Bucks and Gallants started in the dying days of Charlottesville's favorite illegal music performance space, the Pudhouse (home and venue to USAisaMonster, Lightning Bolt and Oneida), as a collaboration between Darren Hoyt (The Cut-Outs) and Davis Salisbury and Tyler Magill (Grand Banks).
Their first show, playing with fellow travellers RahBrahs at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, featured Magill howling about planes having sex through a solid wall of samplers, keyboard drone and prepared guitar. Heavy.
The band slowly honed their forms, keeping noise and power while going back to time honored conventions like "verse-chorus" structure, middle eights and hairpin dynamic shifts. Original drummer, total sac-master and powerdude Jerrod Hood, sadly had to leave the band when he, all in a week: won the lottery, got married, and took a rocket to Planet 9. Drumless, the band thought briefly about becoming a free-klezmer unit. In the nick of time, the final piece of the puzzle came in the form of Josh Lowry (Hillbilly Werewolf, the Sheiks, father of Junior), whose precision minimalist drumming drills songs into bedrock while stopping decay and gingivitis before it starts.