My week of nostaglic 1990's was perfectly capped with Juliana Hatfield and Buffalo Tom at the El Rey Theatre. Juliana Hatfield always puts out great albums with splendid songwriting and catchy riffs via her trademark Gibson SG. Juliana's guitar playing was heralded enough to have a column in Guitar World showing off some of her different chord voicings and use of the capo.
I haven't seen Juliana since her show at the Knitting Factory when she reunited with the Blake Babies. She was supposed to tour as Some Girls opening for Ryan Adams back in the day but Ryan fell off the stage and broke his wrist prompting the cancellation of the tour. When the curtains pulled back at the El Rey, Juliana was standing by herself with her Gibson SG plugged in to a Marshall JCM 800 half stack with a Boss tuner and a Boss RC-20 Loop station. She dialed up a slightly overdriven sound and proceeded to play a small batch of new songs. It was a pleasant surprise to hear "Necessito" as it is one of my favorite songs for her Some Girls outfit. She sounded great and was swaying in time with her guitar during her songs. Juliana combined her powers with Frank Smith for a new EP "Sittin' In A Tree" which features Juliana's sticky guitar riffs and some various instrumentation of banjo and slide guitar. She supposedly played for forty five minutes but it felt like five. I hope she tours again soon.
Buffalo Tom was acheived a nice cult status of followers back in the 1990's. Hailing from Boston, they were assisted by J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. back in the day and were favorites of the college rock scene. They are now back into the music fold with their new album "Three Easy Pieces". Bill Janovitz(Vocals/Guitars) was giving it his all on stage and drenched in sweat after two songs. Chris Colbourn (Bass/Vocals) was cranking away on his bass and adding to the banter in between the songs. It was good to see them back on stage rocking out, but I am still keeping my fingers crossed for a Hum reunion.
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