Richard Buckner

Bloomed to Devotion + Doubt

Richard Carl Buckner is an American singer-songwriter born in California (MusicBrainz gives San Francisco and 1967, a detail we found only there). He lived for several years in Edmonton, Alberta and later in Brooklyn. In 1994 he fronted the Doubters for Bloomed, recorded in Lubbock, Texas and produced by Lloyd Maines. In January 1996 he recorded an acoustic album in San Francisco, self-produced and self-released and sold at early shows, which Overcoat issued as the self-titled album in 2000. He signed to MCA in late 1996, a label he later nicknamed Musical Career Assassins.

Devotion + Doubt, released on March 11, 1997 on MCA, was produced by J. D. Foster, 39:13. Craig Schumacher engineered it and Greg Calbi mastered it; guests included Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico, Howe Gelb, Champ Hood and Marc Ribot. It came in for about ninety thousand, he told Comes With a Smile, and I could've made it for ten thousand; he wanted Giant Sand's sound, I really wanted the songs taken apart and I wanted a bunch of different sounds. A label dispute concerned a song called "Jewelbomb". AllMusic's Mark Deming gave it 4.5 stars, calling it a significantly more ambitious and accomplished effort than Bloomed; Spin's Ann Powers gave 9 out of 10, Rolling Stone 3.5 out of 5, and the Chicago Tribune 2 out of 4, calling the lyrics pretentious.

Since and later

Since (1998, MCA, also produced by J. D. Foster, with John McEntire, Dave Schramm, David Grubbs and Syd Straw) was followed by his release from the label. The Hill (2000, Overcoat) set poems from Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. He made Impasse (2002), Dents and Shells (2004, Merge), Sir Dark Invader vs. The Fanglord with Jon Langford (2005), Meadow (2006), Our Blood (August 2, 2011) and Surrounded (2013), all but the Langford collaboration on Merge. An edited "Ariel Ramirez" was used in a Volkswagen Touareg ad, and the original appeared in the film The Strangers in 2008. His first book, Cuttings from the Tangle, came out from Black Sparrow Press in December 2020. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver has cited him as an influence. On songwriting he told Comes With a Smile: it's just fiction, with little points of personal experience in there, and get in and get out, you've made your point.