I'm A Word Guy

Tom Waits
The Fabulous Fox Theatre
Atlanta
July 5, 2008

When Tom Waits first announced his U.S. summer tour, this is what he did (the following footage is only worth watching if you see it right up to the very end):



I have to admit that what appeals to me most about Tom Waits, even moreso than his growling voice and very physical way of performing, is the man himself. Earlier last year, I was loaned a copy of Innocent When You Dream - a collection of interviews with him taken from various sources, spanning over about thirty years of his career. It was one of those experiences where amongst all the belly laughs, you learn a whole lot about the subject. Waits is (to my mind anyway) an intellectual giant - he loves playing with words and their meaning, and has a knack for telling twisted tales about folks that many would consider no-hopers or bums. With his porkpie hat and typically ratty suits, he looks like someone plucked straight out of one of his songs. You figure out pretty quickly though that behind his ostensibly jumbled ideas and absent-mindedness, he's sharp as a tack.


The nice thing about last night's show - his last U.S. gig before heading over to Europe - was the vast range of people who had come along. Couples - young and old, parents and their kids, and the hardest-core fans who come to town especially - like the lovely lady next to me who had bought her ticket and booked her flight from Baltimore only hours before the show itself. And she'd already seen him play in Texas at the beginning of the tour. As she said to me at the end of the show, "Now can you see why I do this?" Jokes aside though, I could see myself in her exact same position a few years down the track...


What I really do like about Tom Waits' music is the fact that the vast majority of his material is very heavily driven by drums and bass, which at a theatre, can make it pretty hard for the crowd to keep still. Seeing him and his band perform, also makes his recordings sound muted and distant in comparison. The band he played with last night were unbelievable, from the guy who covered all the additional guitars to the guy on saxophone, and especially Tom Waits' oldest (still only teenage!) son on drums. One of the best numbers during the night - whose name I've already forgotten, had both of Waits' oldest sons on stage drumming. I guess like the Lennons, Starrs, Finns and Barnes of this world, having a parent in the music business means that you've got it in the blood. Highlights from last night included "Chocolate Jesus" (for everyone who finds it hard to get up early on Sunday morning to go to church), "Black Market Baby" (which if you didn't know Tom Waits was a white guy, you'd swear just listening to it that he was a black guy), "Hold On" and "Innocent When You Dream" (with the crowd singing entire parts of it). The other corker was "Ninth and Hennepin", apparently written about his old neighbourhood. He sang it, dimly lit, with a single light bulb dangling above him as if he was in an interrogation room.


Waits though, is a natural storyteller, and was happy to engage in some random tales more towards the latter half of the show. The trouble with him is his propensity for bending the truth in the name of a good story. My favourite from last night was when he recounted how he'd gone swimming in a Georgia pond and accidentally swallowed some water. He got stomach pains so went to the doctor who made him have an ultrasound. Turns out he'd swallowed water with frog spawn in it. The doctor told him, "You can have these three bullfrogs surgically removed or you can name them." He chose the latter, and said dryly that they don't bother him, the only time they get annoying is when he and his family are trying to watch TV. Another tale was about his fascination with Indiana's "Lost Luggage Centre" - a warehouse where they keep all the lost luggage and re-sell stuff from it. He'd seen them advertising lots of bargains and thought it sounded as though it was for him. So he flew all the way there - only to lose his luggage.

As someone said to me yesterday, you can call what Tom Waits does "performance art". There's so much more to it than him simply getting up there and belting out a few songs. He effortlessly mixes up the foot-tapping numbers with the ballads, and like few people, makes you laugh but also encourages you to think.