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Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz Would Not Be Denied: The Boston Red Sox

Nothing if not a model of consistency, Buffalo Tom has been making the same decent-to-great music since 1992’s Let Me Come Over. Actually the Massachusetts trio’s third album, Let Me Come Over feels more like a debut, as it zeroed in brilliantly on the group’s strengths, namely the earnest, imagery-laden, acoustic-gone-electric songwriting of guitarist Bill Janovitz and bassist Chris Colbourn and the propulsive punk undercurrents supplied by drummer Tom Maginnis. Judging by the band’s latest, Skins (Scrawny), it’s a formula that still has legs. Skins is the group’s eighth album and second since reuniting after a 10-year (sort-of) break, and its world-weary lilt and been-there/done-that themes make it the perfect grown-up companion piece to Let Me Come Over’s reluctant coming-of-age angst. It may be the best thing the band has done since that LP. Buffalo Tom will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with Janovitz and Colbourn.

Janovitz: I grew up on Long Island as a fan of the Mets. But by the time I left as a 16-year-old, I was agnostic about sports. As I got older, I would keep an eye on baseball, and when I got home from touring, gained more appreciation for the city that was my home: Boston. Like Tom Waits’ “San Diego Seranade.” We would get wrapped up in local football in the U.K. or rugby in New Zealand. So coming home, I would in turn get more into the local teams, but specifically the Red Sox, during the 1990s. During the end of that decade, they started to transition into a worthy team with real characters like Pedro Martinez. So when my first child was born in April 1999, I was primed for watching baseball on a daily basis for a whole season for the first time since I was a kid. I was home with my own child now for the summer. Very few nights out. I was hooked and have not kicked the daily addiction since, enabled in part now by all the aforementioned gadgets and family season tickets. I recently told some friends that October 2004, when the Sox staged the biggest and most dramatic comeback in sports over the Yankees in the ALCS, I was at every home game, and it was the greatest month in my life. My wife, frowning, reminded me that our son was born the next month. OK, greatest two months in my life!