This past weekend I had the rare opportunity to witness a performance by the one and only Tom Waits. From the venue (the deliciously gaudy art-deco miasma known as the Ohio Theater) to the merchandise stand (CDs, a pamphlet containing Waits’s interview with himself, and T-Shirts made from “real oil-slick photographs taken by Tom himself”) to the audience comprised of every social group you can imagine (the punk kids getting into it with the WWII vets, two seats down from the lesbian soccer moms), the show was a performance long before Waits even showed up on stage.
We got our drinks, took our seats and listened to the 30s pop music hissing through the speakers on the stage. Finally, the lights dimmed.
“…independent as a hog on ice…”
The applause, when Tom Waits finally got on the stage, was deafening. You hear that word thrown around now and again to describe applause, but until Saturday night I never realized what it really meant. The sheer force of the applause was eternal, overwhelming, the collective realization of a huge room of people that they were about to see Tom Waits perform live.
From the moment he got on the stage, Waits commanded the eyes of everyone in the room. Something in his bearing - maybe it was the ratty sport coat and bowler hat, maybe it was the utterly confused but nevertheless interested squint - was just completely Tom Waits. Half paragon and half parody, Waits somehow manages to convey all the grandiose pomposity of a circus ringleader. He was so smooth I almost felt like he was getting away with something. He stood there in full regalia, basking in the applause like sub-working-class majesty.
Then he stomped his foot onto his raised dais, kicking up a cloud of dust prepared for the occasion, and launched into the haunting Lucinda (note: I won’t vouch for the legality of that video clip, I didn’t take it but it’s making the youtube rounds and it’ll give you a sense of the vibe the man had).
“You’re not conventionally handsome, and you’ll never be tall…”
Before I start raving about Tom Waits, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge his backup band. They were truly wonderful, and it wouldn’t have been the same show without them. In particular, the guitarist and the reed man stole the show - or, at least, stole as much of the show as Waits let them have.
Omar Torrez handles a guitar like he’s just releasing sounds that really want to come out - sounds that have been around longer than you or me, and which will continue to reverberate until long after we’re gone. When he plays he doesn’t even look like he’s trying - he looks humble, unassuming and serene. His fingers are a blur and at times his sound carries the entire ensemble - and yet he manages to blend into the background as he plays. Waits couldn’t have picked a better guitarist to play with him.
Vincent Henry was there too, mostly on sax although he proved just as talented on the harmonica and even dabbled in guitar once or twice. I’m not a connoisseur of the saxophone - generally, I can’t tell a good reed player from a bad one. But something tells me that when someone is playing two saxophones at once then they’ve got something going on. Henry was right of center and felt like the heart of the backup band - in addition to his amazing sax performance, he also wore a roguish grin for most of the show and his presence helped to define the vibe that the whole performance exuded.
In addition to these two geniuses I want to mention that Casey Waits (Tom’s son) was solid on the drums, long time Waits collaborator Larry Taylor swung the upright bass around like an excitable playmate and Patrick Warren rounded out the ensemble on the keyboard.
In short, the band was almost as impressive as the man. And speaking of the man…
“I got the style, but not the grace…”
I’m not going to go over the entire set list - it’s easy enough to find on Google, if you’re interested. The truth is I didn’t know all of the songs he played - with 20 albums spanning more than 30 years I doubt many people can boast a working knowledge of his entire repertoire, and he played songs from all over the place. Every song he played had a completely new ring to it - it sometimes took me until the chorus to realize he was playing an old favorite, just because the arrangements were so interesting. In addition to unexpected guitar parts and dual-sax solos, Waits rounded out the reinterpretation of his own tunes by changing up his vocal style from time to time.
For a long time, his has been my favorite voice in music - the gravity of his growls is soul-shaking, and a mildly deranged bass is what he’s most known for. The man didn’t disappoint. However impressive his low tones are on an album, performed live they’re frankly unbelievable. There were moments when I felt like he was resonating with the universe as it unfolded around us. Sure, that’s perhaps laying it on a little thick - but come on, it’s Tom Waits!
What really surprised me, though, was the quality of his tenor - emotive, haunting and powerful. I’ve read a few other reviewers who said the same thing - that honestly at first it’s shocking to realize that he’s making those sounds. If his low growl can fill a room, his high voice - conveying more than anything a sense of just barely hanging on - can break a roomful of hearts.
“The face forgives the mirror, the worm forgives the plow - the questions begs the answer, can you forgive me somehow?”
After an exciting round of Chocolate Jesus, Waits paused. Somberly, he said “This next song is about family. My family, your family…everybody’s family…”
Then the polka rhythm began and instead of kicking right into Cemetery Polka Waits led us in a quick escape from a Family Reunion (”There’s Vernon, don’t look. There’s Edna, don’t look. There’s Mame, let’s go.”) That got a few laughs from the audience before he exploded into the actual song, but even then he kept the persona up - it felt less like he was singing Cemetery Polka and more like he was singing around it, building this tenuous structure of riff and inside joke on the rickety but stable foundation he laid out in Rain Dogs 25 years ago.
Trampled Rose, too, sounded like something else entirely. I didn’t even recognize it at first, but maybe that’s because I’ve gotten more used to the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss version lately. The arrangement was different - as were most of the arrangements. It was like listening to alternative reality versions of old favorites.
Hoist that Rag came out swinging as more of a Spanish number, with the whole band cutting loose and joining in for a total blow-out before Waits retired to the piano for a bit. Waits sang both Chocolate Jesus and Big in Japan, staples from 1998’s seminal Mule Variations, through a megaphone - though truth be told it didn’t do a whole lot to change his voice.
Hearing new arrangements for all of these songs was like meeting with old friends after many years, and realizing that you’ve both grown. I won’t say I necessarily liked the new arrangements more than the originals - but I will say that I’m glad Waits is too much the entertainer to simply play back his albums for us verbatim.
“I’m not Abel, I’m just Cain - so open up the heavens, and make it rain!”
And speaking of entertainment, I feel I haven’t adequately conveyed this man’s stage presence. Tom Waits is 58 years old but he carried himself with more energy than his son on drums. Beat boxing, stomping the floor, kicking prepared percussive shims with oversized boots, dancing, keeping time with his whole body - Waits didn’t need any special effects for this performance, he was like a one-man-band whose instruments happened to be played by other people.
You know all of those really bizarre vocal sounds he used on Real Gone? The ones he claims to have simply recorded in his bathroom and then later incorporated into his songs? Well as it turns out he really makes all of those sounds. When he tore into Lie to Me three beats ahead of his band (they had to start the song over) there was an amazing moment when he was just…god, I don’t know if I’d call it beatboxing or clearing his throat, but watch the music video and you’ll know what I mean. And he just made sounds like that all night, like some kind of human effects machine.
Between the stage (simply strewn with instruments, with some sort of mad sculpture comprised entirely of copper pipe and broken phonograph speakers), the body motion and the sound effects there was just constantly more going on than I could take in. It was nearly impossible to appreciate Waits’ movement and his sounds and his ridiculous characters all simultaneously, and that’s without taking a moment now and then to appreciate his band.
Just when the surreality and carny-fare showmanship were at their peak, during his last cry to god to Make it Rain someone flipped a switch and a wave of golden glitter descended from the ceiling, scattering around the stage.
To top it all off, during the final verse of Eyeball Kid Waits took off his black bowler hat and replaced it with one that seemed to have been cut out of a disco ball. There he stood, his head radiant and too bright to look at - and then he start slowly rotating, sending streaks of light into the crowd. A lesser performer would probably have paid a great deal for a light machine to have a similar effect, and the result wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.
“And it’s time, time, time that you loved…”
The show wasn’t all over-the-top fireworks, though. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire performance, but for me the most beautiful moments were the mellower ones - the slow songs, the sad songs and the love songs. These were littered sparingly throughout the set, an inverse punctuation complementing the raucous extravaganza that raged for two and a half hours.
All the World is Green was soft, with the backup band taking the brunt of the performance while Waits crooned the lyrics wistfully. House Where Nobody Lives, which rounded out the first encore, was poignant as always. Innocent When You Dream saw Waits inviting the audience to sing along, instantly creating a community out of the incredibly diverse fan base that showed up to see him.
And finally, after like five minutes of sustained applause following his encore, Waits came back once more, thanked the crowd in a moment of sincerity, and performed Time - the perfect end to the perfect set.
“…yes it’s time, time, time.”
In short, it was a magical evening. Half the time I felt like I was bearing witness to the aftermath of the apocalypse, but even then I wasn’t sure which side won. The lights, the sounds, the entire audience - everything conspired to shape itself into a constantly shifting manifestation of Tom Waits’s stage presence. I’ve never seen anyone take such complete control of a stage before - and he did it all with a wink and a grin, never quite appearing to be taking himself altogether very seriously.
I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that it was the best show I’ve ever seen. It fused all of the best elements from 1920’s vaudeville, 1950’s nightclub acts and post-apocalyptic circuses, and the most impressive part was the way it all came together under the control of one wacked-out ringmaster in a bowler hat.
Then, with an over-the-top adjustment of his hat and an exaggerated bow, Waits left the stage after his second encore and the lights came back on.
The applause was still deafening as I made my way out of the theater and into the night.
This article is cross-posted from my Newsvine Column. This article is ©2008 Mykola Bilokonsky, all rights reserved. If you want to quote from this article in all or in part you are free to do so - but please link back.
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