Herd of Bison caught grazing in the Madcity on Max Ink Radio

We are local music heard a bison brand new music from them is called the return Lord Buffalo. It's the name of the new album

It's pretty cool rocker. Love the I love the keyboards of a thizer or whatever in there

Good stuff there pretty insane, huh? And the best part about a rocker. Yeah, while the song was playing

Yeah, the band is air drumming

In the studio. I was I was like wondering. I'm like, well, you know, I mean, this is really complex drums

And I know the drummer I happen to know the guy and so I was like how do all the rest of the people know where all the drum parts are

I can't do a lot of rehearsals and watch the guy a lot

It was heard it a few times. It was just a great moment. I enjoyed it very much

844-967-2789-844-96 party call or text if you got a question for her to bison rocker

Jimmy Madison drummer Ben Lakuda won the first Clyde Stubbelfield scholarship that was presented by the Madison area music association

drummer for the cuss and blackstar drumline Ben left Madison to pursue his music career studying at the Berkeley

School of Music in Boston where he started a progressive rock band made of friends and other students from Berkeley

heard of bison is out with new music and back in Wisconsin to film an upcoming video here in the studio with us is drummer Ben Lakuda

and heard of bison

Welcome to maxing radio

Well, thank you. Thank you. Thanks now. It's just kind of funny because we were doing a whole story earlier and talking to joy be banks about Clyde Stubbelfield's birthday coming up a celebration

So it was ironic they have you in the studio as the first recipient of the Clyde Stubbelfield scholarship

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. How is schoolbing you guys are done in school, right?

Almost almost um, I'm done Tony is done

Delaney actually is not yep Delaney is actually not

At Berkeley, but you're still in school. Yeah, I'm still in school. So not from music though

I just have the rest of the semester in the summer to go and that's that's pretty much it

Wow, so uh Ben drums are your life. How did you get started playing music?

Um, that's a good question. I don't remember other than to say that I just bang

It was classic drummer story that I was just banging on every single thing in the house. How old do you think you were about four or five

Maybe so what was your parents role in your musical upbringing? Well, so my dad played drums throughout

Throughout high school he was in drum core and then he also played

Drumset throughout throughout college, but just in some punk bands

So he never he like he was never gonna try and do it professionally

Um, but he jammed but he jammed and he did have a drum kit

So after about I guess it was maybe like a year and a half two years of me banging on everything in the house

He finally brought the kid out

And there's been a drum kit in my house ever since

Nice

Uh for our listeners who may not be familiar with herd of bison

Tell us a little bit about this band

So this band is something well Ben composes the skeleton of the music, right? So what's your name?

My name is Paul Paul Fichino. So I'm the I'm the keyboard player in this band

Trying to take all these synth sounds that Ben wants

Trying to apply it just immediately on stage. So trying to take on as much as possible just yeah

That last song we just heard the keys I commented on the album yeah

So that melody that melody I wrote on top of

What about Ben wrote so Frank the guitar that you heard is

That's that's Francisco and he he's playing the line that I wrote and then Paul wrote the synthesizer melody that goes over top of it

Yeah, there's pretty much

All those come very complex uh tunes we have we have two very complex tunes in my guitar uh and

Yeah, most of the guitar parts were either

Especially for for the battle in the return, which are the most complex tunes in the record

Most of the guitar parts were originally synth lines that I adapted into either fredder or fredless guitar and then just

Uh took it from there basically nice you in the backup. What's your name and what do you do and

So you know, you know, you know

Sometimes you need that one guy that's just in the group to help out when they need help as me

My name is T the Pharaoh. I'm an artist and audio engineer out here in medicine and uh

I've went to school with Ben. We were kids and we knew each other for the longest amount of time

He hit me up one day and he was like hey, uh, I got a spot open for you

If you want to go back to the high school and go perform and I was like, you know what?

100% we haven't done anything yet. Let's go ahead and do something

So you don't actually play the band you just help out. Yeah. No, I just come in

I wanted to they got a vocal part on there

So they wanted me to come in and do that so which would you call yourself the band manager? I would call myself

It's uh, it's spirit guardian

Yeah

As long as I'm around, you know that there's it's it's it's bison, right?

It's the lower lower buffalo. So you're a chill manager. Yeah, yeah, it's spirit. Yeah, spirit. Yeah, would you say spirit? What spirit spirit?

Guardian spirit. Guardian spirit. Guardian spirit. Guardian. Every band needs a spirit guardian

And I'm sorry. What's your what's your name and what do you do and hurt a bison? Yeah, my name is Delaney gliman

I'm the female vocalist

Yeah, we used to have

Another male vocalist, but he's no longer part of the band. So it's just me as a sole vocalist

Well, and then these guys help me out because we need the lower notes to kind of round everything out

Especially with Ben's mind and everything else is going on. She says that's it

I just I just say the last word of every phrase that she has to tell I do

Yeah, one of those things so tell me no, but it's great. Yeah, tell us about the the video that you're doing at Oregon High School

so

Tony and I both graduated from Oregon High School class of 2017, right?

and

Yeah, so we we had I am still you know, I'm still friends with still close with all of the music department teachers there and

I know that every year the high school puts on a fine arts week and they always bring one particular act in to be the

like the s the school assembly and

So I asked them if they wanted us to be the assembly and they said yes

Wow, so you're gonna go play their live and then they're gonna film it. Yeah, so we're gonna have

Yes, we'll have um

Obviously, we'll be on stage playing the whole album start to finish all 40 minutes and uh, we also

I have a friend who is going to

college for lighting design his name is Aiden McLeod and

um

He

programmed this whole light sequence that is 40 minutes long to the music and he has like he controlled each light fixture individually

So all I have to do is hit start and as long as I hit start with the with the you know as long as we start exactly with the

With the light sequence then everything happens exactly at the right time and we don't have to touch anything

Well, wait what what what what happens if you get out of sync

Well, then you just are out of sync

So I got the spirit guardian

Sorry, what I what I meant to say was that if we get off then we all just come together and we have a short prayer in the middle of the stage

And then how it gets fixed

Magic so tell us about the new album is called Lord Buffalo

More like that's a solid good. It fits you all

It really does

It was it was

The whole idea behind it was it just I was I had read David Baldacci's book book series called

Based on a character named Will Roby and then I had watched the Mandalorian

And sometime after that I came up I came up with this I just had this idea for a character named Lord Buffalo

I knew there was going to be a starboard reference here

I didn't know that

So then so then I so then I laid out so then I laid out this whole like this basically

I laid out all of the song titles and then had to write the music to fit the songs

Yeah, and then my brother my brother is actually the guy wrapping on the album his uh his rap name is Roman

So we're both uh Fisino brothers and he

Just basically was asked to write all of these things and he took these super deep lyrics from the past two years and

Put it all over. So yes indeed. So as a band uh you're you're back

I mean you all spend part of the time in Boston part of the time here

I think some of you are in the Arctic Circle from what oh the way that's fake news

No fake news here. So uh

It was the Antarctic Circle Antarctic. Okay. Are you here? There's a circle time land. What do you got coming up?

Well, I'm still in Berkeley. So I have one more year at Berkeley

There's a lot of connections that are still out there. Obviously Ben, you're in Wisconsin. Delaney

You're going to be back in Boston. Yeah

Yeah, wherever we can be I guess any live shows besides the the film working on it

We're yeah, we're we're we're working on a lot of things and we'll be able to see the film then yes

Don't know what don't know where or when yet. Okay, where can we keep up with herd of bison follow us on social media

It's yeah, Instagram Facebook H.E.R.D. of bison

heard up bison

I don't did you and also the website sorry Delaney's Delaney whispered tiktok and Paul whispered website

Anyway, well, hey, tell us about this song. We're about to hear. It's called the return

I think yeah, I think we already played the return. Yep. Sorry to rock her. Oh

It's about to return journey

The return came back speaking of journey before we talk about the song speaking on journey

I'm hoping to go to Boston sometime. I might need a place to crash

I crash at your place. Oh my god. I got an apartment. It's got a met. It's got an air mattress. Great

Stay on it many times. It's a very comfortable air mattress. You'll be happy perfect

Clean sheets blankets. We got you. Yeah, they have room service

I mean, they'll bring you water perfect

I can I can make I can make you pasta at about 11 o'clock at night

Can I bring my nine cousins with me?

I don't know if we have nine air mattress seven is max

I'm like the worst guest you could ever buy

All right, tell us about the song the journey

well, so this is well, it's the third song in the album and I don't I don't actually I haven't talked to Roman about exactly what he was

What he was thinking in terms of where where this falls in the whole journey of the of the album, but

It's it's it's kind of just addressing the world basically

Yeah, basically just addressing the problems of the world just right up front and just saying

You know, if you want something you got to go for it, you know, just push through keep going

I mean ask him yourself. He'll be all over social media. Oh, yeah, hopefully we can get here um

If we come back we'll come back. We'll bring Roman. There you go. Roman. You got to come with us

Yeah, it's brand-new heard a bison as maxic on civic media. We are local music