There are 12 drawings on the cover of Buz Owen’s most recent album, Sleep. There’s a bunny-eared television. A crucifix. An elephant. The images make up a visual tracklist for the album’s songs, music that draws from backyard bluegrass, folk and even Uncle Tupelo-era alt-country.
Buz Owen is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter from Marshalltown who’s been releasing solo music since 2015. (For the last two decades, Buz has also performed with the Midwest Irish punk band The Vandon Arms.) Fittingly, most of what happens in Sleep happens at night. This is last-call Midwest music, with songs about staring at ceilings and 3 a.m. agreements and hearing your neighbors through the wall and seeing the wrong side of a rising sun. There’s mandolin picking and banjo rolls and Owen’s weathered voice, a timbre only achieved after decades of singing in loud, rowdy rooms.
The album leads off with “4 Bucks,” a ragged alt-country rocker about looking at what’s left after everything else has already been spent. Hear that harmonica to find that Uncle Tupelo influence. On the title track, over a clawhammer banjo and train beat drums, he weaves a story of hard living, damned doctors, and self-inflicted insomnia with no end in sight. Throughout the album, Owen shows proficiency on several instruments, particularly the mandolin. Really tune into his crosspicking on “Only The Lonely.” It’s exquisite, his most expressive playing on the album.
Next comes a pair of barroom ballads straight out of the police log of the local paper. “Caroline” is about young love, methamphetamine and other currencies. In “Maria,” a crooked Kansas deputy with “stones in his eyes” wields a pistol with familiar results. Both are reminiscent of the raw beauty of early Avett Brothers records, and both are highlights on Sleep.
The second half of the album features a few variations on the theme of “home,” whether it be the metaphorical home of “Chains” or the hometown on “Way Back Home.” On the latter, after name-checking the surrounding Midwestern states, Buz confesses to always wanting to return to this indeterminate thing that we call “Iowa.”
Lost souls ought to search out “Baptized.” Here, Buz delivers an unrepentant clawhammer hymnal, complete with a bleating cricket. This one is pure gospela:
Seen more sin than a man should allow
Lord have mercy on me
Write them down and then read them aloud
Lord have mercy on me
This one, and “Testify,” with its banjo-billy blues melody, would surely be the live standouts if Owen ever took these songs out on the road. To be able to actually record and convey the live energy of these performances in the studio setting, while tracking all of the instruments yourself, is truly a remarkable act.
I missed the release of this one when it first came out in July, but am glad to have found it during these winter days of early dark. With Sleep, Buz Owen has made a significant Iowa folk album. No matter which side of 3 a.m. you usually see.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s January 2025 issue.
