anniversary reissue series is Bloomed, the 1994 debut album
from Richard Buckner. The album will be remastered and released on CD and 180-gram
vinyl. Both formats will include a CD containing 11 bonus tracks of radio sessions, live
performances, and original recordings of songs that appeared on future releases.
Spin magazine described Buckner as ''equal parts Bay Area bohemian and dust bowl
traditionalist'' and named Bloomed one of its best albums of 1994, while Pitchfork
wrote, ''It's a traditional outsider-country record in the lineage of Townes Van Zandt.
Buckner's voice is all honey and oak, his guitar style elaborately twanging, his constant
subject matter heartache.''
track listing:
SIDE A:
1. Blue and Wonder
2. Rainsquall
3. 22
4. Mud
5. Six Years
6. This is Where
SIDE B:
7. Gauzy Dress in the Sun
8. Daisychain
9. Desire
10. Up North
11. Surprise, AZ
12. Cradle to the Angel
Bloomed was originally (erroneously?) released on an unnamable German label in 1994.
I was living in San Francisco at the time, having just moved out of a residential hotel
and into the 1906 hilltop prefab that adorns the cover. At the time, I was heading a
band called The Doubters. We were playing high profile events such as The Covered
Wagon Saloon's Musical Barstools, but weren't making much headway. We had been
turned down consistently every year by SXSW, but I was somehow finagled in as
an unannounced guest onto an already unofficial SXSW showcase created by Butch
Hancock at his gallery in downtown Austin. There, I met up again with Lloyd Maines,
who agreed to produce my first record.
Maines and I met in Lubbock, TX, a few months later, where we worked with
Lubbock musicians in a small recording studio walled in wooden shingles Sharpied
with bible passages from various church groups that also enjoyed working there.
It was 112°F the morning I arrived under the suspicious (Californians are merely
B-grade yankees) gaze of downtown's Buddy Holly statue. That first night there, it
hailed so hard that heaven's angry pellets were storming in under my motel door. It
only let up for a few moments that first night, allowing me to run across the street to
get a butter burger and fries to go. We finished four days later and I flew back to San
Francisco, dismembered the band, and embarked on a tour that would last about 20
years (or a few days, if you count what I actually remember).
Nothing's changed. I'm still dodging the sky and busking to strangers.