RICHARD BUCKNER BLOOMED BEFORE HIS CAREER BEGAN TO WITHER

Seeing that i have so many yanks reading Lost Treasures nowadays, and considering i have been dedicating most of my articles to stadium acts of late, Genesis and Van Halen being two prime examples, i thought i better dig deep into the heart of america and unearth an artist that's really grassroots, just like the kind of fella you'd have a Budweiser with at a truck stop deep down in Texas or New Mexico who drives a Sierra Grand and wears a pick up cap. Talking of Texas and music that symbolises its wide open spaces and its culture of roadhouse bars and drinking copulous amounts of whiskey, when RICHARD BUCKNER burst onto the music scene in 1994 with his superb americana laced country folk album BLOOMED, Texas was put back on the map in a metophorical sense as a backdrop to an album which makes the listener feel that no matter what part of the world they're living in, that they get picked up and plonked deep in the heart of Texas. Not every folk artist or album can do that, in fact most dont, but Buckner's first outing was a revelation, a prime piece of no-nonsense american roots music that had just the right amount of folk, country and americana. Buckner never matched the storytelling grandeur of BLOOMED with his subsequent releases, my favourite tracks are the opening BLUE AND WONDER, MUD, THIS IS WHERE and DAISYCHAIN, but all the songs either side of these are certainly not fillers. Trust me, i am not sold very easily on folk style music, because much of the time it lacks a lyrical purpose and falls into a self indulgent heap. BLOOMED was an uncommon exception to the rule with folk. Buckner originally come from California, lived in Alberta, Canada for many years and currently resides in New York state. He did release a much anticipated and long awaited album in 2011, maybe one of my readers can tell me if its worth writing an article about.
By the way, i couldn't track down a studio version of BLUE AND WONDER and other songs off BLOOMED, so this clip features Richard Buckner performing it live in North Carolina many years after the album was released, i think around 2007 or 2008.