About the artist

John Dufilho is a Texas musician, songwriter, engineer, and producer best known from his work with Dallas’ The Deathray Davies, CLIFFFS, I Love Math and John Singer Seargent (to name a few). He is also a drummer for Denver’s indie stalwarts The Apples In Stereo and a collaborator and producer for Ben Kweller and Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s. Dufilho is ready to share his first album as John Buffalo this fall, a collection of electronic songs that embody John’s indie music roots while evoking sounds of Devo and Beck. Along with the news of the LP, John Buffalo is excited to share “I Got This Now,” a song featured on the new album that affirms his positive attitude after surviving a near death experience.

“‘I Got This Now’ was the first song I wrote for this record. The goal was to make a completely different sound than anything I’ve written or recorded before. I used an Arturia synthesizer and drum machines. As I finished it, I thought – that was fun. I’ll prob never play this for anyone. I’ll just keep it for myself. This led to writing and recording 10 more. Now friends keep saying it sounds like fucked up Beck, which I like.” – John Buffalo

Last year, Dufilho ended up undergoing massive bypass surgery (2x) after an initial alarming routine visit to the doctor that sent him immediately to a cardiologist. The San Antonio native discovered he was suffering from a hereditary condition and needed open-heart surgery stat. A healthy person his entire life, the news came as quite a shock and being a musician, he did not have the kind of health insurance or savings to pay for the life-saving procedure. On top of that, his main source of income had dried up due to COVID-19. He found some financial assistance from an organization called the Musician’s Health Alliance, but still had insurmountable medical debt to deal with and that’s where Stephen King comes in. One of his fans told him about The Haven Foundation – a non-profit started by King with the sole purpose of helping freelance artists who have dedicated their life to their craft and have experienced a “career threatening” emergency. The application must be submitted in writing via mail and that’s exactly what John did. To his surprise and relief, they covered the entire procedure, offering him the highest grant amount to date.

Despite some complications with the surgery (it had to be repeated a second time due to internal bleeding), John survived and began his long road to recovery – part of which stipulated he could not lift anything heavier than 5 pounds. That meant no guitars, no drums, and certainly no live performances. Itching to get back to work, John started playing on a synth and drum machine and, while he didn’t know where these sessions would lead at the time, he was creating his first all-electronic album which he decided to record under the moniker John Buffalo.