TOM WAITS

Tom Waits celebrates his staying power on Bad As Me

By Matt Ashare

Tom Waits, Bad As Me (Anti-)

BAD TO THE BONE: 'I've been here since Eisenhauer"

Tom Waits hasn't quite done it all – he's just done a whole helluva lot since he first emerged as something of an odd duck in the early ’70s. With a penchant for vaudevillian theatrics, an abiding affinity for deep blues and late-night jazz, and a proclivity for rockist experimentation, the prolific Waits has spent most of his career as an acquired taste, a delicacy of sorts. Working on the fringes and behind the scenes, he's seen his songs covered by Bruce Springsteen ("Jersey Girl") and Rod Stewart ("Downtown Train"), to name just two; played supporting roles in films by Robert Altman (Short Cuts) and Francis Ford Coppola (The Outsiders and Bram Stoker's Dracula); and collaborated with avant-garde playwright/director Robert Wilson on two musicals, The Black Rider and Alice. Along the way, he's collected his fair share of accolades, including a Best Original Song Score Oscar nomination for Coppola's One From the Heart, a Best Alternative Album Grammy for 1992's Bone Machine, and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year. And yet, until now, with the release last week of his 20th proper studio album, Bad As Me, Waits has never debuted in the top ten of the Billboard top 200 sales charts.

      Bad As Me, which hit number six its first week out, is the first collection of new material Waits has recorded since 2004's Real Gone. And it does boast an impressive guest list, including Keith Richards, who plays guitar on four of the disc's 13 tracks; Los Lobos multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo (four tracks); and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea (one track). Avant guitarist Marc Ribot, Primus bassist Les Claypool, and Tom's son, drummer Casey Waits, are among the more notable players who round out the cast. But the real difference makers on Bad As Me are the songs themselves, all of which were written and produced by Waits with his wife Kathleen Brennan. It's as if the two made a conscious decision not necessarily to iron all the wrinkles out of Waits' style, but to perhaps smooth over some of the rougher edges in an effort to create a more accessible variation on some familiar plots.

      The disc opens with Richards riffing Exile-style on the chugging blues of “Chicago.” Here, Waits deploys his trademark Howlin’ Wolf baritone growl as he conjures the mix of hope and desperation that led to what’s become known as the “Great Migration,” the early 20^th-century movement of millions of African-Americans from the South to the Midwestern cities like Chicago. It’s a song that could have been written decades ago, yet it resonates with uncanny immediacy in these times of slow economic recovery.

      “Chicago” is hardly a blueprint for Bad As Me. Instead of sticking to one sonic palette or staying on genre, so to speak, Waits tries on a number of the different hats he’s worn over the years. “Talking At the Same Time” is a slow swinging number with tinkling lounge piano, a tasteful horn section, and ethereal vibrato guitar that finds Waits singing in a world-weary falsetto about our troubled times. “A tiny boy sat and he played in the sand,” Waits croons, “He made a sword from a stick and a gun from his hand/We bailed out all the millionaires/They got all the fruit/We got the rind/Everybody’s talking at the same time.”

      Waits goes into mad daddy mode on the disc’s title track, a wigged-out celebration of geek love driven by a trash-can drums and outfitted with surf-style guitar licks and a honking baritone sax. And, over another very Exstylish Richards riff, he barks maniacally about his having his vertebrae rolled “like dice” and his skull being a “home for mice” when he’s “gone.” Aptly enough, the song’s called “Satisfaction.” But, just in case you miss the Stones reference, Waits drives home the point with a wink and a nod: “Now Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards/I will scratch where I’m itching.”

      On the mellower side, Waits has fun with rhymes like “Ocean wants a sailor/Gun wants a hand/Money wants a spender/And the road wants a man” in “Face the Highway,” a haunted goodbye that drips with stoic defeat. The combination of Augie Meyers’ accordion and Hidalgo’s violin, helps lend the spare, tragic “Pat Me” an air of drunken cabaret. And Richards teams up to sing harmony with Waits on the largely acoustic “Last Leaf,” a countrified homage to aging, if not gracefully, then at least with a certain sense of pride. “They say I’ve got staying power here on the tree,” Waits intones, “I’ve been here since Eisenhower/And I’ve outlived even he.”

      As the album nears its end, Waits gets into character as a casualty of war in the most outwardly dissonant track here, the protest tune “Hell Broke Luce.” Noisy percussion, serrated guitars, and the sound of machine-gun fire punctuate points like “How is it that the only ones responsible for making this mess/Got their sorry asses staples to a desk?” And he closes out the affair on a gorgeously sad note, with yet another of his perfectly pitched odes to the broken souls of the world, the poetically bittersweet ballad “New Year’s Eve.”

      It’s hard at this point to imagine the 61 year-old Waits as anything other than the cult artist he’s always been. But it sure does feel like the cult of Waits is growing. . .
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/nov/09/tom-waits-celebrates-his-staying-power-keith-richa-ar-1446733/