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[ b u f f a l o . t o m : s m i t t e n ] [ t e x t . o n l y . v e r s i o n ] [ b y . r a m o n . l o b a t o ] Buffalo Tom. The name says it all: a combination of the down-home melancholy of sunny small towns and barely remembered romances, along with everything that's good about singer-songwriting and old-fashioned rock'n'roll. Friends since high school and soulmates still, the Buffalo boys Billy, Chris and Tom describe each other as 'brothers', and it is this insistence that 'the band is larger than the sum of its parts', that has distinguished them from the confused morass of American indie today. If brothers they be, then most would see guitarist/vocalist Bill Janovitz as the golden child of the three, a ridiculously talented musician with a voice full of gravel and dust and an infallible sense of what constitutes the perfect pop song. His solo experiment "Lonesome Billy" (1996), a memorable journey into alterna-country territory, showed the world the extent of Janovitz's talent; and the band's latest album "Smitten" proves the Buffalo chemistry has not decreased any over twelve years. However, the chronically humble Janovitz is loath to take any of the credit due to his fellow band-members. 'It takes a lot of work,' Janovitz explains over the phone from London, where the band are spending a few days. 'It's something I'm very proud of. I think it's a dubious achievement to say "you guys are survivors, veterans". That's like saying you've got the Perfect Attendance Award for schoolwork, when you'd rather have A's. And I think it's the same thing: while we're proud just to kind of keep it together as a band of three guys, because it hasn't always been easy, there's been some very difficult moments, some times when we've thought of just packing it all in. I think we're proud of that -- it has taken a lot of work and psychic energy -- but I think it's all because we really felt like, well, let's never let the band get in the way of our friendship.' 'It's like having a friendship with a girl and saying, "well, let's not have sex because it will ruin the friendship". Let's not let the band be the sex,' he laughs. 'I'm tickling myself with my analogies.' But is the band better than sex? 'No,' Janovitz concedes, after a few moments of thought. 'Not good sex, at least. It's better than some sex I've had.' While the thought of Janovitz even saying the s-word is probably enough to send most Buffalo Tom fans a little gaga, something that may satisfy their aural libidos is the latest Buffalo album "Smitten". "Smitten" was recorded after a short hiatus following the release of their last album "Sleepy Eyed", in which all three band members indulged in their particular 'little thing'. For Bill it was his aforementioned solo album "Lonesome Billy", recorded with members of Giant Sand and then re-interpreted live around America with his backing band Lincolnville. Bassist/vocalist Chris Colbourn spent his time composing scores for theatre productions including "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and "Of Mice And Men". Drummer Tom Maginnis, always the family man, was busy with the birth of his second child. 'In a lot of ways, we did our little things but we still really want to do Buffalo Tom,' Janovitz explains. 'And it's not like we're making heaps of money where we can take years off and go hang out in the Carribean and make reggae records, or whatever. We got back together fairly quickly, actually, we spent a lot of time recording demos and trying out different keyboardists, really considering the songs and the concept of what this record was gonna be, moreso than we ever had.' 'We started out at home doing demos in my basement, outside of Boston. We actually had Tom Gorman from Belly playing keyboards with us at this point. We decided to got out to this place called Chappaquiddick, which is like a little island off the island of Martha's Vineyard. There were no people on the island. We took a couple of 8-track recorders down and kinda came up with some B-sides and covers, and just had a fun, almost monkish retreat.' Without trying to squeeze him into any particular musical box, Janovitz is a musician who hails from a strong heritage of the guitar-slinging folk troubadour. Especially in recent years, Janovitz calls to memory great singer-songwriters of the past, rather than the guitarrorists such as Lou Barlow and J Mascis who were his Boston contemporaries in the late 80s and early 90s. 'That is the tradition I feel closest to,' Janovitz agrees. 'It's weird for me to be in a band because I really feel like I have to subjugate that part of me. But I really feel like they [Tom and Chris] are great editors for me. We're very much a "band", we're very much a democracy. And yet I feel more like a singer-songwriter than a band member, at heart. It tends to bring out the best in me, and I think Chris feels probably the same way, that the band is greater than the sum of its parts. I think that Chris and I would be very good singer-songwriters on our own . . . ' he trails off, hesitant to complete the thought. 'For example, Nick Cave -- I don't think he's as great as he is with the Bad Seeds, even though he did a great record on his own, one of my favourite records actually, that last one. Bob Dylan -- his greatest records are affiliated with the great bands that he played with at the time. Look at Van Morrison -- he's no greater than he was in the late 60s early 70s when he had some really crack, great bands that really gelled as bands.' This said, has the "Lonesome Billy" experience changed the way Janovitz relates to his fellow band members? 'I think it allowed me a little bit of a steam valve, just to do something different and know that I can. I didn't set out, obviously, to have a hit or anything like that: it was a very quiet little, quickly recorded, relatively lo-fi record. And that's all I intended it to be . . . It was just like a little warehouse of songs that didn't really get their say, get their time in Buffalo Tom.' One thing extra special about "Smitten" that I noticed with a twinge of sadness is that it marks Buffalo's last ever release on the much-loved British label Beggars Banquet. 'We were signed to Beggars but they would always license it out to a major label in America. It was like, we're confident enough to sign directly to a major US label, let's just do that -- if for nothing else, just change's sake. We want to keep moving forward and doing some different things, and our contract was ending with Beggars . . . When Husker Du signed to Warner Bros, that was a bit more of an issue, but that was twelve, thirteen years ago. I think in the States there hardly are any great, great independents in terms of the SST's and SubPops of the world. There's some great smaller independents, like Drag City, but they're few and far between, actually. For a band like, us, I think everybody realises that we have to be on a major label to get the distribution and promotion we need.' Buffalo Tom's "Smitten" is out now on Beggars Banquet. Buffalo Tom tour Australia during December 1998 and January 1999. |