We didn't know much about Billy's Band when we piled into Max of Eastman place during the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival. We knew the musicians were Russian. We knew they played tunes by Tom Waits. That was about it. But as the ragamuffin band made its way to the bandstand like the Marx Brothers fresh off a Tilt-A-Whirl, we knew we were in for a show.

Tackling anything by Tom Waits is like wrestling an alligator: do it well and you've got a new pair of shoes; screw up and you're dead. Billy's Band did it well that hot summer night and wound up being the sleeper show of the whole festival. Folks were raving for days.

Those that knew little or nothing of Waits' work were blown away by the band's Tin Pan Alley sashay, broken English charm, and overall zaniness. And the Waits fans - a fickle, opinionated lot - overwhelmingly approved. Waits fans are hardcore, and so is Billy's Band frontman/bassist Billy Novik. Novik growls and croons so much like his musical inspiration that it's hard to tell where he ends and Waits begins.

"For me," Novik says, "Tom Waits...he is one of my great teachers. I like him as an actor very much. I like him as a writer. I think his lyrics could be called poetry. It's really deep and it touches me so much."

Thanks to some scumbag burglars, Novik was introduced to Waits music the hard way. "It was back in 1999," he said in a phone interview from Russia. "I was already 25 years old and me and my friend, we had a club. We were owners of the club. It was an underground club, low budget. And once they robbed us absolutely; they stole everything and the only thing we had was a stereo and one of our friends just brought two CDs. One of them was Tom Waits' ‘Early Years' from 1971, and ‘Mule Variations.' And that was the only CDs we had, we were playing that and we didn't have anything else."

Novik was transfixed. "After five times listening," he says, "I realized that this really fits to my life, to that situation, and that feeling. I started to get into Tom Waits' music and I realized this is really what I was looking for, for all of my life."

Novik had been a musician playing in a rock band in school, and later on as a busker on the streets of St. Petersburg, playing guitar and drums before settling on the bass. Lacking confidence in his abilities, he hung it up.

"I quit it all, absolutely," he says. "And then only when I was 25, I came back to music because of Tom Waits." Novik began covering Waits' tunes in English and writing in the same visceral style in Russian. And though Novik has translated some of Waits's work into Russian, he doesn't think it's entirely possible, or wise.

"People try to do it," he says. "But it doesn't work, really. I don't think this is a good idea. There are a lot of trials to translate his lyrics to Russian, but I don't think somebody could really hit the point. There are such a lot of small things that you have to really learn to learn what it is all about. I would never say that the translation of at least one of Tom Waits' songs could compare to what I feel when I read his text in English. It's also very important to get Tom Waits as a complete; his voice, music, and lyrics."

Novik stresses that he's no Tom Waits knock-off, since Tom Waits is as much a genre as he is an individual - with Novik in his shadow.

"Tom Waits is much better," says Novik. "Seriously, I don't think it is my right to say something like this. I'm not a musical critic, but I think we, Billy's Band, are a little bit more simpler maybe for Russian people. In Russia we don't play Tom Waits much. We are mostly singing our own songs, which are sometimes similar to Tom Waits."

"People say, ‘Oh, you are Russian Tom Waits,"' he says. "And then when I start to talk to them I understand that they have no idea what Tom Waits' lyrics are about. Russian people got no experience in comprehending music itself, also lyrics. You know, that all the musical culture was nearly killed during the Soviet times. We have no experience of bar music, restaurant music."

According to Novik, the comprehension, the appreciation, and the love of music are coming back, even though this problem never seems to have plagued Novik himself.

"I love music itself," he says. "Like for instance, when I'm listening to Tchaikovsky I can enjoy every single tone. I've got the feeling that music is in my head permanently, even when I'm asleep. And when I have a chance to perform, playing the same songs and the same tones, I think, This time I have a chance to make it better. This is my perfectionism. I'm dreaming every time I'm performing that this time will be better than the last time. This is what's inside and keeps me around music."

Billy's Band

Saturday, June 12

Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music

6 & 10 p.m. | $25/Club Pass | rochesterjazz.com