This week we’ll spend our two hours in a shroud of barroom musk, out-of-tune brass, and painted ladies all spent before the tunes of an American treasure. We speak of Tom Waits. The New York Times, in a review of Barney Hoskyns’ 2009 biography of Tom Waits, Lowside of The Road describes our subject today thusly: “He is as potent and unpredictable a musical force as most of us have witnessed in our lifetimes, and that’s not faint praise. The graveyard croak of his gravelly, bellowing baritone is righteous, paint-scraping, unmistakable; it scatters small animals and slaps your synapses to startled attention. With what’s left of your adrenalized wits, you can attend to his mordant lyrics, which he packs into songs he divides (as his wife, Kathleen Brennan, put it) into two primordial categories: “the grand weeper” and “the grim reaper”. He’s our neighbor here in Sonoma County and we could not be more proud of the boy…really.
No.
1
Artist
Title
Album
Buy
2
John Hammond, Jr.
Clap Hands
Wicked Grin
3
Courtney Marie Andrews
Downtown Train
Come On Up To The House – Women Sing Waits
4
Tom Waits
Tom Traubert's Blues
Small Change
5
Willie Nelson;Sheryl Crow;Lukas Nelson
Come On Up To The House
Heroes
6
The Blind Boys Of Alabama
Way Down In The Hole
Spirit Of The Century
7
The Holmes Brothers
Train Song
Promised Land
8
King Ernest
House Where Nobody Lives
Not The Same Old Blues Crap, Vol. 2
9
The Blue Hawaiians
Jockey Full of Bourbon
Savage Night
10
Tom Waits
Dead & Lovely
Real Gone
11
Tom Waits
Ice Cream Man
Closing Time
12
Holly Cole
(Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night
Temptation
13
Norah Jones
The Long Way Home
Feels Like Home
14
Tom Waits
I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You
Closing Time
15
Hayes Carll
I Don't Wanna Grow Up
Trouble In Mind
16
Eagles
Ol' '55
The Very Best of the Eagles [2003] Disc 1
17
Willie Nelson
Picture In A Frame
It Always Will Be
18
Tom Waits
On The Nickel
Heartattack And Vine
19
Marc Ribot
Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful) (feat. Tom Waits)
Songs of Resistance 1942 – 2018
20
Tom Waits
The Soul Of A Man
God Don't Never Change: The Songs Of Blind Willie Johnson