AVI BUFFALO
A solo show at a much-loved vegan restaurant magnetized Avi Buffalo into a full band; full-band Avi Buffalo magnetized L.A’s Eastside musicians (plus they hit all the major press in the city before they had ANY kind of record out at all); and engineer Aaron Embry (Elliott Smith and Emmylou Harris sideman, among others) invited Avi Buffalo to help him test out the new studio he’d built in his house. This was the big leap—except for some after-class time at a local recording school, Avi Buffalo had never existed anywhere but a laptop or a really good house party. One of the first songs recorded just for fun was “What’s In It For?”; it was also one of the first songs Avi put up on MySpace (“Because that’s all it takes,” says Avi, still a tiny bit shocked). And once Sub Pop came inquiring, “What’s In It For?” became the first single from the album (which hadn’t even been thought of as a possible album until all this). This all happened within a few months—it even screwed up their grades at Millikan. (Don’t worry, no catastrophes.) And then, says Avi, everything got kind of freaky!
That’s where they are now: about to follow their first ten songs into the outside world, and about to celebrate a 21st birthday, and about to figure out whose foibles metastasize in what way after ten hours in a little van, and about to settle into something that they could do for the rest of their lives.
