Arthur Buck

BIOGRAPHY

Singer and songwriter Joseph Arthur and guitarist Peter Buck had been friends and occasional collaborators for almost two decades before they finally teamed up to record an album under the name Arthur Buck. Having first met in 2000 when Arthur opened a string of dates for R.E.M., Buck would occasionally join Arthur on-stage in the years that followed. 2016 saw Arthur invited to perform at the Todos Santos Music Festival, an all-star event presented by Buck near his home in Todos Santos, Mexico. Perhaps fortuitously, Arthur left his Dobro guitar behind, and in 2017, he returned to Todos Santos in hopes of finding it. Buck invited him to spend some time at his home, where they spent several days swimming in the ocean and playing guitars together. Arthur shared a few ideas he’d been working on, and it instantly sparked a collaboration. The pair knocked out eight tunes in little more than three days, making their live debut as Arthur Buck the next evening at a benefit concert for local firefighters.

Arthur returned home and soon thereafter invited Buck to sit in at a Los Angeles gallery show, where they debuted three more songs written earlier that day during soundcheck. Four days later, Arthur Buck set to work in a Portland, OR studio, tracking the songs they’d written together in just seven productive hours. Additional overdubs were recorded in the two musicians’ respective home studios and then shared with legendary mixer Tchad Blake (Elvis Costello, T Bone Burnett, The Black Keys) to weave into what proved Arthur Buck’s self-titled debut album. Released in June 2018, Arthur Buck was met by worldwide critical applause for its roughly hewn but expertly crafted blend of classic rock, indie folk, and socially conscious lyricism, with Record Collector declaring, “Arthur Buck was quickly executed, it feels anything but dashed off. Though it’s essentially a finely-crafted guitar pop record, Arthur Buck also finds room for enough angles, quirks and adroitly-employed electronica to keep it interesting and it rarely puts a foot wrong as a result.”

Arthur Buck celebrated the album with a series of North American and European live dates, furthering their friendship and special musical camaraderie. Now, more than half a decade later, Arthur and Buck have rekindled their partnership with Arthur Buck 2, an equally eclectic collection of nine new songs, many of which had their genesis during their 2018 tour. Songs like “Where Did You Go” and “Not So Modern Now” – the latter marked by an epic, Pink Floyd-meets-Maggot Brain guitar solo from Arthur – see the duo infusing fresh elements of hi-and-lo-fidelity ingenuity without sacrificing their unreservedly enthusiastic approach to timeless rock ‘n’ roll songcraft. A joyous blast of creative solidarity and spontaneous invention, Arthur Buck 2 once again finds Joseph Arthur and Peter Buck capturing lightning in a bottle to concoct what has proven to be their own singular variety of musical magic.