Ramblin’ Utah pickers The Last Wild Buffalo ignite new album, opening set at the Ogden Music Festival
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- Left to right: Jonathan Celaya, Isaac Woodruff, Ella Celaya and Troy Lybbert (not pictured) of The Last Wild Buffalo pictured during the first day of the Ogden Music Festival on Friday, May 29, 2026, at Fort Buenaventura Park in Ogden.
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- Troy Lybbert of The Last Wild Buffalo pictured during the first day of the Ogden Music Festival on Friday, May 29, 2026, at Fort Buenaventura Park in Ogden.
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- Jonathan Celaya of The Last Wild Buffalo pictured during the first day of the Ogden Music Festival on Friday, May 29, 2026, at Fort Buenaventura Park in Ogden.
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- Ella Celaya of The Last Wild Buffalo pictured during the first day of the Ogden Music Festival on Friday, May 29, 2026, at Fort Buenaventura Park in Ogden.
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- Isaac Woodruff of The Last Wild Buffalo pictured during the first day of the Ogden Music Festival on Friday, May 29, 2026, at Fort Buenaventura Park in Ogden.
OGDEN – One of Utah’s hungriest young bands just made a pit stop in our backyard.
A foursome of 20-somethings known as folk-rockers The Last Wild Buffalo made their homecoming official as the leadoff hitters for the Ogden Music Festival late last month at Fort Buenaventura Park, a three-day spring staple now 18 years running.
The trip back to Ogden was especially meaningful for the band, which notched its first festival gig with that very same event last year, with a 15-minute “tweener” set, or the delays between headliners that rising, local acts fill the mainstage with noise.
A family friend of Ogden acoustic star Sammy Brue hooked up Buffalo with a tweener set at last year’s festival, and roughly a year later, the band booked themselves a full slot following the release of a second self-recorded album, “Still Here, Somehow,” a full hour of porch-stomping bluegrass and intimate arrangements.
The 2026 lineup included several key acoustic names, including the Yonder Mountain String Band of Colorado, Tennessee’s own Sierra Hull and the North Mississippi Allstars, among several rising and household acts.
Jonathan, “Jonny,” Celaya has heard them all, and to even be in their company was enough of a blessing, the band’s banjo picker and vocalist said.
“I could tell it was a festival for music lovers,” Celaya said.
“There were a lot of musicians invited to play there that I, personally, admire, and a lot of local talent that I admire, a lot of out-of-state talent that I admire, and that honestly, (we) as a band look up to… We only played a 15-minute tweener set, but everybody in attendance was so receptive and supportive of us that it built us up.”
Buffalo’s new album, recorded and mixed entirely in the band’s custom-built home studio, has delivered strongly in their recent live shows, Celaya said.
“When you write a song, and you record it, you hope that it gets translated well from your heart to the person listening to it,” Celaya said. “I feel like we’ve been able to translate that, I guess. It’s hitting the way we’d hoped it would.”
Buffalo recently performed at the five-day Treefort Music Fest in Boise in March. Spending much of the last year on the road, Buffalo is back home for much of the summer with shows planned for Logan, Salt Lake City, South Jordan and Green River.
An upcoming June 18 show at Logan City Summefest will carry some weight, too, considering each of the band’s members either graduated from or attended Utah State before taking their musical ambitions full-time in 2024.
It was while attending USU that Celaya and Isaac Woodruff, childhood friends, cultivated their folky, bluegrass concept in its rawest form.
The concept, albeit between just Celaya and Woodruff at the time, took the duo 12 hours north to Bellingham, Washington, and another three days by ferry to Ketchikan, Alaska, where they spent the summer of 2023 shuttling tourists and fishermen around the island to help finance their first record.
One of the band’s first-ever “shows” outside the state came on the deck of their ferry up the Inside Passage.
“Me and Isaac, on the deck of the ferry with just the Alaskan, Pacific Northwest wilderness on either side of us as we’re passing through this channel, and we played a little show of all our songs for everybody there,” Celaya said.
“That was like our first go at music outside of Utah, really, as our first show out of the state, and it was very cool because people were receptive,” Celaya said. “It was like, ‘Okay, people don’t just like our music because they’re our friends. People actually will listen to this.”
Not long after returning from that gig, Celaya recruited his sister, Ella Celaya, to pick up additional vocals and her fiddle; High school friend and fellow USU alum Troy Lubbert joined up on double bass, and the band stepped out entirely for a fall tour in 2024.
On its latest jaunt, Buffalo primed its second full-length album with stops on a nationwide trek from Utah to Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and even New York City, where the band performed exclusively for Relix, a popular live music magazine.
The band cultivated an online following of roughly 23,000 on Instagram and another 25,000-plus likes on TikTok.
A busy spring will soon become a busy summer. A 14-date summer tour is scheduled with shows booked between Utah, Idaho and Montana.
“From the get-go, we decided we wanted to do music for the adventure it would bring,” Celaya said. “So much has happened in the past few months… We’re excited to be back home, and (Ogden) is just like the perfect festival for us to come back to.”
Conner Becker has covered sports and more for the Standard-Examiner since 2024.
