Count Richard Buckner In On This One: My Truck

This week, singer/songwriter Richard Buckner releases Our Blood (Merge), his first new music since 2006’s Meadow. The nine-track LP was recorded by Buckner at his upstate New York home studio with pedal-steel guitarist Buddy Cage (New Riders Of The Purple Sage) and drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth). Buckner kicks off a co-headlining tour with labelmate David Kilgour (the Clean) on August 16 in Los Angeles. In the meantime, Buckner will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Buckner: My truck turned over 566,000 miles this month. I got it as a lease, new, in 1996. When the time came turn it in a few years later, I was so much over on the allotted mileage that it made more sense for me to just buy it. It has worked out well: It still has the original engine and transmission, and I’ve only had to make a few other expected repairs besides a couple of batteries and about six windshields. The only modifications I’ve made are the salt, pepper and hot-sauce tour-food cure-alls that I travel with and trading in the cassette player for something I can plug my iPod into. I take it to my local dealership to get the scheduled maintenance checks, and my truck is like a celebrity or an anomaly. Over the years, the driver’s seat seems to have taken the worst of the wear, but last time I was there, the mechanic who usually works on it yanked out a seat from a junker that they were about to crush and put it in without me even asking, free of charge. Not new, but springier, a little younger, less stained from spilled coffee and such. I sit a little higher now, proud, amazed that both of us are still running.

Another photo after the jump.