Q&A: Buffalo Killers

Members: Zachary Gabbard, guitar, vocals; Andrew Gabbard, bass, vocals; Joseph Sebaali, drums
Hometown: Cincinnati
Sounds like: Classic rock, Americana
Latest project: third full-length release “3”

After tours with The Black Crowes and an album produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, the Buffalo Killers are set to release their third full-length album.

Recorded with Mike Montgomery at Candyland Studios, the new album is a collection of songs that are more thoughtful in both their theme and approach, and which celebrates their friends and family.

We talked to brothers Zachary and Andrew Gabbard ahead of the release party at MOTR on Saturday.

This is your third album, how do you feel about it, and have you seen a change in your approach since you first started?
Andrew (bass, vocals): It’s not really like an extremely different album, but I think it’s a lot different from anything else that we’ve done. I think we’ve changed gradually, and it’s our first 12-song album. And I’ve always wanted to do a 12-song album. (Our last two were both 10 songs.) I’m happy with our old records and stuff, but I feel like just adding two extra songs widens the spectrum. We put a lot more time into these songs. Some of the songs have a lot of different instruments and players on them, which they didn’t have in the past.

You recorded your album over a six-month period. What was the process? Did you go into the studio with a clear set of songs in mind for the album or did you have to work through material as you went along?
Zachary (guitar, vocals): Me and Andy both write the songs separately and then bring them together. Andy’s writing songs all the time and so am I. You know, we would demo songs pretty much with just acoustic guitars and then sit back and listen to them and record some of them with the full band. And then we kind of weeded out songs. We probably had like two albums that we cut down to 12 songs.

What made you pick one song over another?
Zachary: With this album, we kind of just didn’t treat like a live show with a set list, but treated it like an album as a whole, where we weren’t afraid to put more emotional material on the record.

In the process did you find any themes arising?
Zachary: We tried to pick songs that spoke more to us, you know… if a song doesn’t move you, it’s not going to move anyone else. You know, we just kind of—when me and Andy write, we write separately, but it seems like when we bring things together the same themes will come up in our songs. It’s like we’re on the same wave, you know, and we’ll find that common ground, when we put things together.
Andrew: All the songs are about things that have happened to us in our lives, as opposed to the last album.

Has a lot happened to you in the past year?
Andrew: I got married, moved to Dayton. I mean, that’s a big thing that changed my life. [chuckles]

You were saying that for this album, you included more emotional songs than you would have in the past. Can talk a little bit about that?
Zachary: Well, with my writing, obviously, I write about what’s going on. I’m, you know—maybe where I would write before more about… I don’t know, we’ve all grown up. I don’t mean ‘grown up’, but grown up as adults together over the last—I mean, me, Joe and Andy have been playing together for a long time. We all really understand each other and things work fairly easy with us. As far as the song content, I think we’re all just a little more aware of what’s important, as opposed to just writing aggressive music. Not to say that our music was all that aggressive before, but in my writing, my themes are more about loving your family and standing your ground, and growing up, you know, growing up as an adult. In the past, I wrote things that were not so much real shit. Things are very real now. I have a family, and it’s not all about me anymore. It’s about everything. I have kids, and the world is a messed up place and everything has become more emotional. That’s kind of the best way I can describe it. Playing music has become more of an emotional experience. That is how life is when you have more grown-up things to do in your life.

Speaking of having more grown up things to do in your life, how does that factor in with your time and having a band?
Zachary: It’s my job, so it’s… I mean it’s not work, but it is my work. It’s never work doing something you love. This is what I chose to do and I still do it. We still stay very active touring, but we’re also home a lot being very smart about what we’re doing.

You guys are touring all over the country and then Europe for this album and have toured extensively in the past. What are some of your favorite places to play?
Zachary:  Honestly, I like my shows in Ohio: Athens, Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland and Columbus. All those towns have become our hometown in a way over the years. Um, so I do enjoy touring other places. I do enjoy going to the West Coast, I do enjoy going out of town. It’s always enjoyable, but it’s more enjoyable to do it with your friends.

In terms of the songs you’ve done for this album, what’s one of your favorites?
Zachary: We did a track on the album that Kelly Deal sang on. It’s the last track on the album and it was fun to have friends in the studio and to have her give, you know, her take on things. Everything was fun to do. I always enjoy recording with the guys, you know. It’s fun, but we had her come in, we had Brian Olive come in and play saxophone on a song. We had our friend James Legg come in and play keyboard on a song. Andy had a couple of his buddies come in and play banjo and lap steel. We hadn’t really done that in the past. We had kept it to the three of us. So it was fun to have other people come in and give their take on things.
Andrew: All the songs on this album, I mean, I’m really, really happy with. I love to play them all. There is a song on the album called All Turn to Cloud. It was really fun to record because we had a couple of our friends come down from Columbus to play on it.

How is it different and who did you have play on it?
Andrew: Brian Wells from the band Moon High came down from Columbus and he played banjo on it, and Sven Kahns who also lives in Columbus played steel guitar on it. It’s not like a strange song or really different or anything, but it was written kind of weird. Like when I wrote it, I wrote it really fast, I wrote the lyrics to the song as I thought of them, so it didn’t really make sense at first, but once I heard it and read the words after I’d written them down, it kind of made sense. We recorded it like a live track, but with acoustic, which we’d never done before. So it was really fun and awesome. It’s like, it’s my favorite song because it was just so weird when I wrote it. Usually when I write a song, I have everything figured out for it. I can imagine what the drums would sound like and harmonies and everything. This one just came out kind of weird and I wrote it differently than any other song.

To celebrate both Buffalo Killers' U.S. tour and the forthcoming release of their new studio album "3" (in-stores Aug. 2 through Alive Records), the trio are offering up the previously unreleased outtake "Love Is Gold" from their recent "3" sessions:

Listen: “ Love is Gold ”

» Try another track: Check out "Circle Day" in our "Ear candy" feature.