Grant Lee Buffalo Split
In what amounts to one of the quieter break-ups in recent history,
Grant Lee Buffalo have decided to call it quits. Actually, the
official announcement of the band’s demise came on June 9, but
because the band had already been dropped by its Warner Bros.
record label, the company didn’t bother to disseminate the brief
press release to the media.
The official statement, posted on the group’s unofficial Crackdown
Web site (https://www.people.virginia.edu/~akm5f/glb.htm), reads in
part: “The original members of the critically acclaimed group Grant
Lee Buffalo have announced they are parting ways…[Grant Lee]
Phillips and [Joey] Peters remain on amicable terms and the
possibility of a future Grant Lee Buffalo album exists.”
A subsequent letter posted on the site by Phillips explains: “It’s
no good hummin’ or hawin’ about the band this or the band that. I’m
on a particular donkey-headed path, it’s narrow, only room for one
ya know…presently, I’m writing up a storm from morning ’till
midnight…”.
Similarly, former GLB drummer Joey Peters has kept busy working on
solo material, music supervising, playing drums with the pop duo
Evan and Jaron and, oddly enough, working with original GLB
bassist-producer Paul Kimble, who was fired by Phillips in April
’97. “I actually met with [Paul] last week and we’re talking about
doing a new kind of project,” says Peters. “I don’t know that it’s
gonna be so much a band that plays out immediately because it’s
gonna be more concentrated on recording, as he’s been doing.”
Kimble completed half an album’s worth of material for London
Records before getting dropped by the label.
Peters refused to comment on the current relationship between him
and Phillips — even though the press release claims it’s
“amicable” — but says he hasn’t spoken with the former GLB
frontman since the band broke up. Says Peters, “the end of the
Buffalo thing is just, whatever, an end of an era.”
Grant Lee Buffalo formed in the early nineties and released four
albums, the most recent of which was last year’s
Jubilee.