Rochester, New York-based heavy psychedelic rockers King Buffalo stay busy. The trio of vocalist/guitarist Sean McVay, bassist Dan Reynolds, and drummer Scott Donaldson only formed 10 years ago and already has four full-length albums and five EPs under their belts, as well as tours with the likes of Clutch, All Them Witches, and Elder, among others. Their latest album, Regenerator, has received immense praise and was one of Bandcamps best-selling rock albums of 2022. On a personal note, anyone who knows me knows my obsession with this bands music, which in somewhere along the lines of a combination of Pink Floyd, Tool, Rush, and Black Sabbath. So when I had the opportunity to speak with Sean McVay ahead of their upcoming show here in Louisville on Thursday, Jan. 18, at The Whirling Tiger, I jumped at the chance.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
LEO: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen a fan do?
Sean McVay: Once after a show a guy came up to me super stoked and covered in sweat, he had his shirt off and he wanted me to autograph his body, and then he was immediately going to his buddy’s tattoo shop to have him tattoo the autograph. I tried talking him out of it because I’m like, Dude, have you seen my autograph? Because it’s kind of shitty. It’s almost like a Nike swoosh, like a scribble. You sure you want this? And he’s like, Absolutely. I made sure to give him an out about 10 times before finally like, Okay [laughs].
Are you now able to make a living off of just King Buffalo?
It has been the full time gig for all of us for a few years now. It’s an interesting situation. Unlike a lot of bands that are maybe signed to more traditional label deals, we’re a D.I.Y. outfit. We pay for our own pressing, we ship it ourselves, and we do it on our own. So while we sell less units than a lot of bands, we keep more of the profit. So when the pandemic hit and touring got shut down, the support we received from our fans was really phenomenal and it was able to sustain us so that we could do that three album arc, [The Burden of Restlessness, Acheron, and Regenerator, all recorded and released between 2020 and 2022], and stay busy and active.
So youre starting to see some of that success pay off?
Yeah, definitely. It’s pretty surreal. We’ve been a band for 10 years now and it’s been a slog. We did countless tours for years, playing dive bars to no one but the bartender, just really grinding it. Now we’re getting older and just starting to see the fruits of that, so it’s really humbling.
What’s behind the decision to keep self-managing and self-releasing your records?
Its a lot. We do have an arrangement for distribution in Europe. We also have a booking agent and we do hire a PR person. So there’s some stuff we do sub out, but we definitely do pretty much everything else ourselves. And honestly, it’s not the kind of thing where we would never sign to a more traditional record deal or with a management company, but it would really have to be the kind of thing where although we’re losing a share of a profit for each unit, we’re able to get a larger reach to make up for it. We’ve had a few smaller labels express some interest and we had talks with them, but it just felt like the deals weren’t right for us at the time. And right now we’re at the point where we’re doing okay on our own, so we see no reason to go hunting for that.
Will you all be recording any new material this year?
We do have some plans to get that going, but nothing is set in stone yet. Right now we’re in between studio spaces, so we need to shore up where we’re going to do that before we get to the actual fun part.
How did recording in a cave come about? [Note: this is in reference to their Acheron EP which was recorded in Howe Caverns in Howes Cave, NY]
It was our drummer’s idea. It was a place he had visited with his family in the past. We were planning on doing some sort of live performance type thing, but we didn’t really know where we were going to do it, and COVID really limited our travel options. So he brought it up and he’s like, It will look great, and the engineer in me started having a panic attack, [laughs]. But Grant Husselman came in and handled the engineering, and he did a great job.
How much trouble did you all go through to get down there and get everything set up?
I never want to do that again, [laughs]. It was a lot. We did it all in one day, so it was a really long, brutal day. It’s a pretty developed tourist spot and there is an elevator down into the main cave area, but we had to hoof all our gear pretty far away to where we ended up shooting. There’s a path in the cave that a lot of the lights were already installed on, so they have infrastructure down there. But its the stuff that you can’t really get from the cameras; like it was around 52 to 54 degrees in there – but it’s also the thickest, heaviest, most humid air you’ve ever been in in your life. So you’re not hot, but you’re dumping sweat, the gear is sweating, and everything’s wet and moist. So keeping everything in tune was a nightmare. And its just like, how did we think this was going to work? So while it was a really cool, rewarding experience, I can’t say I’m itching to do anything like that again. But we were the first people to be crazy enough to set up a live rock band down there.
What would you say were some of your favorite shows youve played?
We played Burning Man in 2022. [Note: the entire performance is available on Bandcamp as a free download]. That was just a total surreal, amazing experience. I don’t think we performed the best that we ever have, but it was super cool. Over the summer we played HellFest in France – which is a huge, huge festival – and it was amazing. Iron Maiden was headlining the day we played, and at one point I’m backstage and I see Steve Harris walk by. I idolized Iron Maiden when I was a teenager and I was like, Oh my God! I love this band! and to be there definitely felt like an I made it moment. We did not play the big stage, but I like to jokingly say, Oh yeah, we opened for Iron Maiden. But reality is much different. [laughs]
King Buffalo plays The Whirling Tiger on Thursday, January 18 with REZN and Doom Gong. Tickets are $20.00, 18 and over. For more information visit kingbuffalo.com or thewhirlingtiger.com.
This article appears in Dec 21, 2023 – Feb 13, 2024.
