Creating, Excavating: Rival Sons' Jay Buchanan Goes Off Grid to Make 'Weapons of Beauty'
Monday, 13 July 2026
Written by Chris Lord
Photo: Matthew Wignall
For most artists, writing an album in isolation in the Mojave Desert might be considered a form of self-flagellation. But Jay Buchanan isn’t most artists. When Rival Sons’ guitarist and vocalist finally got round to crafting his first solo record, he knew he had to go all in like never before, switching off from the hubbub of a tech-reared society and going off grid.
That meant months of living and working out of a windowless underground bunker powered by a gas generator, sleeping on a cot and writing songs by firelight. Downtime was spent hiking and using empty soup tins for target practice. “It forced me to stay in the creative zone, chained to the desk,” Buchanan tells us via video call. “If you’re fishing, you keep your pole in the water and your odds of catching something increase dramatically.”
The objective was always to achieve a sort of focused introspection, not a sense of purgatory. Buchanan is perhaps uniquely placed to maintain that in such surroundings, with the decision to write the bulk of ‘Weapons of Beauty’ in this way being made with his roots in the California mountain town of Wrightwood in mind. “The desert is the way that I grew up,” he says. “That comfort in isolation is something that I carry with me.”
“[A solo album] had been on my back for years and years but there’s always been so much to do,” he continues. “Every year I’d say, ‘This is the year!’, and then you let it go because it’s such a massive undertaking. But getting the role in the Bruce Springsteen movie was a great opportunity, and I thought, if I can do this, I can write a record.”
That Bruce Springsteen movie was Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White as the Boss. Buchanan was invited to play the lead singer of Cats on a Smooth Surface, the real-life house band at New Jersey’s legendary Stone Pony. In the biopic, White’s Springsteen jumps on stage for an impromptu jam with a cast of musicians that also includes Jake and Sam Kiszka from Greta Van Fleet.
Buchanan is speaking with Stereoboard from Los Angeles International Airport, where he’s about to fly to Europe for a handful of Scandinavian festival dates with Rival Sons. He has fronted the band for almost 20 years, and one hand is probably all that’s required to count contemporary rock groups that are held in higher or even equal regard.
Beyond the Springsteen gig, that regard extends to Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne handpicking the band to support Black Sabbath on their global farewell tour in 2016. “You see 500 bands and you see one and you go ‘fuck, they’re good,’” Ozzy raved at the time. Buchanan recently released a western-style cover of Sabbath’s Changes – whistles and all – paying tribute to the late Prince of Darkness, and it’s an apt extension of the stylistic melting pot on ‘Weapons of Beauty’.
The LP is a blend of American gothic, country, western and folk realised through Buchanan’s preacher-voiced tenor and a stark, cinematic lens. That sense of depth has set Rival Sons apart from their rock ‘n’ roll peers, but here it’s more intimate than ever before. These are the songs of a wandering romantic — vulnerable, but delivered with a knowing confidence.“It was a case of ‘Why not be as indulgent as I can be?’” he says. “This was the time to go all the way. As an artist you’re basically walking around the world with your pants down, and I tried to be as naked as possible.”
And Buchanan is someone who commits fully. In an interview earlier this year, he revealed that while he was in the desert, he felt compelled to burn boxes filled with photographs, letters, lyrics and such keepsakes from decades ago in a ceremonial goodbye to old identities. Is a similar sentiment shared when it comes to well-travelled songs? “When you’re creating, you’re excavating,” he says. “But once a song is born, you’re able to reinvent it as a performer and enjoy the dialogue in a different way. They become part of your vocabulary.”
Excavation is a good way of putting it. Buchanan says that, for him, songwriting and self-examination are one and the same. But there was no cataclysmic revelation that came from his months alone in the desert. “If I learned anything it’s that I could do it, because I wasn’t sure,” he admits. “I had to get in touch with the me that writes in that way. It’s a tall order to try to reach something inside yourself.”
There was doubt? “Absolutely. I’ve always had confidence in my ability to express myself, but every time you start making a record – right now I’m working on a Rival Sons one with Scott [Holiday, guitarist] – when there’s nothing there, you have this disbelief: how the fuck am I going to materialise this? It’s making something out of thin air, and you push through the doubt not knowing where you’re going.”
The title track was the song that came first. Completing that helped carve a way forward even if it almost didn’t make the finished album. “I abandon creations all the time because they have to fit,” Buchanan notes.
“[Getting settled] took a while,” he adds. “I was surprised by how loud the silence was, and how distracting the lack of distractions was.” Even in the wilderness, though, he had a keen audience: “There were lots of rats, and I would see coyotes at night. I could see the reflection of their eyes staring at me in my headlamp. It was a feeling of being watched.”
To the question of whether he would do it again, the answer is a resounding yes. “We’re really adaptive,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a difficult way to live. Going through that to try to summon these songs and reconnect with myself…the real revelation came as soon as we finished recording the songs [later in the studio with long-time producer Dave Cobb]. There was this exhilarating release and disbelief that I had actually accomplished what I’d set out to do.”
Jay Buchanan Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue July 21 2026 - BRIGHTON Brighton Komedia
Thu July 23 2026 - SOUTHAMPTON Attic Southampton
Fri July 24 2026 - BRISTOL Lantern, Bristol Beacon
Mon July 27 2026 - BIRMINGHAM Glee Club
Wed July 29 2026 - LEEDS Wardrobe
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