Day After Day #49: Velvet Roof

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Velvet Roof (1992)

The alt-rock gold rush of the early '90s was something to behold: It opened the door for a lot of bands who might otherwise not have had the opportunity to get their music out to a wider audience, but it also slammed that door shut fairly quickly. 

One of the bands to get swept up in the guitar-rock frenzy was Buffalo Tom, a three-piece formed at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1986. A friendship with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. led to him handling production on the band's first two albums, the first of which was on SST had a lot of hints of Dino Jr.'s feedback-laden crunch as well as influences including Husker Du and the Replacements. Buffalo Tom fared better in England at first and toured internationally before beginning work on their third album, 1992's Let Me Come Over, which was released on RCA and Beggars Banquet.

But instead of following the example of on-the-rise bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Buffalo Tom opted to go in a more Stonesy direction, adding acoustic guitars and alt-country ballads to their straightahead rock sound. You can hear the newfound maturity in songs like "Taillights Fade," which got some radio airplay in the Boston area and is probably the band's best-known song. The band has said they wanted to accentuate the acoustics over the electrics, but the label brought in Ron Saint Germain (who had worked with Bad Brains, Sonic Youth and Living Colour) to remix the tracks and he brought the electric guitars up. 

One song where that is especially evident is "Velvet Roof," which is my favorite BT tune. The song gallops along right from the start as singer-guitarist Bill Janovitz sings about a woman who he can barely keep up with. "Scraggly hair and messed up shoes/I'm lookin' all around for you/Find you in a corner bar/But you can't find the keys to your car/She's as sharp as a razor blade/But she could cut my wrists open just the same."

Janovitz's guitar chugs away infectiously while the rhythm section races alongside, before the song breaks into a harmonica solo, of all things. As "Velvet Roof" powers to a close, Janovitz asks, "Hey man, what's the matter with/Hey man, what's the matter with you?"

The band's videos from this album got some play on MTV's 120 Minutes, but ultimately, the album didn't chart in the U.S. The followup, 1993's Big Red Letter Day, performed better, as "Sodajerk" got some attention (including in a few commercials and in the band's appearance on the ABC show "My So-Called Life"). The album got up to #8 on the Billboard Heatseekers Album chart and #185 on the Billboard 200. Jon Stewart also called BT his favorite band and had them play the final episode of his syndicated mid-'90s talk show. 

BT released two more albums before getting dumped by their label and taking a hiatus for several years to raise families and work "real" jobs (Janovitz works as a realtor in the Boston area and has written books about music, including one about Leon Russell that I'm reading right now). Since 2007, they've released three more fine records, with another one due out this year. BT shows have been rare the last few decades, but they've announced a short European tour for later in the year. They may not have hit it big in the '90s, but they've got a fairly rabid fan base. 

I've seen Buffalo Tom many times, as recently as December. To this day, "Velvet Roof" is a highlight of BT shows.