The Pheonix

New beginnings
Bill Janovitz

BY BRETT MILANO

THE PAST FEW YEARS have been among the busiest and most frustrating of Bill Janovitz¹s career. He¹s written several batches of new songs and played out in four different formats: solo; with the country/rock band the Bathing Beauties; with his new rock band Crown Victoria; and in occasional hiatus-breaking gigs with his regular group, Buffalo Tom. It¹s been a frustrating period for Janovitz because, like many of his contemporaries who find themselves out of the mainstream demographic at a relatively early age, he has fallen off the industry¹s radar. As a result he hasn¹t released any new material in the three years since Buffalo Tom¹s Smitten (Polydor).

" I don¹t know of any record labels that are signing 35-year-old white guys doing indie-rock music, " he explains, noting that one of his favorite current bands, Wilco, were recently dropped by Warner Bros. " You just have to come to terms with that, and it¹s been a long process for me. For instance, I feel a little responsible for the guys in Crown Victoria: they love to play, but if they expected to sign some big deal on Buffalo Tom¹s coattails, that¹s not going to happen. I don¹t have the energy to be my own label or to spend months on the road, so I¹m probably going to have to get some kind of job. "

Of course, the hard times also remind a musician what really matters. " There was one thing I missed with Buffalo Tom: the feeling of just getting out and playing a bar. Part of me always wanted to get out and play every Friday night, the way guys like Mark Sandman did. Sowe bemoan the business side of things, but it can make you discover what was special in the first place. "

Janovitz¹s new solo album, Up Here (spinART), finds him taking matters into his own hands. Unlike his first, countrified solo effort, Lonesome Billy (Beggars Banquet), or for that matter a lot of the unreleased Crown Victoria material, it¹s not a major step away from what Buffalo Tom were doing, just a subtler, stripped-down version of same, mostly performed with just acoustic guitar for backing. And as with the latest Baby Ray disc, the material gains something from the setting. Without the trademark screams and crashing power chords, the songs fit into a comfortable, classic-rock mode. Not that Janovitz has ever made a secret of his love for Neil Young and Exile-era Rolling Stones.

What comes through most is a warmth that he¹s previously kept up his sleeve. Many of the songs concern separation from a loved one, something he attributes both to missing his wife on the road and to the current scattered state of Buffalo Tom. And he¹s learned the trick of being vulnerable without sounding like Dan Fogelberg: a roughed-up, countryish edge in his singing makes it work. " Like You Do " ranks as one of his first outright love songs; " Like Shadows " includes a resonant chorus ( " I¹ve learned enough from hollow youth to hold on to the good things that I got " ) that puts a lot of Buffalo Tom¹s more despairing songs in perspective. When you consider the general absence of happy songs in that band¹s catalogue, this amounts to something of a breakthrough.

" My wife is always asking why I always have to be so bleak and oblique, " he notes. " It may just be my neurosis from growing up in New York. I think of a song like Bob Dylan¹s ŒI Threw It All Away,¹ which just devastated me ‹ the idea that a guy can have so much in life and fuck it all up. I think I live with that shadow all the time, the potential we all have for self-destruction. ŒLike You Do¹ was actually written for somebody¹s wedding, and that¹s what gave me license to be more direct and just write a love song. "

Janovitz also attributes some of the flavor to his recent songwriting collaborations with Fuzzy¹s Chris Toppin. " If I break out of my usual pattern, it gives me license to write something different. With Chris I can write a line that I¹d otherwise never do myself, maybe something more on the lovy-dovy side. That¹s not to say she¹s wimpy, just that she¹s come around to that way of writing more than I have.

" In fact, Fuzzy and Buffalo Tom can¹t seem to get enough of each other. While Janovitz plays in the Bathing Beauties with Toppin, Buffalo Tom bassist Chris Colbourn leads a band with Fuzzy frontwoman Hilken Mancini that also includes Fuzzy bassist Winston Braman. It seems only a matter of time, I suggest, before the two bands merge into one. " I feel like that¹s already happened, " Janovitz notes. " We¹re like Fleetwood Mac, only without the marriages. "

g record that doesn't get where it's going quickly, rather with plenty of time to stop and hear the roses.