Buffalo Rose plays atac. Again.

Bryce Rabideau of Buffalo Rose

A house favorite, Buffalo Rose returns to atac on Saturday October 21st. We caught up with mandolinist Bryce Rabideau to see what’s new with the band, and learn more about his MetroWest upbringing. Buffalo Rose’s most recent release, Again, Again, Again, is shimmering and sophisticated, building on recent work with Tom Paxton.

atac: Bryce, great to meet you. I hear you’ve got MetroWest roots?

Bryce Rabideau: I live in Pittsburgh now, but I grew up in Natick, MA, right on the Natick/Framingham town line. 

atac: What was the soundtrack to life in Natick?

BR: As a young kid, I had a walkman that I took everywhere with me. My meager collection of CDs included a John Williams compilation, Simple Pleasures by Bobby McFerren, the Tarzan soundtrack, Appalachian Journey (with Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan), and a handful of a cappella albums from groups that toured through central Mass. One way or another, all that stuff plays into my current musical taste.

atac: How’d those influences turn into a practice?

BR: My musical journey started with piano lessons at age 6, then trombone a few years later. I picked up the guitar in middle school, which is how I learned that string instruments were my thing. I now primarily play the mandolin and I'm working on my fiddle chops. Some of my first jam session experiences were at the Amazing Things weekly jazz session in the early 2010s.

atac: Suburban Massachusetts…trombone lessons…have to ask; you ever play in a ska band?

BR: Ah, a great question! Unfortunately I was never cool enough to be in a ska band. I wish I had ventured out into the local scene a little more in my early teens. I might have stuck with the trombone longer if I realized I could work Bosstones licks into my practice. Eventually it took a backseat to the guitar and I never went back.

Buffalo Rose. Photo courtesy of the band.

atac: So as you mentioned, you’re old school atac! You got any tips or advice for kids coming out to our Open Mic series this year?

BR: Finding your niche is a long and intensive process. It can take a lot of years of being *pretty* sure you're on the right track and blindly pressing forward. Recently, I've seen a lot of returns on my investment and I'm very grateful that I stuck with furthering my craft and putting in my hours, even though throughout my early- and mid-twenties I wasn't always sure where I was headed.

atac: Finding the right path can involve some tough lessons—ever have it all fall apart on stage?

BR: Some of the best memories come from the worst train-wrecks. Buffalo Rose had one show go iconically wrong in Indianapolis a handful of years ago. We tried playing an older song that we hadn't rehearsed in a while and it fell completely apart halfway through - we had to "jam" our way to the end. The song was completely retired from our set after that day, partly because it didn't feel like it fit our aesthetic anymore and partly because it conjures traumatic memories. We can laugh about it now because it's the kind of on-stage mistake that we've learned how to handle and covertly fix.

atac: How’d you ended up in Pittsburgh and for those new to Buffalo Rose, what’s the long short of how you all came together?

BR: I moved to Pittsburgh to attend Duquesne University’s jazz guitar program. I came to love the city’s music scene during those four years at school and decided to stick around.

Buffalo Rose was a beautiful anomaly that happened a year or so after I graduated. We were all in noisy rock bands at the time and Shane pulled a few of us together to play on a quiet, beautiful folk ballad he had written. A couple of shows later, we realized that we had something more than just a side project on our hands and we leaned in.

atac: Tell me about these noisy rock bands…

BR: Shane had Manic Soul, Lucy and Mac had Memphis Hill, I was in Ferdinand the Bull, and Jason played with a whole bunch of hip-hop and jazz groups around town. All varying degrees of noisy, but certainly more so than those first few Buffalo Rose songs we played together :) By the time Margot joined the band in 2021 we had re-introduced a lot of attitude back into the band's sound.

Buffalo Rose. Photo courtesy of the band.

atac: Who have you been listening to lately?

BR: Noname’s Room 25: Just relistened to this one on our last trip. Noname's first album, Telefone, blew my mind back in the day, and this one iterates on it so beautifully. She transports me.

I'm in awe of Nickel Creek’s knack for pushing bluegrass instruments and harmonies into new aesthetic universes. Celebrants has been on rotation in the band van since it came out.
As a composer of instrumental music and a member of a vocal-forward folk/pop group, I appreciate when an artist can straddle both styles on one album and make it work. Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer lives in my head as a reference point no matter what kind of music I'm writing or arranging.

I’ll also mention that I loved seeing Laura Marling at the Rex in Pittsburgh a few years ago. She had a remarkable command of the stage, her arrangements, her band, everything. I came away completely satisfied and inspired.

atac: Buffalo Rose co-wrote songs with Tom Paxton. The Tom Paxton! What was that like?

BR: We love Tom so much. Lucy, Shane, and Margot are the primary songwriters of the band and have spent the most time working with him, but I am so energized by him every time we perform together or I get to be a fly on the wall during a writing session. He gets more excited than anyone I know about songwriting. He’s living proof that music keeps you young.

atac: Two parter: Buffalo Rose played atac back in 2019—what’s new for this October show and, what else do you have going on in life?

BR: The show at Amazing Things will be a blast! Yes, I believe our last time playing there was in 2019. Since then, we've released a full length record and two EPs, and done a ton of touring. Expect a new dynamic stage show with lots of energy and fresh material.

I also released an acoustic trio album under my own name this year! It's called Meanwhile and every member of Buffalo Rose ended up being involved in its creation one way or another. I'm very proud of it—you'll be able to buy it at the atac show or you can listen to it wherever you stream.

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Buffalo Rose performs live at atac on Saturday October 21st. You can grab tickets here.

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