#buff thomas

i forgot i had an art blog on tumblr

I used to see Buffalo Tom play all the time, and I bought this shirt at one of the shows on their “Let Me Come Over” tour, 25 freaking years ago! “25 years are just washed down the draiiiiiin,” amirite? Oh, I’m not right? I’m sorry. I thought you knew. It’s a line from their song, “Birdbrain,” which was the title track of the album before this one.

Anyhoo, Buffalo Tom put on great shows, but my college sophomore self soured on seeing them live for a while, mostly because their shows were becoming date night fare instead of the beer-drinkin’, fist-pumpin’ rock shows that I thought they deserved to be able to put on (and that I thought I needed at that point in my life). My friends Ariel, Andrew, and I coined the term Buff-Thomasing from a coupling posture we had started to notice at their shows: Tall dudes would press up against their little ladies and use their arms to hold them in like a stable—either to protect their girls from the crowd (which wasn’t very threatening because most people had paired up into the Buff-Thomas position), or to ward off other potential suitors—while the tall dude would rest his chin on his girl’s head to watch the show. Most of said dudes wore white baseball hats backwards. I am not even 100 percent positive that I didn’t indulge in a little Buff-Thomasing once I got a girlfriend. Heck, maybe that was the chief reason I put an ad in the personals.

“MSW: For companionship, romance, and to let me grind up on you in a sappy yet icky way when we go see Buffalo Tom concerts.”

I mean, yes, “Frozen Lake” is a lovely ballad, but to watch the crowd around take that position during “Velvet Roof” was just disappointing. I know that a band cannot be held accountable for the behavior/romantic inclinations of their fanbase, but a few years later I happened to see Chris Colbourn at a show at T.T. the Bear’s, and he was definitely Buff-Thomas-ing his wife.

As for this shirt, I had a lot of good times with it, and I’ve endured a lot with it too, as you can see from the huge hole on the front and the back. I could pretend that the hole was caused by a Buff-Thomas conga train, and the belt of the person in front of me and the zipper of the person behind me, but it was really caused by forgetting to zip up my own fly before my jeans shared a washing machine with this shirt. And the wreckage this shirt wreaks continues to this day, as I sat in the lounge chair on my parents’ back deck this weekend, and it collapsed.