The name came from a brainstorming session before a Cabbagetown Café gig in Ithaca in 1988 — “Dawn of the Buffalo” was misheard as “Donna the Buffalo” and stuck. What also stuck was the music Tara Nevins and Jeb Puryear were building: old-time Appalachian fiddle, Zydeco, and Cajun traditions folded into something the industry hadn’t named yet. They were doing Americana before Americana was a genre. Eleven albums and nearly four decades later, that sound arrives at Town Ballroom in Buffalo on Friday, January 22, for an evening their devoted following, known as the Herd, has been tracking across the country for years.
About the Show
Billed as “An Evening With Donna the Buffalo” and presented by Funtime Presents, the January 22 show features the band’s current five-piece lineup: Nevins and Puryear, the only two original members, alongside Chris English, keyboardist David McCracken, and Ted Pecchio. Nevins plays fiddle, guitar, accordion, washboard, and tambourine; Puryear moves between guitar, pedal steel, fiddle, and bass. Together they write most of the material, songs that began in the tradition of southern Appalachian string bands and grew into something electric and communal over decades of touring.
In October 2026, the band released “On The Right Side Of History,” a new single with Horace Trahan. Their most recent full-length, Dance in the Street, came out in 2018; their 2013 album Tonight, Tomorrow and Yesterday reached number five on the Americana Music Association’s airplay chart. The band plays more than 100 concerts a year and has appeared at Bonnaroo, the Newport Folk Festival, and Austin City Limits Festival, with opening slots for the Grateful Dead along the way. They’ve traveled alongside Los Lobos, Little Feat, and Rusted Root. In 1991, they founded the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, which now draws between 12,000 and 15,000 people annually. Puryear on what keeps them going: “It feels incredible to be with music that’s really alive. The music and the audience are bigger than you are. That’s the milestone. That’s the touchdown.”
Venue & Logistics
Town Ballroom sits at 681 S. Main Street in Buffalo, a standing-room venue on the western New York concert circuit. The show is Friday, January 22, 2027, at 8:00 p.m. Ages 12 and up; minors under 16 must be accompanied by a parent, and a government-issued ID is required for entry.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Buy tickets