Count Richard Buckner In On This One: My Medicine Bag

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: A medicine bag was given to me by a gentleman named Doc in Colorado a number of years ago. He lived outside of town and visually was somewhere between a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition and a biker. He was also a real sweet man and a tailor of hides and the like. He was wearing this medicine bag around his neck when I met him. I have a feeling I might not have been at my peak at the time. I asked him about the bag. He told me that he thought I needed it and took it off of his neck and tied it onto mine. I didn’t take it off for a long time. We hung out together late into that night in a cabin in the woods. I remember asking him about its contents. All he said was, “You don’t wanna know.”