"In the nasally rumble of his voice on the first few tracks here Riviere sounds like he might be blood kin to Tony Gilkyson, and his songs have the same restless thrust as Gilkyson's best work; but as the disc unfolds, Riviere's timbre softens and lightens into an airy, eerie near-falsetto replicant of the young Neil Young's voice. Some may find this unnerving, or derivative, but settle in and it all makes sense, sounds right, and wholly Riviere's. The song titles underscore the importance of location in Riviere's work-'Ohio,' 'Old Kentucky,' 'Alkali/Cold Harbor,' 'This World,' 'Angry Town,' 'Three Rivers,' 'Rainy Day,' even 'Destination Unknown' and its implied journey. The music informing these numbers is itself a kind of map-the energetic rockabilly shadings and propulsive, insistent rhythm of 'Destination Unknown' (and Burton's chiming, exuberant guitar solo) as the narrator wends his way from the Carolinas to Missouri to Wyoming and beyond; the sparkling, Allmans/Marshall Tucker-like cascading twin guitar lines erupting in 'Ohio,' a tense, grinding summons to explore some unsavory history buried by time and blood; the languid, old-timey fiddle-accordion-banjo-mandolin ensemble of 'Old Kentucky,' which turns out to be one man's apology offered to the land he plundered for his own riches at the moment he realizes the land, not he, will prevail--'there's cards on the table/and a shell of a man/but these hills of Kentucky stand'; in 'Alkali/Cold Harbor,' the mournful pedal steel, stark, deliberately plucked banjo and ominous wash of organ chords filling up the track as Riviere, singing in an odd, detached voice, as if he's looking back on horrors from a psychological dead zone, recalls the desperate straits in which he found himself, apparently during the Civil War, when his only aim was 'to stay alive' and get back to the solitude of his Tennessee mountain home. You get the idea. Wilderness ranges across time and space with impunity, seemingly coming out of antiquity at one moment, at another firmly rooted in modern times, and occasionally daring to occupy a phantom zone of past and present in the same breath.

The roots-rock singer/songwriter/guitarist who records under the name Mad Buffalo has a master's degree in wildlife biology, and his nonmusic career includes contributing to the preservation of 40,000-plus acres as permanent wildlife conservation easements for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"[The landscape] is a very natural theme for me," says Riviere, who splits his time between Montana and Washington. "It is always on my mind, but actually, I spend quite a bit of effort trying to diffuse it. I don't want to bore everybody with my issues and do try hard to produce a diverse album with a variety of subject matter and melodies."

Mad Buffalo's latest album is the self-released Wilderness, which follows 2004's A Good Bad Road and 2006's Fool Stand. On Wilderness, Riviere says he enjoyed exploring his country side in depth, and the experience reminded him of his days growing up on a small farm in Northern California.

Wilderness producer Marty Grebb brought in guitar legend James Burton to play on the songs "Little Walk" and "Destination Unknown." Riviere knows all about Burton's extensive resume, and he's quick to point out the man known for his "chicken picking" style spent a number of years playing with John Denver.

Speaking of Denver, Riviere realized not long after Denver's death how much the "Rocky Mountain High" singer influenced him as a junior high school student.

"The whole image, I guess - music, the mountains, the hiking boots, all of it - seemed very cool to me at the time, and I'm now convinced he did influence my feelings for the landscape, music and my career choices later on," Riviere explains.