John Pruitt (Left) and Greg Parrott are co-creators of BUCK-DEERE. AKA: Buckshot & John Deere

story

Buckshot & John Deere are a gritty acoustic duo where rock, blues, folk, and country all collide in the dust. On paper, they’re musicians. According to persistent rumor, they’re also fugitives tucked somewhere inside the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Either way, the result is the same.

Their show runs on outlaw storytelling, raw road-worn guitar, and vocal harmonies that sound like they’ve been sharpened by too many miles and not enough sleep. It’s the kind of music that feels lived-in; equal parts backroad confession, barroom sermon, and late-night campfire tale.

These two roll into town like fugitives with guitars, hiding in plain sight ever since the Federal Witness Protection Program quietly decided to un-witness them.

Their funding vanished overnight after Elon Musk’s pet bureaucracy, the Department of Government Efficiency—D.O.G.E., reportedly redirected federal protection funds into something called “Experimental Rapid Unscheduled Rocket Disassembly Initiatives” (E.g., blowing-up spaceships) down at Starbase, TX on the Gulf of America. We ain't makin' this up y'all!

Which left Buckshot and John Deere with exactly one option: KEEP MOVING!

These days the duo surfaces wherever the trail goes cold: dive bars, winery patios, senior living rec rooms, backyard parties, and the occasional abandoned grain silo where the acoustics are surprisingly good.

What they bring with them isn’t just a setlist. It’s survival gear.

* Outlaw storytelling
* Raw, twang-heavy guitar chugs
* Harmonies strong enough to trigger a multi-state manhunt

Their songs sound like dusty highways, late-night diners with flickering neon, anonymous motel rooms. They've had at least three run-ins with bounty hunters who, surprisingly, ended up staying for the second set. Giddy up! :)

Every Buckshot & John Deere performance lands somewhere between a concert and a confession, and almost certainly violates the terms of whatever federal nondisclosure agreement they used to be under.

Legend has it Buckshot still writes songs by candlelight in undisclosed safehouses, slipping coded lyrics into the music; messages meant for a mysterious insider still working to get their witness protection status reinstated.

Meanwhile John Deere tunes his guitar by the low mechanical hum of approaching drones, calm as ever. The kind of calm that signals he is a genuine bad ass. The last people who tried collecting the bounty learned exactly what that decision costs.

Together they’ve built a sound critics have described as “Johnny Cash meets malfunctioning GPS.” Law enforcement officials have described their sound as “Not our jurisdiction anymore.”

So if Buckshot & John Deere show up in your backyard one night, catch them while you can. Not just because it’s a one-of-a-kind musical experience, but because by morning they'll likely be gone once again.

And if you're fortunate enough to see 'em,  remember: 

You didn’t see us!

repertoire

Their setlist pulls from a deep American jukebox, running the backroads between rock, blues, folk, and country. One minute you’re hearing the timeless pull of The Beatles, the outlaw gravity of Johnny Cash, or the dusty storytelling of Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle. The next, they’re sliding into heartland rock from John Mellencamp, the jangling alternative pulse of R.E.M., or the road-tested anthems of Tom Petty.

The duo digs into everything from the swampy grooves of Creedence Clearwater Revival and the cosmic folk of Neil Young, to the British cool of Oasis and the art-rock edge of Talking Heads. There’s room, too, for the roots revival of Son Volt, the indie storytelling of The Decemberists, the raw minimalism of Violent Femmes, and the Southern swagger of ZZ Top.

Somewhere along the way you might catch echoes of Led Zeppelin, the sharp songwriting of Elvis Costello, the cosmic supergroup vibe of Traveling Wilburys, or the barroom poetry of Todd Snider and Robert Earl Keen.

In other words, Buckshot & John Deere roam across decades of music history, pulling songs from the dusty corners of the American songbook and delivering them like they were written for a long night on the run.


+  Hand-crafted original songs by Buckshot & John Deere