Translating twang

When you think of Japan, you think of sushi and sake, Mount Fuji and manga, and a spectrum of music that ranges from the soft strains of koto to the full-volume frenzy of J-pop.

But squeezed in on that spectrum is something unexpected – kind of like corn on your pizza but much more tasty: Americana music.

Feeding that appetite is Buffalo Records, a label and importer located in scenic Kamakura, about an hour's train ride south of Tokyo.

Buffalo founder Doug Allsopp, originally from California, started the company in 1999 to serve the "very niche" alt-country audience in Japan, his adopted home. The labor of love at first was the fruit of frustration at the limited selection of English-language live shows here.

"All of the established promoters were bringing safe, sure sell-out artists like Eric Clapton or Madonna. Or bringing old rock bands for the hundredth time," said Allsopp, 49, listing KISS and Deep Purple as tired examples.

Pining for something a little more "interesting," and a little less mainstream, Allsopp set out to fix the situation, one acoustic guitar at a time.

He set up a six-show tour for blues guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps, and it ended up breaking even – pretty much a phenomenal success for a Western artist touring in Japan. In the process of beating the streets to promote the tour, Allsopp learned that a lot of CD stores couldn't get indie CDs through their usual suppliers.

"Pretty much anything mentioned in No Depression magazine at the time was impossible for a Japanese chain store to get," he said.

So the tour promotion business morphed into importing, and six months later evolved to also encompass a label.

Eight years on, Allsopp and his small staff license albums from stateside (usually) labels and then print, press and release the CDs for the Japanese market. The folks at Buffalo also do PR – trying to get albums reviewed and artists interviewed in the Japanese media – and work with promoters to get gigs for their artists in Japan.

Some of the artists on Buffalo's roster include String Cheese Incident, moe., Keller Williams and Hot Club of Cowtown. They've also released albums from Rickie Lee Jones and John Hiatt.

How are the Japanese versions of these albums different from what's on sale in America? For one thing, the print quality for liner notes and other packaging is "extremely high," Allsopp said. The Japanese editions usually contain extensive liner notes (sometimes translated into Japanese) and, often, bonus tracks. Also in Japan, you get a higher price tag – even though the CDs are printed in-country, so you bypass importing costs.

"Pretty much everything is expensive here," Allsopp said, "and CDs are no exception." In fact, he said, because Japanese law restricts stores from selling CDs -- which usually go for the equivalent of about $20-$25 -- at any kind of discount, discs imported into Japan are often cheaper than the homegrown version. Bonus tracks and fancier packaging in part are aimed at making the Japanese version worth the extra yen.

Marketing alt-country is tough enough in any land, but in Japan there are extra challenges, according to Allsopp.

"There aren't the cultural touchstones and reference to make the music appeal to the average Japanese," he observes. "… My parents never listened to country, bluegrass, gospel, blues music when I was growing up. But I was exposed to the theme from 'The Beverly Hillbillies' on TV, country music from used-car dealership commercials, even songs by Johnny Cash on Top 40 radio. So that kind of music was part of my childhood, somehow. … Most Japanese didn't/don't have exposure to that music."

But all the same, there's some interest here, and Allsopp thinks the genre has some growth potential.

"People are exposed to more different kinds of music these days … and many people are looking to find new, interesting music," he said.

It's just a matter of getting the word out. And luckily for Buffalo Records and alt-country lovers the world over, good music is a universal language.