The Way Back: Buck Down of Combine
Photos and memories courtesy of Buck Down
Greetings Recidivists:
It’s your old buddy Buck Down here (or Brian Pafumi as the more geriatric members of the community remember me by) writing on behalf of myself, Xavier Darryl Lewis, and John T. Corbett as the rock band COMBINE. Combine was active from around 1991 - 1997 or so, and holds the distinction of being one of Norfolk’s biggest exports of all time. After some diddling around on a tiny Texas label named Staplegun - we were picked up Caroline Records - probably the largest indie label on the planet at that time (it was actually technically owned by Virgin Records and was used as a front to market test bands they would eventually move up to bigger deals, or sell outright - Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, White Zombie, Primus, and the Misfits were all examples of this) The good news is all those sweet, sweet rock dollars being generated by some of your favorite 90s bands were being converted into gasoline and alcohol for US, which we went through untold gallons of as we gallivanted across the countryside in a custom high top conversion van the label bought for us, bringing our unique form of Live Jimmy Action to young people across the fruited plain. It was an amazing experience. We got to do a lot of really cool indie rock star stuff like play sold-out shows at CBGBs and be on the radio and MTV, and do weird shit in stranger’s houses all over the country. Combine was a whole thing. We lived it 24 / 7. Combine was so impossibly together because we were never apart. On a good night, we could take almost anyone, and even the bad nights were at least funny. But the one thing we were, are, and always will be is a Norfolk band. In fact, given the amount of records we sold - for tens of thousands of people scattered around the world - we may be the only Norfolk band they’ve ever heard. Once we got the big deal - we did our level best to shine some of the attention back home, even going so far as naming our first record “NORFOLK VA” That record did really well, actually. College radio loved it, and it reviewed really, really well. To some folks, it’s considered a classic. I’ve seen people pay a pretty surprising amount for a vinyl copy of it on eBay before anyway. Norfolk was an AMAZING time back then, as I’m sure a lot of you younger folks are fucking sick of hearing - but it really WAS magic. There were at least 7 or 8 bands at that time that were some of the best I’ve ever seen anywhere, and we were all surprisingly close friends. I don’t remember a whole lot of beef back then. Almost every other band in town had at least one person in it that you either played with in another band, lived with or worked at Bamboo Hut or whatever with. We all made each other better bands, and the fact that we all shared a block of dilapidated storefronts on Hampton Blvd. meant we were all pretty heavily influencing each other. Which was weird, because none of us sounded remotely alike, but we were all still pretty obliquely referential. I could sit down and listen to any of the recordings any of us made during that time and I can point to countless cases where we were all subconsciously ripping each other off. Norfolk was a city built on rock and roll, which it turns out is a pretty structurally unsound building material. There were casualties. But holy shit it was an epic scene. The three of us never really lost touch. I moved to Los Angeles where I’m still making records (https://buckaedown.bandcamp.com/music), Xavier is still the hometown institution you know and love currently playing with Song of Praise, and John is enjoying domestic bliss up in MD. We did get together to do a reunion show at the Veer Music Awards in honor of our winning The Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 (there’s some pretty raw footage of it at https://youtu.be/_-CduSGzd74), and there’s also a really solid mini-documentary they made for us at https://youtu.be/GkUxPcwtUq4 We also remastered and reissued our catalogue, and because Combine is for The People - you can download it right now for any price you wanna pay for it - including free at https://combine1.bandcamp.com To this day, we still remain closer than friends, and closer than family. It’s impossible to quantify the bond we created together living out our dream tearing ass across America playing music together. I highly recommend it if you ever get a chance. It really is the ultimate way to travel, and getting someone else to bankroll it is a pretty big life win. At some point, we’ve decided we’ll probably write another record together and will do another proper reunion show back in Norfolk sooner than later. In the meantime - here’s a bunch of pix of us and some of our inner circle back when we were thinner, cuter, and a lot dumber…..
-ORF4LYFE Combine: Buck, Xavier & John
All Photos are from 1992-1996
Note: click the thumbnails and the little white dot at the bottom of the photos to view larger photos and full captions.
