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at a glance...
Hometown: Pomona, CA
First Recordings: 1973
Members:
Tom Waits -guitar, piano, vocals
Greg Cohen -bass
Smokey Hormel -guitar
Charlie Musselwhite -harmonica
Related artists:
Marc Ribot, The Lounge Lizards
Notes:
Born in Pomona, California, on December 7, 1949, Tom Waits was "discovered" as a musician by Herb Cohen in the early 1970's. Cohen was manager/handler and label head of Bizarre/Straight Records, best known for their association with Frank Zappa. Waits recorded material for Cohen that was primarily solo acoustic guitar and piano ballads and were later released as The Early Years: Volumes 1 & 2. In 1973, Waits released his first official recording, Closing Time, beginning a long and productive tenure at Elektra/Asylum Records, who put out a number of stellar albums. These recordings established Waits as a kind of barroom prophet, living the life of the drunks, hobos, and heartbroken who inhabited his songs. The music leaned heavily on lounge jazz configurations, often with strings. During the recording of the soundtrack for the Francis Ford Coppola film One From The Heart, Waits met his future wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan. His work with Coppola led to numerous acting roles. In 1983, Waits began the process of radically reinventing his musical persona, with his first release for Island Records, Swordfishtrombones. The Mule Variations is his latest release, and his first for Epitaph Records.
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Tom Waits
The Mule Variations
Epitaph, Released 1999
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One of the many ironic things about Tom Waits is that he is not only the most consistent recording artist of the last thirty years, but also the most diverse and adventuresome. The Mule Variations, his long-awaited new release, is perhaps his first album that doesn't sound like it's just stopping off at your stereo before it pulls out and trucks on to a whole new musical destination.
Many long-time fans will be tempted, at first listen, to peg Mule as a rehashing of familiar territory, namely that of Bone Machine. Repeated and obsessive further listening tells a different story, however; that of a relentless stylistic journeyman who has finally found his way home. Dark and smoky lounge shuffles, soul-rattling blues mindfuckers, nightmarish suburban spoken word terrors, tear-inducing piano ballads, anthemic true-believer rock and roll manifestos, twisted bohemian rantings - all of the ghosts of album's past rattle the cages of this monumental recording. Tom's voice still sounds like he's gargling a driveway, and his band continues the pattern of his Island recordings, sounding as though they've been the house band at the lounge of Satan himself for so long that they might have acquired both his immortality and his omniscience.
It's as though after all these years, Tom finally has nothing left to prove. He can drink more than you, smoke more than you, write a better song than you, act in a Francis Ford Coppola movie better than you and pass out on a piano like nobody's business. And goddamn, can he make a record.
If you like Tom Waits, check out:
Jim White Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Oscar Brown Jr. Then And Now
Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos
Vic Chesnutt About To Choke
-- Dave Rosen
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