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Artists sing or write about life. Most work from their imaginations. Only a few draw from having actually lived the episodes described through their music. Of that small number, Randy Riviere (pronounced "Ri-VEER"), who records under the name Mad Buffalo, stands almost alone by virtue of what he has experienced and accomplished, how he connects it all to the flow of American culture and history, and how he ties it together through the poetry of his lyric and the emotion of his performance.

Wilderness, the latest of three Mad Buffalo albums, transcends the standards Riviere set with his previous releases, A Good Bad Road and Fool Stand. Those who have followed him through these past five-odd years will see in Wilderness the qualities that drew them to those works, especially in how his music seems to emerge from some place deep in our collective DNA.

What's different on Wilderness is its depth, its sense of all the parts of Riviere's story coming together as a unified statement about who we are, how we've come to where we stand together and sometimes in isolation, where the roads that began in that place honored by its title are leading, and what choices we might make for ourselves in years to come.

This is because Riviere himself has passed the milestone that he's seen for years, always somewhere far ahead but only now put behind him. Up until recently, music has been only one part of his life. He's played it since his high school years north of Sacramento, in garage bands that foreshadowed his integration of the sound and spirit of Johnny Cash, the Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd and especially Neil Young into a unique and personal fabric.

But for years, other things demanded his attention: service in the U.S. Army, blue-collar gigs that included working a drill rig and driving a long-haul truck route, and being inspired by his contact with the land to return to school, earn a master's degree in wildlife biology, spearhead the preservation of more than 40,000 acres as permanent wildlife conservation easements working for the government in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as the head of his own company, receive multiple awards for his environmental efforts.

There is much more as well, but for our purposes the key point is that Riviere's love for music, though moved to a back burner, never ceased to simmer. Only when the time was right did he raise the temperature, pour all the ingredients of his adventures into the pot, and shift his attention to his most enduring passion.

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That search begins
with Wilderness
and leads as far
as imagination
allows.

Now Playing: "Alkali/Cold Harbor" from Wilderness CD