Grant Lee Buffalo Split

In what amounts to one of the quieter break-ups in recent history, Grant Lee Buffalo have decided to call it quits. Actually, the official announcement of the band's demise came on June 9, but because the band had already been dropped by its Warner Bros. record label, the company didn't bother to disseminate the brief press release to the media.

The official statement, posted on the group's unofficial Crackdown Web site (http://www.people.virginia.edu/~akm5f/glb.htm), reads in part: "The original members of the critically acclaimed group Grant Lee Buffalo have announced they are parting ways...[Grant Lee] Phillips and [Joey] Peters remain on amicable terms and the possibility of a future Grant Lee Buffalo album exists."

A subsequent letter posted on the site by Phillips explains: "It's no good hummin' or hawin' about the band this or the band that. I'm on a particular donkey-headed path, it's narrow, only room for one ya know...presently, I'm writing up a storm from morning 'till midnight...".

Similarly, former GLB drummer Joey Peters has kept busy working on solo material, music supervising, playing drums with the pop duo Evan and Jaron and, oddly enough, working with original GLB bassist-producer Paul Kimble, who was fired by Phillips in April '97. "I actually met with [Paul] last week and we're talking about doing a new kind of project," says Peters. "I don't know that it's gonna be so much a band that plays out immediately because it's gonna be more concentrated on recording, as he's been doing." Kimble completed half an album's worth of material for London Records before getting dropped by the label.

Peters refused to comment on the current relationship between him and Phillips -- even though the press release claims it's "amicable" -- but says he hasn't spoken with the former GLB frontman since the band broke up. Says Peters, "the end of the Buffalo thing is just, whatever, an end of an era."

Grant Lee Buffalo formed in the early nineties and released four albums, the most recent of which was last year's Jubilee.

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