Buffalo Tom, LarkFest 2007

One of my favorite underappreciated bands of the mid-90's is the Boston-based three-piece Buffalo Tom. They got a little bit of play with songs like "Sodajerk" and "Treehouse" (both of which have turned up in commercials, and the former apparently figured prominently in an epsidoe of "My So-Called Life"), but they had a string of three terrific albums (Let Me Come Over, Big Red Letter Day, and Sleepy Eyed) that just never got the recognition they deserved. Of course, I say this in part because their characteristic sound-- chiming guitars, rolling drums, slightly cryptic lyrics-- plays to all my musical preferences, but really, everybody ought to love the records I do, dammit.

Anyway, they stopped releasing records a while back, though singer-guitarist Bill Janovitz has continued to record well-regarded but largely ignored music with Crown Victoria. They've apparently been playing a few shows a year in the Boston area, and selling them out consistently, so they got back together recently, and released a new record, Three Easy Pieces (Amazon link), and it's pretty much exactly what you would want from a Buffalo Tom record, assuming of course that you're the kind of discriminating music fan who would want a new Buffalo Tom record. If you liked their mid-90's stuff, the new stuff picks up pretty much where Sleepy Eyed left off, and it still works-- the title track, lead single "Bottom of the Rain," "Good Girl," "CC and Callas" are all great tunes.

They're also doing a bit of touring, and played yesterday at the LarkFest street festival in downtown Albany. I actually wasn't aware of it until a friend of mine emailed me to tell me about it, but I skipped the second half of the Union-Albany rugby game yesterday to go down there and see the show.

Unfortunately, one of the main effects of the trip was to remind me how much I hate free street festivals. I'm not fond of crowds-- at my size, I'm always in somebody's way-- and I'm not really that big a fan of hippie tat or fried dough, so I only go to these things if there's a band I want to hear. Unfortunately, most of the crowd inevitably ends up being people who are there for the mob scene, the hemp T-shirts, and the carnival food, and couldn't really care less about the music. This tends to piss me off.

I kind of felt sorry for the band, given the atmosphere. They had a largely indifferent crowd-- they were nominally headlining the show, and I heard three different people near me ask whether there was another band after them-- a stage the size of our dining room table, and a sound system of somewhat dubious quality (they played about eight songs before the sound guys figured out that both Janovitz and bassist Chris Colbourn sing, and that both mikes needed to be on for all the songs). It's got to be deeply unrewarding to play under those circumstances.

That said, they did a really good job with what they had to work with. Janovitz in particular worked really hard, bouncing up and down and throwing all sorts of rock-star moves with his guitar, but all three of them played with a lot of energy. (Of course, they sort of need to compensate for the fact that they're one of the least rock-star looking bands this side of Barenaked Ladies. When I first saw them, I said "They look like school teachers." I wasn't all that far off-- Janovitz is a real estate agent for his day job, about as non-rock a job as there is.) They even managed, against all odds, to get a little banter going with some of the crowd.

The set list was about what you'd expect-- they opened with "Sodajerk," "Renovating" off the new album, and "Taillights Fade," the semi-hit off Let Me Come Over, and went on to play a similar mix of old and new songs. I was surprised not to hear "Bottom of the Rain," the single that WEQX has been playing a lot this past week to hype the show, but other than that, they played most of the obvious stuff, closing the set with "Tangerine," off Sleepy Eyed (and a largely unsuccessful attempt to get the crowd to sing along with the closing "Just a little haiku/ To say how much I like you"). There was also a two-song encore, weirdly closing with an ominous version of the Stones' "Under My Thumb."

The new material works well live (modulo the microphone problems, which were significant-- a number of the new songs have a lot of back-and-forth between the vocals, and losing half of that really hurts), and the old songs sounded good. They mixed in a few of their noisier older songs-- "Birdbrain" and "Velvet Roof" are the ones I recall-- to a cool reception, and also some slower tunes, including a really good version of the new "You'll Never Catch Him."

In the end, it was a good set, but it could've been a lot better given a better atmosphere. I think they'd be terrific fun at a show of their own, where the audience was there to see them, and not just for a chance to drink outdoors in the middle of the street. I'd definitely pay to see them live if they come around again, and if they're touring near you, you should check them out.