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Band will go back in history for rare retrospective show
By John Benson
A walk down Dave Buker Lane is what the Poland native and Columbus resident has planned for his hometown return gig Saturday at Cedars Lounge.
Formerly of The Devotees and The Depths, with the latter act featuring his longtime musical collaborator Tyler Theofilos, Buker has crafted a 22-song set featuring the aforementioned bands along with his current group Dave Buker and The Historians. Lifelong friends, both musicians graduated from Poland Seminary High School in 2004.
“The goal for this show is to do songs that we’ve written either together or separately over the last six years under one big umbrella because we don’t get to play very often,” Buker said.
Joining Buker (vocals, guitar, keyboard, synthesizer) and Theofilos (vocals, guitar) will be bassist Mark Cracraft (current member of The Historians and former member of The Depths), drummer Jared Buker (formerly of the Devotees and The Depths), trumpet player Justin Hite (formerly of The Devotees) and guitarist-keyboardist-bassist Nate Welch (formerly of The Devotees).
It’s been quite the interesting musical journey for Buker, whose three bands have all ventured into decidedly different and unique soundscapes. Even though the groups may be different in style, the 25-year-old musician feels they all fit together nicely.
“The Devotees were very folk rock, Americana, Dylan-goes-electric,” Buker said. “When it came time to do stuff with The Depths, it was a more simplistic, four-piece rock band straight- forward idea. It wasn’t conceptual. Now with The Historians, it’s kind of a combination. It’s what we call electro-folk, sort of folk-esque sort of music with a lot of electronic elements to it with programmed beats and synthesizers on top of acoustic instruments.”
Buker’s current act came after he lived briefly in New York City before relocating to Columbus. There he ended up scoring the low-budget film “The Last Vampire on Earth,” which he points out is available on Netflix. Feeling as though the film soundtrack material was too strong to bury, that’s when he hooked up with The Historians, which earlier this year after a lineup change was renamed to Dave Buker and the Historians.
“My music has kind of come full circle, where I encompass a little bit of everything,” Buker said. “I’ve always been interested in working with electronic music, but I’ll never get away from wanting to play folk music and having that sort of influence. So it makes sense to me now that I put myself in a situation where I feel like I can do just about anything under the guise of Dave Buker and the Historians. I can really tackle any genre of music and still maintain an identity.”
Up next for Buker and the Historians is a full-length debut, as well as a solo EP he’ll be recording back in Youngstown over the next week or so. For inspiration, the 2009 Dana School of Music graduate has decided to not only get his fortune read but to record the audio from the session.
“I think it’s a curious endeavor and might give me something to write about,” Buker laughed. “I was trying to get myself hypnotized but it’s hard to find somebody to do that.”