The Boston Globe SOUND BITES
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Grief and joy interwine
By Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff, 09/20/2001

After Bill Janovitz - longtime singer-guitarist for the Boston band Buffalo Tom - finished making his second solo album, "Up Here," he thought it was the most positive record he'd made. He'd written a song for two friends' wedding, "Like You Do," and one about his baby girl, "Light in December."

"In hindsight," Janovitz says, "a lot of it has to do with separation and loss. Even in [the two aforementioned] songs. In `Light in December' the bridge is `Please don't leave me.' Sometimes I deal with my writing self in the third person, and I look at it and go, `Who is that guy?' The theme I take away is `Everything's good right now, please don't let it go away.' It's about holding on to what we have. That has a certain resonance right now."

"Up Here" is a spare and sparse record, with an understated country flavor. The rhythms are mostly mid-tempo, the guitars mostly acoustic. Phil Aiken contributes complementary, subtle keyboards; Fuzzy's Chris Toppin occasionally joins Janovitz on vocal harmonies - their version of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, Janovitz says.

Buffalo Tom, which formed in 1986 and released it s first album in 1988, was a hard-driving punk-pop trio, one which gained some success in the '90s.

"Right now," says Janovitz, "I don't need the blazing guitars or noise. Not to distance myself from Buffalo Tom, but here the words are not covered up. . . . This is almost like a book of short stories. My favorite authors are guys like Raymond Carver. These are quiet songs you have to listen to."

Janovitz, joined by Aiken, will play a free WXRV-FM (The River) show tomorrow at noon at Fanueil Hall. (Other club dates will follow.)

A roots-rocking band has also taken shape, currently called Crown Victoria. In this, Janovitz is joined by drummer Tom Polce, drummer-bassist Josh Lattanzi, and keyboardist Aiken.

Buffalo Tom is not quite dead and, in fact, may play a charity benefit with other Boston bands to help raise funds for the victims and families of the terrorist attacks. The group last played an acoustic gig at the beginning of summer. "It was very nostalgic," Janovitz says. "I started to feel we were becoming almost an oldies band, and I don't ever want to be that."

Janovitz says he likes the "yin and yang" of artists who can work in both blustery and quiet modes, naming Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen. "But what I love most is the guy with the guitar."

Buffalo Tom recorded for the influential indy label SST and later major label Elektra. At 35 and not rocking out hard, Janovitz knows record companies aren't yearning to sign people like him. "I don't even know if I want to be on a major," he says. "I'm hoping to make a go at it, make a living at it. I've made a living at it for 10 years, but I don't want to work out of a point of desperation."