Listening to him keep the beat for Smokehouse these days, you’d never know that James ‘Buffalo’ Briggs started playing the drums at age 13 for fun on a borrowed drum kit. You’d also never guess that he has never had one professional lesson- he is entirely self-taught. Being left handed, he didn’t have a whole bunch of professional musicians to emulate growing up- there just weren’t that many left handed drummers out there. But there was one closer to home- Mike Bouyea. Jimmy credits Mike with showing him the ropes and helping him to get past being ’different’ as a left-hander in a mostly right-handed profession.
His first professional gig was a birthday party for a friend, and he and 3 band mates made a whopping 15 bucks (big money at the time). Of course, they were just happy to be playing, so the cash wasn’t that big of a deal, and by the time the night was over, they had only played seven songs anyway. Jimmy did the math- fifteen bucks for seven songs- and knew he’d found his calling.
These days, as the drummer for Smokehouse, he works harder, (usually 4 hours a night), and gets paid more (though not as much as he’s probably worth), and he couldn’t be happier. Before joining Smokehouse, Jimmy worked with several other New England bands- a 60’s rock band out of Massachusetts, named Reprise and a 50's&60's Doo whoop band called Gary Lane & the Heartbeats; this was one of his biggest gigs before he began playing country with Old Number 7, out of Connecticut. Over the years as his style evolved, so did the genre of music he played. He switched from rock, where he states that the Beatles were a huge influence for him, into older country, and finally ended up where he is today- playing a blend of new country, hot southern rock and the original tunes the band has written, which they call ‘country music on fire’.
In addition to playing the drums, Jimmy lends his voice to the award winning harmonies the band is known for, and will occasionally be coerced into singing lead on a classic tune like "Takin’ Care of Business" by Bachman Turner Overdrive. Even knowing that the drummer is often considered to be the ‘foundation’ of any band, when asked, Jimmy automatically shares the credit with the rest of the band, saying " what makes this work is that it isn’t about any one person or instrument or voice- what makes this work as well as it does is that we all give 100%, and we do it because we love it".
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