Desert Horizon

Album Review

Desert Horizon is harmonica player Norton Buffalo's second solo album, although it might be more appropriate to borrow terminology from jazz and describe it as his second album "as a leader." Not that Desert Horizon is a jazz album — actually, the musical style would best be described as country-flavored pop/rock — but Buffalo, a long-time sideman, has gathered a studio full of notable musicians to join him, including Bill Champlin of the Sons of Champlin and Nicolette Larson on background vocals, Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead on percussion, and guitarist Greg Douglas and drummer Gary Mallaber, bandmates of Buffalo's in the Steve Miller Band. As some of these names suggest, the country inflections in the music derive not so much from Nashville as from Marin County, California. This is cosmic cowboy stuff, a kind of neo-Western swing, and to play it Buffalo has employed no less than three steel guitar players. He sings the songs in a clear, adenoidal tenor, often double-tracking the voice to give it body, and, as might be expected, he takes up much of the space with his harmonica solos, which are more country than bluesy, and certainly very smooth. Buffalo's solo work doesn't seem likely to lead to a big career as a leader, but it sounds like everybody had fun in the studio on Desert Horizon.