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NEWS: Bill has a new blog to replace the message board.
The Show People cd is now available for purchase from CD Baby online.
Shows for June / July 2008:
Thursday is Bill Day at Toad in Porter Square, Cambridge, MA, USA this month. I will be hosting a shambolic hootenanny from 9 - close on June 12, 19, 26 and July 3. Many covers will be played. A lot from my solo records. Some BT tunes solo maybe. And I might try out a new song or 2 that I am working on.
Here is how the core is shaping up for each:
12th -- Chris Toppin and Jim Buni will play some songs together, followed by me plus a band that is 3/4 of the old Crown Victoria -- Phil Aiken (keys), Matt Taheney (bass), and the illustrious Billy Beard who has been kind enough to agree to sit in on drums for a few of these shows. Tom Polce was lured by the siren song of Hollywood, where he has sold his soul to the corporate music syndicates. Billy is well known around town as drummer for Session Americana, Dennis Brennan Band, as well as a drummer for some big time touring artists. Most importantly, he is a great guy who knows how to play the skins.
I believe the early 7-9 show will feature the band, The Rationales.
19th -- This looks like a battle of the bands, with the remnants of ye olde bar band, the Bathing Beauties, the songs of which Chris Toppin and I resuscitated and joined up with some newer songs to complete the CD Show People. This all star lineup featured Dean Fisher on the traps, Philly on the keys, Paul Kolderie on bass, and Top and me singing, guitaring.
And the Crown Vis facsimilie will also be playing this night. It will be a steel-trap death match.
26th -- I have no idea who will be playing. We may be the same CV band, though we might have a sub-sub drummer.
July 3 -- Same as above.
If worse comes to worse, I will play a lot of stuff solo or duo or trio. And once that runs out, we will do Jimmy Buffet covers as an audition for summer resorts.
Hope you can make it to some or all of them.
Bill was the subject of an interview on WBUR 8.24 Here is the audio and transcript |
"Three Easy Pieces" the new 13 song Buffalo Tom album will be released in the U.S. and Canada on July 10, 2007. Other territories TBA. |
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Vedder and Epstein jam at Toad with Bill
By Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, Globe Staff | May 27, 2006
Some 17,000 people saw Theo Epstein join Pearl Jam at the TD Banknorth Garden, and windmill his way through a cover of Neil Young's ``Rockin' in the Free World." But barely 50 folks were at Toad a few hours later, when Epstein and Eddie Vedder strolled into the tiny Cambridge club and jammed with Bill Janovitz . The Buffalo Tom singer had invited the Sox GM to drop by with his superstar sidekick, and -- lo and behold -- he did. ``I really didn't think they'd make it out," said Janovitz, who's been friends with Epstein for a few years and first met Vedder when their respective bands played at Bunratty's back in '91. Theo happily joined Janovitz and the Gentlemen's Ed Valauskas on a version of "Taillights Fade" -- a Buffalo Tom tune that's apparently a favorite of Vedder's -- before the Pearl Jam singer agreed to grab the mike on `` Rockin' in the Free World," Young's ``Cortez the Killer," and ``It Makes No Difference" by the Band. ``It took a little arm-twisting to get him up there, but not much," said Janovitz. An invigorated Vedder described the after-hours affair as ``off the grid" because, he said, the stage is ``about the size of [Pearl Jam drummer] Matt Cameron's drum kit." Afterward, the group, which included Epstein's fiancee Marie Whitney, sat around a table, talking about books, music, and family. "Eddie and I traded pictures of our kids," said Janovitz. ``It was really a great night, a total blast."
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| This is from an article in Boston Magazine about workspaces that artists use. Along with Bill they profiled authors Tom Perrotta, Doris Kearns Goodwin and others.
Buffalo Tom frontman Janovitz isn’t particularly sentimental about the room in which he composes his songs. “Simply having a spot is what’s important,” he says. “It removes the excuse of not having a spot.” Over the years, those spots have included a hotel room, the back seat of a tour van, various bathrooms—one of Buffalo Tom’s biggest hits, “Taillights Fade,” was composed “while sitting on the pink and black tiled floor at the end of my railroad apartment in Somerville.” His current haven is a corner room in the basement of his Lexington home. Once knotty pine, it’s now painted white (“acoustically dead,” he says of the soft wood and its carpeted surroundings), and holds a collection of guitars, some microphones, and a couple of computers containing hundreds of pieces of music. The room is a quiet place for him to record and develop melodies and lyrics in moments he steals between his day job, as a real estate agent, and his life as a husband and father of two young children. He recalls sitting in his backyard a few years ago, watching his little daughter Lucy chase a chipmunk. “You’ll never catch him,” he told her. “Oh, that’s what everyone says to me,” she responded. “I remember loving that pair of lines,” Janovitz says now. Playing around in his basement room not long ago, he came upon a snippet he’d recorded that day. “You’ll Never Catch Him”—its first two lines the very exchange he and Lucy shared there in the yard—appears on the next Buffalo Tom album, slated for release this spring.
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Sven
Schlijper from Kindamusic.net is working on an
article on the 33 1/3 series. Here is the except
of his interview with Bill about writing his book
on the Stones Exile on Main St.
Link to Exile
interview
Here is another recent interview with
Bill from writer Michael Atwood.
link to Atwood
article |
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Exile on Main
St, by Bill Janovitz
Can
be ordered on Amazon.com |
Exile
On Main Street Review
The Perfect Score: 33 1/3
by Michael Lindgren
"He writes movingly, almost
poetically, about the Stones’ synthesis
of American blues, soul, and country idioms and
how it made him feel as a teenaged punk-rocker
to hear this music reimagined so richly. His understanding
of the record’s sonic landscape —
dark, messy, potent — is unparalleled. It
may be the best book ever written on rock’n’roll.
"
-full
review |
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