Buffalo Traffic Jam, who recently released their EP “Take Me Home” on Oct. 24, 2025, is an up and coming Americana act that is nurtured by the habitat of their upbringing. The group hails from Bozeman, Montana, which is located in a valley that stays greener than much of Montana, leading locals to call it the Valley of the Flowers. This mix of mountain air and fresh greenery defines the folk sound of Buffalo Traffic Jam that turns quiet acoustic frames and a steady, full-throated vocal into a clear pull toward something just out of reach, like a light winter snow tracing the memory of last summer’s green.
Buffalo Traffic Jam is composed of two members, Frankie Cassidy and Nathan Ross, who met each other at Montana State University and were “united by a love for storytelling and the raw beauty of acoustic sound”. Releasing their first song in May 2024, they quickly gained traction in the underground Americana scene when their November 2024 single “Forgot Your Roots” caught steam on various social media platforms and led to them signing with Aristia Records.
“Take Me Home” opens with a track that bears the same name of the EP. Immediately opening with sparse, lush guitar strums, “Take Me Home” sets the tone for the rest of the EP. Like a lot of Buffalo Traffic Jams songs, “Take Me Home” references themes of homesickness and a longing for comfort. It latches on to the desire to stay young forever but with an understanding that one can’t outrun adulthood forever. There’s a quiet awareness that it’s time to grow up, even with the inability to let go:
“So I’ll lock the doors to the good times / Say goodbye to my white lies / Don’t listen to the wolf cries / Saw a life in them blue eyes / Oh, take me home / ‘Cause I’m not safe on my own”
Accompanied by a stripped down instrumental with a harmonica, piano, acoustic guitar and drums, Buffalo Traffic Jam has mastered their wistful craft. The lead single, “Fool’s Gold,” echoes the same anxiety that runs through “Take Me Home,” but instead of dreaming about a simpler life, it lingers in the fear of being alone and stuck. Numbed by late-night conversations and “doing drugs to ease my mind,” the narrator feels time slipping away as he is “twenty-two, wasting time” and “[doesn’t] have much time” to continue using drugs to mend his fear of growing up:
“Doing drugs to ease my mind…/And they said, “Oh no, don’t go, I’ve been here before…/ But I know how this stories told, bottled up my fear / And they said, “It’s fool’s gold, it’s got a hold / I’m dying here”
Buffalo Traffic Jams craft resides in making the fear of growing up feel intimate. They achieve this through using their stripped-down instrumentals which highlights the poetic lyricism and the raspy voice of Cassidy. Their music turns into a vessel for all the quiet dread that many listeners may feel.
Buffalo Traffic Jam ends their debut EP with another single, “Comfort in Misery”, which acts as a perfect finisher to the themes discussed throughout the EP. Here, Cassidy again talks about needing “Help…find[ing] [his] way home” as he feels lost in his current state of life. Throughout the EP, Buffalo Traffic Jam has continuously approached themes of fear of the future and yearning for the comfort of home and “Comfort in Misery” reaches a melancholic conclusion to this anxiety riddled topic:
“Just tell me that you won’t leave / There’s lies in your nicotine / Goddamn it, I can’t breathe / Cheap cigarettes and gasoline / You find comfort, comfort in misery”
In that final admission, misery stops being a temporary detour and becomes a place he’s learned to live, propped up by cheap crutches and half-truths. “Take Me Home” closes on the bleak idea that for all his talk of going home, it is easier for Cassidy to cling to familiar fear than to risk stepping into a future he can’t control.
Liam Nelson can be reached at [email protected]
