After a long hiatus, Buffalo Tom is back in play

CAMBRIDGE -- If a guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer get together to play songs once a year, are they a band? Say they play at the Paradise, and sell out all 650 tickets to every show, year after year, and everyone knows the words and sings along -- but it only happens on one night out of 365. Can they call themselves a living, breathing rock group? Buffalo Tom thinks not.

"It started to feel very nostalgic," says guitarist and vocalist Bill Janovitz . "If we were going to keep doing it, we weren't going to just keep playing the greatest hits of the '90s. We couldn't be an oldies band. So we thought either we're going to make a new record or we're going to stop."

On Tuesday, the Boston rock trio will release "Three Easy Pieces," the first collection of new Buffalo Tom music in nine years. The passage of time is palpable on the album, which sounds like a seasoned analogue to the chiming rockers and angst-fueled ballads that made Buffalo Tom alt-rock darlings last decade. Working for the first time without a producer, the band recorded 13 tracks piecemeal over the course of a couple of years at Somerville's Q Division studio, during the infrequent cracks in their busy lives.

"Usually when I play now my kids put their hands all over the strings and I'm just like, 'Stop. Stop. Stop,' " says bassist and vocalist Chris Colbourn . "It was a luxury for us to get in a room together."

Buffalo Tom never broke up. They grew up, or as Colbourn notes: "I woke up and realized it was time to be 35." Colbourn, who's now 43, lives in Cambridge and works at Concerted Efforts, an international booking agency. Janovitz, 41, is a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker and a Lexington resident. Tom Maginnis, the group's 42-year-old drummer, lives in Newburyport and works for EBSCO, a reference database publishing company. All are family men with six young children among them, and over dinner recently in Harvard Square they seem cautious to a fault in their enthusiasm for the next phase of their music careers.

Janovitz reports, happily, that the new songs remind him of stripped-down, mid-period Buffalo Tom, but says he's reticent to read the blog buzz already circulating in anticipation of the new album's release. Still, he does, and the familiar chatter pushes Janovitz's buttons.

"Everyone says 'Do you remember that "My So-Called Life" episode?' ["Soda Jerk," from 1993's 'Big Red Letter Day,' became a minor sensation after being heard on the show]. Or, 'Do you remember when they were Dinosaur Jr. Jr.? Now they're Dinosaur Jr. Jr. again, because Dinosaur Jr. has a new record out, too.' "

Colbourn, who errs on the severe side of self-critical, says that "in all seriousness there's a certain degree of 'I don't care anymore.' I kind of dislike records by the time we mix it. I hear the mistakes. That said, there are a couple songs on this record that are really special."

"It's taken so long to come out," says Maginnis, the proverbial quiet one. "I just want to see the reaction."

"Three Easy Pieces" is being released on Ammal Records, an imprint of the prominent indie label New West. Ammal is run by Danny Goldberg, an industry veteran who was formerly chairman of Warner Bros. Records and has managed Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, and Bonnie Raitt. "I love jangly guitars and smart lyrics," says Goldberg. "I love poetic rock songwriters." Goldberg also loves something else about Buffalo Tom: their devoted fans. At the band's showcase in March at the South by Southwest music conference, there was a line around the block to get into the club.

"Because of economics we're looking for artists that have some sort of fan base. The record business is half as big as it was 10 years ago, so in terms of budgeting you have to cut the numbers in half. But the up side," Goldberg says, "is they make magical music. On the days I like being in the music business it's because of people like the guys in Buffalo Tom."

Janovitz, Colbourn, and Maginnis formed the band as students at UMass - Amherst in 1986. Their first gig was in a sports bar on Route 9, as contestants in a battle of the bands that Colbourn's friend's brother was judging. They lost. Armed with raw power chords and fetching melodies, Buffalo Tom was classified early on as a sort of Dinosaur Jr. Lite -- a label underscored by the fact that the band's first two albums were produced by J Mascis, whom Colbourn met in an Amherst gas station where the Dinosaur Jr. frontman worked. By 1992 Buffalo Tom had a solid following stateside and overseas, and that year RCA Records released the group's third, breakthrough album, "Let Me Come Over." Buffalo Tom's profile exploded, and things started getting weird.

"It was the best of times and it was the worst of times," says Colbourn. "Artistically, Bill had his moment in history. Tom was drumming like a real drummer. I was coming out of my shell, starting to sing. That's when the trouble started coming, though. It quickly flipped. People started talking about pre-sales and our enjoyment level just . . ."

"The goal post was moved down the field," Janovitz interjects. "Nirvana broke and sold a million records. And then it was, 'Well, can we do it too?' "

For the next two records it felt like Buffalo Tom was "fighting the good fight," according to Colbourn. They toured constantly. But music fashions, and the music business, were changing. The week Buffalo Tom's last studio album, 1998's "Smitten," came out, the band's label, Polydor, fell apart in a big corporate merger .

"It was a good time to take a break," Janovitz says. "We felt the momentum slipping. Families were starting. Everyone was on the same page."

"Ironically, we were at the top of our game, even though the times were against us," notes Colbourn. "We understand that, though, because we're rock fans, too. It's not about skill. It's about a new face, a new feeling."

"You do have to tweak your attitude when you stop, because if you do something that long it becomes part of your identity," says Maginnis.

Although Janovitz says he had prepared himself for the inevitable fall from grace, the shift from rock 'n' roll frontman to stay-at-home dad was jarring for him.

"It was a depressing time for me and I felt depressed that I felt depressed," he says. "I remember looking at my friends and wondering, 'What the [expletive] have I been doing for 10 years?' They'd been working their way up in the world, figuring out what they want to do, and I was just starting to figure it out."

While Buffalo Tom has been all but silent since 1999, Janovitz has made three solo albums, formed the popular live band Crown Victoria with a handful of Boston musicians, and been an active participant in the annual "Hot Stove, Cool Music" benefit series. Colbourn performs and records in a duo with Hilken Mancini of Fuzzy. Maginnis has been involved in the local Newburyport scene.

Janovitz used to put the odds at 90 to 1 that Buffalo Tom would make another record. All three agree that it wouldn't have happened without the patient ministrations of longtime manager Tom Johnston, who by all accounts has tended to the band's emotional health as carefully as its business prospects.

"I guess I always hoped this would happen at some point, but stepping back is a good thing, too," says Johnston. "Everybody needed to take time off. It allowed us to appreciate the time gone by."

What's to come is anybody's guess. The band is playing in Belgium, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and London this week, and will return to Boston for a sold-out CD release show Saturday at the Paradise, followed by a few West Coast dates. There will be no six-week tours, though, or all-night recording sessions. Life has changed. So have Buffalo Tom's rock 'n' roll dreams.

"You want to know what I think is the answer? Branson, Missouri," says Janovitz. That's the Midwestern town where celebrities like Glen Campbell and Tony Orlando set up long-term residencies. "You work every night and then go home and be with your kids."

"Yeah," says Maginnis. "The Buffalo Tom Family Theater."