Tom Waits is a musical god. Full stop. And like most gods when they interact with us mere mortals it is, at times, a bit hard to comprehend. This guy smashes together blues, jazz, industrial, experimental and theatre into a single album like some half-crazed recovering mad-scientist turned carnival barker and then leaves it for us to sort out. This is not a task for the faint of heart! But let us attempt to make sense of Wait’s mad, mad landscape, filled with drunks, bastards, brawlers, and bawlers into something we might be able to hear.
This project started a couple weeks ago. I was talking to my oldest son, Kerouac who knew how much I loved Waits. We share a lot of similar musical interests, and he decided he was finally ready to give Waits a shot.
“So where do I begin, Dad?”
This is NOT intended to be exhaustive, just a broad stroke introduction.
Now that’s a loaded question. To know Tom Waits is to know there are very different periods in a career spanning more than 50 years and 17 studio albums. There’s the San Diego folk scene period of Closing Time, and The Heart of Saturday Night that showcases Tom’s vivid characters and storyteller ability but placed in a softer, jazzy-piano bar setting. There’s the period after 1980 when Waits married Kathleen Brennan who would go on to be Wait’s main songwriting collaborator (move over Lenon-McCartney!). Around the same time, he moved from Asylum Records to the Island Records label where Tom would begin experimenting with pretty much anything he could get his hands on to make sound.
Swordfishtrombones, Wait’s first album on Island Records was a massive departure from anything he’d done prior, his Island years culminated in Bone Machine which won the 1992 Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. Jon Pareles wrote that “On Swordfishtrombones, Waits has made a breakthrough–he’s found music as evocative as his words. Waits’s grumble of a voice now bounces off a peculiar assortment of horns and percussion and organ and keyboards, as if he’d led a Salvation Army band into a broken-down Hong Kong disco.”
From this point, Tom moved to Anti Records (an off shoot of Epitaph Records), releasing Mule Variations in 1999. “Epitaph is a label run by and for artists and musicians, where it feels much more like a partnership than a plantation... We shook on the deal over a coffee in a truck stop. I know it’s going to be an adventure,” Waits said of the move. Tom’s, as of right now, final studio album, “Bad As Me,” was released in 2011 and would go on to become his first top 10 album in the U.S., peaking at number 6.
That was a lot and was, in no way, even trying to be exhaustive. So where do you begin with someone has wide-ranging as Tom Waits? I told Kerouac, that while it was probably my absolute favorite Waits’ album to stay away from The Black Rider initially. He of course didn’t listen to me and a few days after our initial conversation sent me the following text.
“I don’t know how I’d even describe this album …its so far outside my comfort zone I almost can’t even judge it!”
I warned you.
I’ve attempted to not only create a solid introduction to the artist, but one that also looks to showcase his different eras. Much like the little biography above, this is not intended to be exhaustive, there’s a couple albums not represented as something from each album was not my goal. Give it a whirl. What did I miss? What’s your favorite Tom Waits album or track? What song do you think I should have included as an introduction? Tell me in the comments below!
Side A
1. (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night – The Heart of Saturday Night
2. San Diego Serenade – The Heart of Saturday Night
3. Tom Traubert’s Blues – Small Change
4. The Piano Has Been Drinking – Small Change
5. Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard – Blue Valentine
6. Blue Valentines – Blue Valentine
7. Christmas Card From A Hooker in Minneapolis – Blue Valentine
8. Frank’s Theme – Frank’s Wild Years
9. Way Down in A Hole – Frank’s Wild Years
10. 16 Shells From A 30.6 – Swordfishtrombones
11. Singapore – Rain Dogs
Side B
1. Rain Dogs – Rain Dogs
2. Goin’ Out West – Bone Machine
3. Black Wings – Bone Machine
4. Chocolate Jesus – Mule Variations
5. Filipino Box Spring Hog – Mule Variations
6. Make it Rain – Real Gone
7. Green Grass – Real Gone
8. God’s Away on Business – Blood Money
9. Flowers Grave – Alice
10. Just the Right Bullets – The Black Rider
11. Down There By the Train – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
Let me know which tracks you liked or if there was a particular era that appeals to you more! Enjoy!