Donna The Buffalo

Donna The Buffalo is not just a band, rather one might say that Donna The Buffalo has become a lifestyle for its members and audiences. Since 1989, the roots rockers have played thousands of shows and countless festivals including Bonnaroo, Newport Folk Festival, Telluride, Austin City Limits Festival, Merle Fest, and Philadelphia Folk Festival.  They’ve opened for The Dead and have toured with Peter Rowan, Del McCoury, Los Lobos, Little Feat, Jim Lauderdale, Rusted Root, and Railroad Earth to name a few. They also toured with Ben & Jerry’s co-founder
Ben Cohen to help raise awareness about increased corporate spending in politics.  In 1991, the band started the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, NY. The four day festival has become an annual destination for over 15,000 music lovers every year and was started as an AIDS benefit. It continues as a benefit for arts and education. To date, the event has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and is now one of three Grassroots Festivals; the Bi-annual
Shakori Hills fest in North Carolina and Virginia Key festival in Florida. In 2016 GrassRoots Culture Camp was introduced in Trumansburg, New York as four days of music, art, dance and movement workshops, including nightly dinners and dances.

Founded and fronted by singer-guitarist Sean Walsh, The National Reserve mines an archetypal musical seam, pulling together from countless influences to form their own timeless brand of American music. Walsh and the band have spent nearly every Friday night of the past decade lighting it up at a Brooklyn bar, establishing themselves through the lost art of the weekly gig. Endearing their regulars and winning over boozers and barflies with epic three hour sets showcasing remarkable breadth of songcraft and showmanship, if you are a fan of live music in New York City, there is a good chance you’ve seen The National Reserve at some point over the past ten years.

“Look at The Band.” Walsh says, “Guys like Taj Mahal, Leon Russell, and the E Street Band, they cut their teeth doing what we call residencies now but were just a gig back then. You’d play three weeks at one club and then move on; play three weeks at the next club. You basically holed up somewhere and learned how to entertain people. And that, in my opinion, is something that has been lost.”

They’ve left their mark, and in the process Walsh has worked some of the top talent the City, and country, has to offer. Once bemoaned as “just a bar band” by a popular NYC radio host, they have traveled to Europe and back, toured half of the United States and this bar band has opened for the likes of Tedeschi Trucks Band, Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Marcus King, Lukas Nelson, Amy Helm and Brent Cobb. They released three EPs during the pandemic months following 2018's Motel La Grange and are presently in the studio working on the next full length release. In the meantime The National Reserve continues to build a following as they take the sound they’ve built in Brooklyn across the country.