Unreleased Buff Tom

Things were slow over the winter, so I went into the vaults, almost literally; we have a bomb shelter built into our house. Well, that’s how it was described to us when we bought it in 2005. The house was built in 1942 and we are only a couple of miles from what used to be an air force base. It is this steel and concrete-walled foundation under a breezeway that sits between our garage and the house. It is really just a room off the basement. I use it to store music equipment and road cases. Recently, I have found it useful as a vocal/isolation booth to do some night recording for the Cover of the Week project and demos for BT — to not wake the rest of my family as they sleep.

Anyway, I have this chest of drawers in there that has old tapes — cassette demos and DATs, mostly. When things were slow and dreary this winter, I finally had a chance to comb through some of the old DATs. And we will be posting some stuff at buffalotom.com. Kevin has already posted an unreleased song called “Blake” that Chris sings. I believe it was an outtake from Sleepy Eyed. I would have guessed that it would have found its was onto the Besides record, but it seems not.

Also posted is a cover we recorded of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York,” with lead vocals from Tom Gorman, who was the guitarist in Belly. He was hanging out with us playing keyboards before Phil Aiken came into our world. At the time, we were trying out new directions and ideas before what became Smitten. We rented a house for a winter or autumn week down in Chappaquiddick, a small island off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard known for an ill-fated night involving Ted Kennedy. Let’s stay on topic, people. We set up some digital recording gear and ran through demos and covers, some of which did make the Besides record, like the cover of the My Bloody Valentine song, Cupid Come.

We should have a handful more songs to post over there. Keep checking it.

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