TOM WAITS, SONGWRITER’S SONGWRITER, PUTS OUT 20TH ALBUM

I’ve never been the hugest Tom Waits fan, partly because Closing Time is so goddamn good, few of this other records have hit me that way.

However, I can’t help studying Tom Waits… because he is undeniably authentic. And that guy hiding behind songs & peeking out at shadows is quite fascinating.

So I listened to the 45-min interview on NPR’s Fresh Air about his new album, Bad As Me. A few gems.

To get the throwback sound of vinyl on one song, he stuck a microphone up to fried chicken. Sounds identical to a record player, he says.

Songs he used to study obsessively:
Julie London's 'cry me a river' & James Brown's 'it's a man's world'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByUOFV5TusE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fd8_gojNXc

He talks about figuring out how to sing songs he wrote… something I’m only now tapping into: just ‘cuz you wrote it doesn’t mean you’ve unlocked its mysteries of how to put it over.

“I bark my voice out through a closed throat, like a dog almost.”

And then there’s great audio of him doing vocal exercises to undo the damage that style of singing creates. (about 10 min in.... http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141657227/tom-waits-the-fresh-air-interview)

When I was writing a story on performance anxiety for a science magazine, I learned that Waits’s gruff voice was a construct – a character, an alter ego, a mental trick to separate the real sweet-voiced Waits from someone who would be fearless onstage. He says, as a young man, he was always eager to be an old man.

Another of my favorite Waits’s stories: Elizabeth Gilbert, in her Ted talk on creative genius, talks about how Tom Waits is haunted by his creativity. He went through decades thinking every great melody that hit him was a fluke & if he didn’t literally careen the car to the side of the road & run to the nearest tape recorder or studio, the muse would never visit him again.

Watch it here, included in a blog post I did recently on the Art of Living Dangerously. http://jessietorrisi.blogspot.com/2011/09/art-of-living-dangerously.html

Or listen to Tom tell it all in his own words. http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141657227/tom-waits-the-fresh-air-interview

How do you keep making great music for decades???

“You are still mystified at the construction of songs. You don’t ever really get to a plateau where you feel like, ‘Oh I’m done. I know how to do this.’ You stay curious & puzzled by the whole affair.”
-- Tom Waits

* * *

my fav tom waits song, "the piano has been drinking"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUeKDtMV1gA&feature=related