For nearly four decades, Donna the Buffalo has been the quiet center of Upstate New York’s roots music ecosystem. Formed in Trumansburg, near Ithaca in the Finger Lakes, the band has built one of the most devoted touring followings in American music while also creating the institution that defines their region: the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music & Dance. Their fans call themselves “The Herd,” and they follow the band with a near-Deadhead intensity that has kept Donna the Buffalo on the road since 1988.
Origins and Sound
Founded in 1988 by multi-instrumentalists Jeb Puryear (vocals, guitar, pedal steel, fiddle) and Tara Nevins (vocals, fiddle, accordion, washboard), Donna the Buffalo emerged from the Ithaca-area community of old-time and traditional musicians. Their sound is harder to describe than any other Upstate band’s: a layered fusion of old-time fiddle, Cajun and zydeco, country rock, folk, reggae, and groove-based jam. They were Americana before “Americana” was a marketing category, and they remain genuinely difficult to file in any single bin. The band name itself reportedly came from an early brainstorming session in which “Dawn of the Buffalo” was misheard as “Donna.” The accident stuck.
The GrassRoots Festival
In 1991, the band co-founded the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival in Trumansburg. It began as a four-day benefit for AIDS Work of Tompkins County and grew into one of the most beloved regional music festivals in the Northeast — drawing 12,000–15,000 attendees annually and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for arts, education, and AIDS-related causes. Sister GrassRoots festivals later took root at Shakori Hills in North Carolina and, for a decade, at Virginia Key in Florida. The festival network became almost as important to Donna the Buffalo’s identity as their recordings.
The Herd and the Long Run
Across more than two dozen recordings — beginning with The White Tape (1989) and including critical favorites such as Positive Friction (2000), Tonight, Tomorrow and Yesterday (2013, which charted in the Americana Top 5), and Dance in the Street (2018) — Donna the Buffalo has refined a sound that is unmistakably theirs. They have played Bonnaroo, Newport, Telluride, Austin City Limits, MerleFest, and the Philadelphia Folk Festival. They have toured with Peter Rowan, Del McCoury, Los Lobos, and Little Feat. They have served as de facto house band at festivals, backing acts including the Avett Brothers and Béla Fleck.
Most bands fade. Donna the Buffalo just keeps going — playing the long game, building the community, holding down their corner of the Finger Lakes with the kind of patient durability that turns a band into an institution.