INTERVIEW: Tom Maginnis of Buffalo Tom - Jon Steltenpohl

With their fifth album, Sleepy Eyed, Buffalo Tom has matured as a band. Their sound mixes the power three piece sound of Sugar or Husker Du with the pure pop of a band like the Smithereens. The result is a pure, no-frills style of bare bones music which you can still sing along with. In a way, they sound a bit like Buddy Holly on steroids and caffeine. The song arrangements get straight to the point, and the solos are few and far between. Bill Janovitz sings with a gratingly honest voice that pleads and croons about lost loves and summers past. Bassist and back-up vocalist Chris Colbourn and drummer Tom Maginnis add a steady backbeat to Janovitz's front work. It is a full, three piece sound that Maginnis says was inspired in part by the sound of Husker Du.

Although Buffalo Tom's sound doesn't rip off Husker Du, the emotions and drive behind the music is the same. Without fail, Sleepy Eyed provides powerful blasts of sonic candy that bring you back to the album time and again. On the surface, there isn't much that distinguishes this record. There's no studio mastery to go on about, and nothing new about the performance. But, just like any great work that seems effortless, Buffalo Tom's glory is drawn from the skill that goes into it. Sleepy Eyed works because the guitars are raw, the lyrics are real, and whether it's a loud, raucous song or a melancholy ballad, the songs latch onto you. Without a doubt, Buffalo Tom has finally mastered the sound of a three piece band. I recently had the chance to speak with Buffalo Tom's drummer, Tom Maginnis about their new album. Consumable: I must say to start off with that I really like your new album. I think it's the best one that you've put out so far. Tom: Thank you. I think I agree with you.

C: What do think maybe has changed in your life or in the band that has gotten you to this point compared to past albums?

Tom: I don't know. I think it's been a pretty gradual change. We've just gotten more comfortable with the studio situation and trying different things in the studio. I think that in the early days it was far less money and far less experience. We were just kind of hacking away at it. So I think at this point we've honed our song writing skills and arrangements and have played a lot of live shows. And we've gelled overall in every aspect. At this point, we actually took a step back from possibly an overly produced record, [_Big Red Letter Day_], where we were really careful about everything. We were just kind of craving the old style of banging it out and trying to keep it live and keep the vibe. We weren't really making sure the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed and all that. We really made a real effort to keep everything as live as possible. We went as far as not using head phones and having little monitors and not worrying about some of the noise bleeding in to all the microphones. We'd rather just get a good vibe, and I've always felt that playing with headphones and being separated off into different rooms is just totally alien especially with the way we play. You know, the way we rehearse and do all of our live shows is not that way, and all of the sudden we're in this situation where you're supposed to actually be making the record, and you've got these little headphones on. It's bizarre. This time was just much more natural, and I think that overall added a great feel to the record. I think the songs were very strong.

C: Sure. Well, that's one thing I noticed about this album. It's not necessarily pretty, but I just keep playing it over and over.

Tom: Yeah, I like that assessment.

C: Musically though, I have trouble placing exactly where you are. Your music feels, in a way, like the Smithereens. Not that you sound the same, but that you guys have a fundamental American rock sound.

Tom: Yeah, we tend to get that some times. A lot of press in Europe actually have seemed to pick that up on that aspect of it, and, I kind of agree with that. I mean, we were definitely fans of the traditional, "dinosaurs of rock", growing up. I think that element is still there. But we try and put our own stamp on it, and we certainly were influenced by the kind of mid-80's college rock scene when we started. So, it's kind of a blend of those two things. We just play what we like to hear. I think that's pretty natural. We try not to force too many things. We like to take some chances, but it's always within the range of whatever has become a traditional Buffalo Tom sound. We try little things within that context. We're not out to revolutionize rock music, but in your own way, you try and stretch your song-writing or add some weird instruments you might not try to put in there normally.

C: Do you have any weird instruments on this one?

Tom: Not too weird. We did a little more organ stuff than normal. I think Bill played a real basic simple cheap keyboard and stuff like that. Some harmonicas and that.

C: Yeah, the harmonica fits in pretty well.

Tom: Yeah, we tried it on an earlier record and it got some play around the Boston area. We put it in, hesitating, not sure if we wanted to deal with harmonica in the solo break, and we had it way down in the mix. And when we did a remix, Ron Saint Germain, [our producer], immediately put it way upfront. We've become more comfortable with taking those sort of chances. I mean, they don't sound like huge chances, but for us, we're just a basic guitar band.

C: I used to have a folk radio show, and I used to always play your acoustic singles and b-sides. Where do they fit into your music? Is that something you just tinker with in the studio?

Tom: Um, I think that's kind of an outgrowth of where the songs originated. Basically, Bill and Chris will write the basic ideas for songs on acoustic guitar and just record them at home. Then, we pass the tapes around and select which ones we like and start working on them by adding different parts or changing tempo and stuff like that. [The acoustic versions] are kind of a stripped down return to where they really came from. So, it's kind of a natural thing. I don't think it's something we have to really work out. It adds a different flavor to a record. We stir it up a little because it gets a little repetitive if every song is loud and furious.

C: You say "loud and furious"; it seems like a lot of the lyrics are, well, they aren't so happy on this album. Is that the mind state of the whole band?

Tom: Uh, no. It's hard for me to say. I'm the one guy who writes no lyrics, but you know, if I have to speculate on it, I'd just say they're probably more inspired by those sort of emotions. I think a lot of people are. It's kind of harder to write a happy song than it is to write something that affects you more deeply or something that may be troubling you down deep. It sort of bubbles to the surface in a song. It's like a different way to express something you might not otherwise be able to express in your daily life. It's just kind of an outlet for those type of feelings.

C: It seems like you guys just pretty much play your songs as they are, as they need to be.

Tom: Yep. I think we've become more concise in arranging and stuff like that. We've felt like if it doesn't really need to be there or if it sags or if it doesn't go in the right direction in a certain part then let's change it or cut it out. The result is that there are more shorter songs on this record than we normally have. We usually write three and a half, four minute songs and a lot of these are under three minutes which is kind of a shock to us. But, I think that over so many records, we've added some meat to the songs. You can recognize right away that, in rehearsals, we tend to take care of that. We don't like to arrange the basic structure of a song too much in the studio. We do that before hand and really have them rehearsed - especially for this record because we recorded it so live. We didn't want to be screwing around with arrangements in the studio. It just takes too long and costs too much.

C: Do you work up most of the songs touring?

Tom: Um, not too much. It's hard to find time to really get the songs together. There's usually maybe one or two we tool around with at sound checks sometimes, but generally, we like to more or less stop when we're going to start arranging and rehearsing and not try to do too much touring. Bill is always bringing his acoustic guitar into the hotel room and recording little bits. He ends being pretty prolific. It's more of an editing process when we actually get down to the ones we do. It's pretty democratic. We all pitch in our ideas, and we'll be pretty open about which songs we like and which ones we think sound just like a song on the last record.

C: Speaking of touring, how did you get set up with the Live tour? Did you know the guys?

Tom: No, they approached us. We didn't know them personally. The timing for us with our record coming out made it real worthwhile for us to do. It just seemed like a natural thing. From what I'm told, I don't know if it's true, but they had a big list of bands, and we were at the top of it. So, they asked if we could do it, and we agreed. But, I would like to get out later in the fall and play our own shows because it's tough playing early when people are just finding their seats.

C: You did this album pretty much like you do your live shows. Is Sleepy Eyed how you end up sounding live?

Tom: Yeah, I think so. I mean, this record may be a little closer than the last couple because we tried not to layer too much. It's pretty simple. I think we play a little bit more intensely because we are a three piece, and you feel like you've got to fill up the space and the guitar is pretty loud. The dynamics could be increased when it's live and there's no extra instruments. You have to kind of push the loud parts harder and pull back more on the softer stuff where in the studio you tend to level it out.

C: Some of the really good three pieces I've seen live were The Juliana Hatfield Three and Bob Mould just before he formed Sugar. How would you guys say you compare those two bands?

Tom: I would say we're definitely more in the vein of Husker Du and that camp. They are certainly [a band] that played when we were going to school. They came to our college, and we saw them play. And it was just guys, regular looking guys in the same clothes that they came in, and they just went up on stage and played a pretty inspired show. And that's somebody we respected. That's what affected our live shows -- seeing that they could pull that off and have great dynamics. And it took a while, you know. We toured a lot and had to go through a lot of wild stuff. And now we're a pretty good live band. Maybe we weren't for a few years when I was still learning drums at the beginning since I had started as a guitar player. We all kind of switched around on different instruments when our other bands had sort of fallen apart, but, we just went at it, you know.

C: How'd you come up with a name like Buffalo Tom? I know it's kind of a cheesy question to ask, but...

Tom: Yeah, well, I wish I had a real good snappy answer, but, uh, a friend of ours was just kind of playing around with the name "Buffalo Bill" perhaps since there was Buffalo Springfield. Bill's the lead singer, and I'm just more of the shy guy in the back playing drums and they thought it was pretty funny to have "Buffalo Tom". We didn't think too seriously about it at the time because we were just playing parties and shows at school, and it just kind of stuck. And then I get asked a million times in my life!

C: So how did you go from just playing around college to getting signed up with SST? I read that J. Mascis (of Dinosaur Jr.) produced your first record?

Tom: Yeah, he had something to do with the American side of the SST part. We'd done a quick one day demo of 3 songs, and we sent it all over the place. The only real response was from a guy in Holland who had a label. He just slowly sent us some more money and wanted to hear some more demos and those eventually became our first album. It was recorded in 1988 and came out in 1989. And J., you know, was a friend of ours. He's from western Mass. where we went to school. He had put out a couple of records, so we asked him to come in and help out because we didn't know what the heck we were doing. I think he had a little bit of a hand in getting SST interested. At that time, you know, they were a pretty hip indie label and all our favorite bands were on SST so we were amazed that we actually had a record on SST. So, we started doing pretty well in Europe. We came out in Holland and did well, and we got some labels interested in England. We ended up signing with Beggars Banquet, and then, through them, we were licensed to Elektra. We did pretty well in England. Dinosaur Jr. was really big in England, and we just slowly started building our audience.

C: Can anybody get that self-titled album now?

Tom: It was available for a while and then, all of the sudden, it is kind of hard to find. But, I think we've gotten the rights back in the last year. So, it'll probably be put out again with a couple of extra songs. It's a cool record. In a weird way, you might hear some similarities to the new one just because it was definitely rougher and done quicker without too much texturing.

C: Sure, those are the kind of albums that I know a lot of my friends go back to. Like the first couple Lemonheads albums, they just love them.

Tom: Yeah. We're good friends with them, and we ended up touring with those guys in Europe. We kind of hooked up with them later since we didn't really know them from the Boston days. But we were, like, playing together in Germany and stuff. They were a great band then and have done pretty well for themselves.

C: What would you say the Boston scene is like? Are you still a part of that at all?

Tom: Um, I guess in a way. We do really well in Boston. We kind of started more in western Mass, which is a little different. It's just a healthy place for bands to start. It's not one of the media centers of the record business, but there's a built-in college audience because of all the different schools. In that way, it's got great college radio. There's probably like five good stations so a lot of bands can make a demo and actually get some air play and start to build at some followings at small clubs and bars. That's kind of what we did, but it wasn't until the first record came out here that we started to pick up.

C: Okay, last night I was trying to think of comparisons for you guys and trying to place your sound. And for some reason I started thinking about Bryan Adams.

Tom: [laughs]

C: His style is straight forward, poppy songs. But somehow, you sort of seem in the same vein.

Tom: That's funny that you should say that because I think, kind of as a needle in the side, the Village Voice a couple of years ago came up with this little blurb that called us something like "the Bryan Adams of indie rock". And, we kind of took that hard because I think at the time we were struggling to have credibility. I mean, we're certainly not real fans of Bryan Adams in any way. But, I guess there's the traditional element there that you could draw some parallels with, but I just, I don't know. I just hope we're just... (Tom stops in mid-sentence.)

C: Well, he writes these reminiscing love songs, but they always come out sounding so generic. And when I listen to your album, I think, "Man, if you got into Bryan Adams -real- head and he made some -real- music, maybe this is what he sound like."

Tom: Yeah, maybe that's a good way to put it. I'd accept that. Hopefully ours in a little more honest, direct. I mean, hell, I don't know Bryan Adams so, what can I say about him. But we just try to make what comes natural to us, and we try not to worry to much about how we'll be received. But, we come from a real, college radio, do-it-yourself, punk attitude where you just get up there, you know, no fancy stage show or costumes.