Tom Waits

When I first began posting my favourite artists, I never really used to write much about them. It was more about just posting an image…well, not so much anymore huh.

After a Facebook conversation with a very dear old friend of mine Christine, she asked why I hadn’t done Tom Waits yet. I was like “What! He was the second artist I ever did!”…then realised I actually hadn’t written anything about him. And if there is any artist ever who deserves something written about them…it’s him.

To say that he is not everyone’s cup of tea is an understatement. But somewhere in the haze of public opinion, lives a beacon of eccentricity that i find often defines his supporters. Apart from the main reasons I think he is one of this planet’s foremost storytellers, I really do believe that somewhere deep down I love that not everyone gets him.

I think most people know him [if at all] as this grumbling jazz/blues artist who seems to make music like he has been recording in a smelting plant with a piano that is just a little bit out of key….Oh, and accompanied by a tuba player. Again, I think this is why I love him so much. For those who love him, I am never going to do him justice with quippy rhetoric referring to his most popular or rare tracks that I resonate with…so to you guys….he he he, yep, me too. To those who don’t know or who don’t ‘get’ Tom Waits, I am going to try and explain why I love him so much.

I was in a small bedsit apartment in 1997 when the enigmatic Christine played the first track I ever fell in love with was a song called ‘Murder in the Red Barn’. It’s off an album called ‘Bone Machine’. Maybe it was where I was in my life… or that fact that we were most probably half way through a bottle of [cheap nasty] red, but somewhere in that small 5 x 5m room, I found a love for this man who can paint a picture in a couple of well chosen words.

Some people prefer his early jazz/blues work. Others really love his later work which has smatterings of beat writers like Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson. Me, I don’t think that there has ever been anyone quite like Waits. I think he is possibly one of our most encompassing storytellers. Add to this a voice that sounds like an old mattress exhaling after 20 years of use by a 400lb steel worker and you get such a rich, vibrant framework in which he allows his stories to flourish and blossom. Sometimes sweet and beautiful like in ‘Johnsburg, Illinois’ or ‘Kentucky Avenue’. Sometimes harsh and raw like ‘Hell Broke Luce’ or ‘Lowside of the Road’.

But no matter what road he decides to take, it is always so visceral you can practically feel it. Without getting into the circular and always meandering questions of what is his best work, I will say three things.

1. If you choose to get into his music, be patient, because once you’re in there, it’s like taking a degree in songwriting. Seriously, I could do my masters on Tom Waits and still feel like I could go for my Doctorate.

2. Like choosing your favourite child, it always feels like I’m cheating the others out of some sense of warranted validation, but after years of listening and loving, my favourite Tom Waits track is ‘Burma Shave’. I wont go into it, but like most other favourite anythings, it transports me to a place that I am very fond of and value the memories of visiting it as much as any other vacation I’ve ever actually had. (I have a very good imagination).

3. My favourite album is not really a difficult choice. Again, it kills me to not choose another album, but as the website name indicates, ‘Nighthawks at the Diner’ made a very big impression on me.

Finding this gem from 1975 was a gift. I reckon it was around a year after I’d had that first interaction with ‘Bone Machine’ and I think I simply fell into this record without any intention to find something new. I’m nearly 100% sure (I can’t be 100% about anything from that time) that Christine had this album on CD and god knows I had a portable CD player that I trotted around like I was better than anyone with a walkman. I have since learned that you can never ‘one-up’ anyone using a Sony Walkman cassette player.

I distinctly recall waiting for a bus somewhere in the industrial backstreets of Abbotsford and having a revelation about this album and subsequently Tom Waits. As I played the album I discovered that I was drawn to his ability meld music and storytelling in a way that I had never experienced before. Sure, I had favourite writers. I also had favourite musicians. But never had I had one who spanned into both genre and result was a driving need to discover more and more and more. Luckily, of all people, Tom Waits has one of the worlds largest musical catalogues, so for me ‘Nighthawks’ was the gateway album to the rest of his music.

Knowing a few Waits aficionados, it often comes to pass that you are a fan of his old jazzy stuff or his newer industrial stuff. Me, I love both because no matter what music you put behind him, his authenticity shines through like a bad SciFi movie UFO landing in your back yard. It’s just what he does.

‘Nighthawks at the Diner’ is a live album that sounds as though you should be listening to it drinking your third finger of whiskey from a well worn leather bar stool in a downtown Minnesota speakeasy. All of the tracks resemble a beat writers musings but really, if you have any experience with Waits’ early material, you’ll see that it’s an accumulated ensemble of tracks that had been previously successful for him.

The aura around this album for me is what draws me back every time. It’s all fuzzy around the edges (although musically its so on point its ridiculous), and somewhere I feel as though its a musical translation of a conversation with a drunk genius in that speakeasy. One you probably can’t get a word in with simply because their genius makes so much sense that you don’t wanna interrupt….it could also very easily be the drunk part.

But most of all. It’s fucking beautiful. The way he describes the mediocre life of an a midwest town in ‘Putnham County’ epitomises what I love the most about his storytelling. He has a magical ability to make the inane seem heartfelt and a place we all secretly long for.

I think that this is his super power. Painting the ordinary side of life in colours that we’ve never really seen before.

I don’t expect the general population to love his voice. It really is an acquired taste. But I will challenge anyone to show me a more prolific songwriter that has endured over four decades, 16 studio albums, 2 soundtrack albums, 3 live albums, 7 compilation albums and countless collaborations.

My only regret is that I’ve never seen him live and he’s doing less and less gigs than ever. Possibly because he’s pushing 70 soon. But I always have my whiskey fingers crossed in the hopes that one day…just maybe.

So, thank you again Chris, I don’t think I really understood the gravity of that night until half a century later.

Cheers to beauty of the shadow x

M/

~ Article updated August 2018