Buffalo Nickel | |
Type: | studio |
Artist: | Dan Baird |
Cover: | Buffalo Nickel (album).jpg |
Released: | 1996 |
Recorded: | 1995 |
Label: | American |
Producer: | Brendan O'Brien |
Prev Title: | Love Songs for the Hearing Impaired |
Prev Year: | 1992 |
Next Title: | Redneck Savant |
Next Year: | 2001 |
Buffalo Nickel is an album by the American musician Dan Baird, released in 1996.[1] [2] The first single was "Younger Face".[3] Baird supported the album with a North American tour.[4]
The album was produced by Brendan O'Brien, who also played guitar.[5] Baird cowrote or wrote nine of the songs; he ignored musical trends when forming the songs.[6] [7] Two songs were written by Terry Anderson, Baird's bandmate in the Yayhoos.[8] Georgia Satellite Mauro Magellan played drums. "Hush" is a cover of the song made famous by Deep Purple, with backing vocals by Joe South.[9] "I Want You Bad" is a cover of the NRBQ song.[10] "Cumberland River" and "Younger Face" are about washed-up characters. "Hell to Pay" is about a friend who destroys his life. The album contains a hidden track about a Tennessee state park.[11]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that "Dan Baird plays guitar like the cockiest rooster stalking the walk and sings like a Faces-era Rod Stewart weaned on stock car races and homemade sin."[12] The Denver Post determined that Baird "is making the kind of footstomping, rude, seat-of-the-pants rock 'n' roll you hardly hear anymore."[13] The New York Times concluded that, "in an era of grunge power chords, he's dedicated to twangy, down-home, cowbell-socking rockers steeped in Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones."[14] The Los Angeles Times deemed the album "not profound, exactly, but a sloppy good time."
Stereo Review noted that "Baird's an old-school rocker who kicks the blues and boogie around with a salty wit underscored by a love of the sweaty, footstompin' fun that can be had when guitars, bass, and drums fall into the lockstep of Faces and Humble Pie by way of Sun and StaxVolt."[15] The Toronto Star stated that "Baird remains one of southern rock's finest writers of toe-tapping tunes and dispensers of home truths."[16] The Austin American-Statesman opined that O'Brien "seems obsessed with trying to keep the careers of former Georgia Satellites alive ... [he] only helps point out why the Satellites were one-hit wonders."[10]
AllMusic wrote that "Baird's approach is so basic it borders on the generic, except when he comes up with striking lyrics to supplement the simple sound."