During the late-1980s East Coast college-radio heyday, Buffalo Tom were a band that broke out. They were an alt-rock-labeled, hook-heavy three-piece from Amherst, Massachusetts, with a punk-toned, country-strummed honesty. They were friends with Dinosaur Jr.âs J Mascis, who helped produce their first couple of albums, playing guitar on one. Mascis opened the door for them to sign with hugely influential underground label SST Records. Buffalo Tom captured the three-piece power-tangle of Bob Mouldâs HĂźsker DĂź and the purest lit-pop tendencies of REM and the Smithereens. Singer Bill Janovitzâs voice was sweetly graveled, straining in the right way, and campus DJs everywhere played it heavily to undergrad masses listening on Walkmen as they made their way to entomology and art history requirements.
Twenty-five years later, Buffalo Tom have released their eighth studio album, Skins. The original lineupâ singer/guitar player Janovitz, bassist/vocalist Chris Colbourn, and drummer Tom Maginnisâis still intact, and theyâre releasing Skins on their own label, Scrawny Records. Theyâre older and wiser, theyâve become parents, and it might be an obvious conclusion, but their songwriting has also matured. Buffalo Tom arenât so alt anymore, though. The songs on Skins are well-formed singer-songwriter rock. Flourishes and bursts of Janovitzâs guitar solos poke through openings, and his vocals have never sounded better. His honeyed grit has ripened over the yearsâhe sings with weathered control, widened range, and conviction. Lead vocals are traded between Janovitz and the cleaner, snugger Colbourn.
Skins opener âArise, Watchâ marches out from the get-go in rich folk-rock thirds. âDown,â a definite highlight, shows Janovitz at his apex, singing, âYou no longer see the sky, the truth has obscured my eyes, a man must refuse to die, for what is a pack of lies.â His roundhouse guitar solo fires lowly and possessed, through distorted tremolo and ripping heartache. The acoustically twanged âDonât Forget Meâ features a duet with Grammy-nominated Boston icon Tanya Donelly (the Breeders, Throwing Muses, Belly). Skins wields a sincere Jayhawks vibe throughout, and with it Buffalo Tom have returned. Itâs the bright orange autumn of their careers, and itâs good to hear them again. Chris Colbourn spoke. I was not on my way to entomology class.
Skins is your first album in five years. Why so long between albums? What have yâall been doing? Have you been playing a lot of Wii?
Weâve been procreating quite a bit, which would probably make an awesome Wii game.
Have you ever played Wii bowling? Itâs pretty sweet. Or thereâs one game where itâs little Star Wars Lego people. Itâs not just Darth Vader, itâs a little Lego version of Darth Vader. I wish I had thought that up.
My 7-year-old was playing that very Star Wars Lego game on his DS this morning. I asked him why he was always trying to kill everyone he meets in these games instead of trying to work something out. He said, âBecause they were all evil.â
I canât believe thereâs Wii fishing. Thatâs disgusting. A fricking video game where people fish. How can that possibly be enjoyable?
I would say I exist upward of 80 percent of my life in my imaginationâwith books, movies, and just making stuff up about people as I walk down the street, without actually having relationships with too many actual humans. So I can see how the Wii fishing thing might appeal. No pesky mosquitoes. Personally, I always hated taking the hook out of the fishesâ mouth after I caught them. Because no matter what anyone says, itâs cruel to the fish.
What was it like getting back together after the hiatus? How did it come about?
I didnât really think of it as a hiatus; we were constantly writing and playing together in Boston. Weâve all lived pretty close to each other for 30 years or so. The long tours stopped and the babysitting started, which was a big difference. A lot less coke and harlots, more formula and diaper runs. Both types of late-night diversions in a sense.
Your original lineup is still intact. Pretty impressive after all these years. Arenât you all supposed to hate each other by this point?
I guess weâve all felt a shade of contempt on occasion through the years, but I was the youngest of five kids and I always got a long well with my very different siblings. I kind of go with the flow. Tom and Bill, and our manager of 25 years, Tom Johnston, are all interesting and smart, and read a lot, and watch films I like. Buffalo Tom guys are funny and polite to people we work with, and I like their wives and kids, and we show up on time for things, which means a lot in the end of 30 years of knowing each other. Not very rock and roll.
What made yâall decide to have your own label? How did you go about setting it up?
Weâre working with the Orchard, a company that is a label-type partner. Itâs a young, energetic team and on top of the quickly changing 2011 music landscape: the social networking, online marketing, and producing lots of different media for fans to see each week, and all that stuff. With that said, I was a really big fan of Beggars Banquet, our mama label for most of our career. It is still a company I admire a lot on every level. Great people to work with is the main thing.
What music do you dig?
I love all the classics and am never far from a Leonard Cohen, Ray Davies, Echo & the Bunnymen, or a Who song, but I am loving lots of new bands this year. Sharon van Etten from New Jersey, Mean Creek from Boston, Agnes Obel from Copenhagen. Iâm a big fan of Seattleâs Tiny Vipers. Jesy Fortino did Buffalo Tom a big favor by supporting a short Dutch tour a few years back, which was tough because our fans can be loud and her music works with dynamics that need quiet spaces. Jesy is an odd apple, and like J Mascis in 1987, I think she is one of the great originals, deep and dark materials lurking in there.
Jon Stewart loves you guys. You were the final musical guest on the MTV show he had. Whatâs he like?
Jon was really nice when we played on his show and always made time to see us if he was in Boston through the years. Jon worked hard in the early daysâTV, writing, and touring. He seemed to be trying hard not to get too caught up in the Hollywood or NYC celebrity world and keep his feet on the ground. I think the regular Buffalo Tom guy thing appealed to him. Jon once told us that he and his wife had a Buffalo Tom cassette tape they would always play in their car when they went on vacation, driving across a certain bridge going to a beach town in New Jersey, turning off everything else in their busy life. Thatâs a nice image.
Buffalo Tom started out on SST records in 1988. The same time as Nirvanaâs first album on Sub Pop.
We were very lucky to exist at this time in indie-rock history, and I think although our music is different, Nirvanaâs success helped us so much, along with Dinosaur Jr. and Pearl Jam and the Pixies. We wouldnât have existed too long without the success of these bands, plus of course our big heroes HĂźsker DĂź and the Replacements and X. Good timing for us.
Has Buffalo Tom ever been attacked onstage?
In 1990 at a show at an old abandoned hospital venue in Paris, a young five-foot-tall skinhead woman in the audience repeatedly spat at us and taunted us to play more punk rock. Kind of funny at first. We liked her style and accent, a curious gal. I think we did play harder, in fact. But she continued to spit and toss full beers at Bill, who finally got fed up, leaned over, and attempted some retribution. Then she jumped onstage and began to windmill pummel Bill with her fists. No one really came to his defense for several minutes. Everyone stood watching. So he used his still-plugged-in guitar as a shield. She was just socking his guitar, and it made this giant roar through the PA and Marshall amps. The hospital security guys finally showed up and tased her. I wish they hadnât tased her.
Talk about the song âThe Hawks & the Sparrows.â What is it about? How was the recording?
Most of our songs are fairly simple, three or four chords, and we rehearse them several times before we record. Other songs come along and we almost never rehearse them, we just give it a shot when weâre in the studio, improvising as they take shape. âThe Hawks & the Sparrowsâ was one of these. I like drum intros, so just before the tape rolls I almost always ask Tom to improvise a drum intro. He hates these, which make it more interesting to me. It didnât work with this one, so Bill improvised an acoustic guitar intro before the band enters. This song is very wordy, and my idea was to play around a bit with words that used to mean one thing to me but now mean another thing. The Hawks and the Sparrows is a funny, odd film from Pier Paolo Pasolini, but the image of the birds also reminds me of me and my two kids, the Stonesâ album Sticky Fingers, and the Dylan line from âSubterranean Homesick Bluesâ about parking meters. The world of a younger me crashing into the kid world I live in now. Rosemaryâs Baby Mia Farrow fades into reading kidsâ books at bedtime. Life has really changed for me these past years with kids of my own. We added a violin solo that was meant to suggest John Cale or the dark English country of Straw Dogs. In the end, itâs a love letter to my very young kids, though Iâm aware that songs people write about their kids are often sucky and too sentimental. I tried to keep it real and humble in its lyrics. Itâs hard to do this, and Iâm not sure it worked too well in the end, but itâs all real and true stuff, which is always my intention when writing a song. 
Listen to "The Hawks and the Sparrows" by Buffalo Tom:
Listen to "Down" by Buffalo Tom:
