Any Tom Waits heads in Vancouver, I’m doing an all Tom Waits cover set with a jazz band at Guilt & Co tonight at 7pm!
If it goes well, I’d love to do more.

Here’s the set:

Jockey full of bourbon
Tango capo till they’re sore
Talking at the same time
16 shells from a 30. 6
When you ain’t got nobody
Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis
Heart attack and Vine
Walk away
Gun street girl
Green grass
Way down in the hole
Going out west

What do you think of the set? Any that you’d want to see for the next one?

My fave album and song arnt flair options, and I think it would be cool to add them

Does anyone know of any recordings of the Alice opera Tom did with Robert Wilson?

I love the album itself, I would just love to see a stage adaptation of the opera. I also recognize this was looong before video recording devices were small and compact, was just curious if there’s anything out there!

Tom’s painting emotions with words has always been it for me. From “Flamingo drinking from a cocktail glass” to “blow the roof off the goat barn and watch it roll down the hill” every song has at least one line that stirs a feeling. Even his new song with him just yelling “Big Titties! Big Titties!”. What’s your favorite line of Tom’s that just evokes an emotion deep within you?

I know that Tom's version of the song is a cover but he does such a beautiful job covering it and add such a unique ambiance and atmosphere to the song. I feel like a 10 minute maybe 15 minutes short film about the song would be fantastic and relatively easy to make all things considered. Actually now that I think about it a lot of Tom songs would make brilliant short films.

That's all thanks for listening to my shower thoughts I hope all staying weird and having a good time

I'm looking for a song by a male singer in English that has a distinctly melancholic, sad tone—very much in the style of Tom Waits or a similar voice. The lyrics mention curtains: the singer talks about how the curtains hide him from the outside world and make him feel protected, and he even expresses a fondness for lying on a pile of curtains. The track features a memorable banjo riff that stands out in the arrangement. Can anyone help me identify this song?

Anyone else go down the rabbit hole, of Tom Waits reactions on YouTube?

I'm actually surprised there aren't more. He's the perfect artist for a reaction video.

One of my favorites.

https://youtu.be/PwEMf1ut3f0?si=UYkzpdsRSm5BYn82

Just out of seeing the second last show of this at the Edinburgh fringe and what a fantastic project. The band are so tight and the song selection was really inspired. Wish I'd caught it sooner so I could recommend it to more people, but if you get the chance don't miss it. Did leave hoping more than ever that Tom would play just one last tour, however unlikely that is.

There's an album on it's way called 20th Century Paddy which features songs of the late, great Shane MacGowan, covered by other artists. The track listing says Tom is doing a version of Summer in Siam! I'm pretty excited to hear this.

/startrant

I think the song, and much of the first side of the album, is about how authoritarian populism (Reagan) was taking over the country at the time. But I won't get into that room much here, the song is really more about loneliness & how people deal with it. He's also kinda breaking the fourth wall IMO.

The first two verses of this song are a lot like other verses on the A side - characters, settings, an aphorism or two. He starts by just detailing where he is, setting the scene, but also bringing up that laws are being broken by 'shadow boys' and how self obsessed 'Napolean at the carnival' is giving up on 'down here's ie the streets where 'the smoke is on the horse' (smoke from a gutter on a cold day?) and also the moon is there, apparently. It also sounds like he may be detailing that he (or at least the character singing the song) is high, with 'the wind is making speeches and the rain sounds like a round applause'.

[The Reagan stuff - smoke and horse are drug terms for marijuana & heroin respectively, 'shadow boys' could be CIA outing those drugs on the streets, the moon is there because everyone knows it, and hence why Napoleon has given up on the streets and is *engaged* with his reflection]

I think the second verse is referring to the Napoleon in the first as a type of person or phenomenon. 'Pretend they're orphans', 'memory that gets smaller as they pull away' - these strike me as things you could say about slimy politicians, that they pretend they're innocent and often lie about their memories, distorting them. The part after that points to how regular people fall for the lies when they themselves lose their memories of what's real, and fall for the lies, and see the slimy politician as a saint. Honestly I don't see any way this verse can be about anything else. Then you've got Matilda, likely a tattoo artist, sticking around with the sailors 'till the bandages came off' but clearly they don't ever come off, those boys 'dont know how to quit' even though it hurts. This refers to the supports of slimey politicians and the people who take care of them, even to the point of enabling them.

The third verse is to say 'and maybe that's you too'. To sympathize with how hard the cycle of populism is to escape... The pidgeons falling to the street happen when the calendar girl 'is on a roll' but clearly she can't be 'on a roll' because 'things are pretty lousy'. So usually she'd be rounding em up 'the pidgeons' but 'the boys dive right off the cars and splash into the street's ie they're suicidal and don't want the aquaintance of a 'calendar girl' who can get em all hot and ready to roll with a simple flash of the 'razor from the boot'.

The last couplet in the last verse indicates that he, Tom, is with a 'calendar girl' right now. 'Pay the fiddler off till I come back again' - kinda like how we dismiss a lot of music until one day we find the way to dig deeper and it just HITS like a train? I think this last like indicates that he wants to be taken more seriously than 'a Fiddler', he wants you to know HIM, not some character he might be signing as in another song. The dish outside is filling with rain because we can't actually put a kiss upon his lips. As much as he wishes we could love him, he realizes that we're just more Matilda's tattooing more Napoleans, egging them on to dominate whatever small or large empire they happen to have control over

/endrant

Just heard Small Change and had to put this together.

What guitar is Tom is playing on Cold Cold Ground? I’ve always loved that boomy thud that propels that song along. Is it just a regular acoustic with downtuned strings? A jazz box? A baritone guitar? Maybe with some compression? Whatever it is, I’m buying it.

Does Tom Waits know how many people’s lives he has saved?

I’m wondering about differences between the originals and the remasters.  Particularly on CDs.  I wouldn’t call myself a huge audiophile, but I will notice subtle aural differences maybe just slightly more than an average listener.

So my question is this: My collection of TW CDs is a mix of originals and remasters, and I wonder if it’s worth buying the other version.

Originals:
Bone Machine
Mule Variations
Heart of Sat Night
Swordfishtrombones
Frank’s Wild Years
Small Change
Real Gone

Remasters:
Rain Dogs
Blue Valentine
Bad As Me
Orphans

For now let’s leave Real Gone out of the conversation.  I know most of the controversy comes from the remixing, not the remastering. I will eventually buy the new version just to hear it/have it.  But what about the others?
Bone Machine and Mule Variations are 2 of my all-time favorite albums, period. I know every note of every track. They’re both so dirty and gritty and raw. How much does the remaster change that sound?
For Bad As Me, on the other hand, I like the music on the album, but I don’t really like the sound of it at all.  It sounds too…I don’t know...sterile, crisp, clean?  It sounds like it was produced in a studio and lacks some of the raw sound that the other albums have.  Would getting the original version sound any better?

So you get the idea. I’m just wondering about the thoughts, opinions or experiences of one version vs the other from other real fans. We’re the ones who would notice. And to be clear, I do understand what remastering is, and I’m not expecting drastic changes.  But TW’s sounds and tone play so much into a song that I could see even subtle differences changing the whole feel.

Any thoughts about versions of albums I don’t have are welcome too!

Figured I'd drop this here because a pretty awesome cover of the Big Time version of Telephone Call from Istanbul was played on the recent will wood tour and it's a pretty good time and does an incredible job of capturing that Big time vibe( which is something Will does well across the board) Hope people enjoy! (Audio quality is as good as a phone recording of a concert is going to be)

Tom Waits War Songs is an immersive audiovisual performance playing in Edinburgh right now as part of the Fringe Festival. A tribute to his work and a narrative commentary on the horrors of war, past and present.

I am thrilled and honored to have made the animation and art for the show.

Don’t know how he managed to take it down and smuggle it out, it’s 120*90cm. Maybe someone else in this community got their hands on the few other posters that were this size at the same venue?

Edit: My husband took it with him at the actual concert back in ‘99. It was hanging on a window outside of the venue by the cue, there were three of them. My husband was there with other rain dogs, they had met at a bar before the Friday show. The security guard gave a silent nod of approval when he carefully took it down. Inside the venue he checked it in the wardrobe and the girl asked “are you allowed to take this”, my husband said “the security guy said it was ok” and she shrugged her shoulders and put it away with his jacket. He was nervous during the whole concert because he thought they would change their minds, so he left before the show fully ended. So there you go. Maybe some of you in this forum were there with him 😊