The White Buffalo set to release live album

A powerful and prolific storyteller through his songcraft, the Emmy-nominated, Oregon-born, and Southern California-bred, singer-songwriter-guitarist Jake Smith, aka The White Buffalo, will release his first-ever live album, “A Freight Train Through The Night,” on September 20.

Smith is the son of Jeff and Ginny Smith of Sisters, and The White Buffalo has performed at festivals in Sisters on numerous occasions.

Arriving on double-vinyl, in a limited, collector’s edition run, “A Freight Train Through The Night” is available for pre-order worldwide at https://the-white-buffalo-us.myshopify.com/collections/a-freight-train-through-the-night.

Smith describes the new live album:

“This album spans my entire career, over 20-plus years of writing and performing songs. With more than a hundred songs to choose from, some of these tracks I wrote in my 20s, and others were born just years ago. We selected crowd favorites and some deep cuts to give them a new life.” He adds, “We also did a completely reworked adaptation of the song ‘House of the Rising Sun.’ I wanted to establish a definitive version that was all our own, and representative of our sound giving a fresh alternative to the original ‘Sons of Anarchy’ show version. This album has all the emotion and passion of the live experience, it’s visceral, in a way that can’t be attained in the studio. What we do live is wildly different than studio albums. Pure and raw, no backing tracks, no auto tune, not perfect. It’s the three of us giving it our all, us in our purest form.”

“A Freight Train Through The Night” was recorded live on March 1-2 at the Belly-Up in San Diego and finds The White Buffalo reteam with his band, including Christopher Hoffee (bass/keys/guitars) and Matt Lynott (drums). The group brought in Mike Butler (The Rolling Stones, Reba McEntire, Phoebe Bridgers) to record and mix the live album. Smith says, “You can feel the energy of the audience, that circular push and pull, between crowd and stage. It’s unique every night, every show. It’s that love and flow that feeds all of us. We are in it together and you can really feel it in these recordings. We have a long history with the Belly-Up and brought in Mike Butler to capture the audio and mix, so this album sounds like you are in the room.”

Named after a line from the song “How the West Was Won,” the album encapsulates nomadic life and the nights of a traveling musician, as well as the group’s own gloves-off approach to their live performances.

Watch the trailer for the new live album from The White Buffalo, “A Freight Train Through The Night,” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXaeJI_Owj4.