The Chris Moeller Archives

Always Keep a Diamond in Your Mind - Tom Waits and the A-Train Concert Series - by Aaron Moeller

American music’s greatest iconoclast and junkyard poet, Tom Waits, brought his one of a kind stage show to St. Louis last week and played to a sell-out crowd at the Fox Theatre. Even had he never performed a note, it would have been worth the ticket – well, maybe a cheaper one – if only to see the glamorous old 1929 theater in all its architectural glory. Built to resemble an Indian temple, Hindu images abound and the theater itself is so overwhelming that one gets the sense it could potentially distract from many of the artists that may perform there.

This, however, was an ideal environment for Waits whose live performances always offer an abundance of theatrical style. As my buddy Nick and I entered the venue we could see the stage set, which looked fittingly like a workshop for musical experimentation – a slightly raised platform at center stage, with a small keyboard and pump organ to its right. There was a drum kit without risers to the left and a number of instruments scattered around the stage, each seemingly waiting to meet in some strange musical configuration. Hanging as a backdrop to the stage was a number of old fashioned horns and speakers, lined up in rows like a chain-link fence full of discarded hubcaps. None too surprising, I suppose, for an artist known to sing at least a couple songs every night through a megaphone.

He kept us waiting but we didn’t mind. We sat for more than an hour after the ticket start time wondering to ourselves if perhaps Tom was backstage inventing a new instrument at the last minute to again radically alter his unusual sound for the umpteenth time in his career. The guy sitting behind me asked what my favorite Waits record was. I told him Big Time was my favorite. That’s the live album that served as my Waits introduction when I saw the concert film of the same name on Dad’s satellite dish during college. (I’d previously only known of Tom Waits as the guy who wrote “Jersey Girl”, the best Springsteen song that the Boss never wrote.) I told the guy it’s probably rare but I love “Falling Down” from that album, but also the series of six or seven songs that close the album. “God bless you," the guy said. "I tell people all the time that that album is the best.” Obscure, we agreed, but a sentimental favorite. Then the guy told me a story of first seeing that concert film in St. Louis, in the ‘90’s, at a theater that had previously served as a porno house.

Then the stage went dark and the crowd of St. Louis’ most hardcore hipsters erupted in applause as the shadowy figures took the stage. The stage remained dark and after a few seconds the crowd settled down awaiting the first notes. “I love you, Tom!” someone shouted. “I love you even more than that guy, Tom!” “Bullshit!” the first guy replied.

“Lucinda”, a song recently released on Orphans, his box set of rarities, kicked off the evening. Waits stood on the small platform, raising his knees high and stomping them back down with the beat, raising a cloud of dust with each giant step. Waits also had a contraption on each side of the platform with foot pedals that produced the sound of a bell, essentially his own set of cymbals. Waits tours with a guitar and banjo player, a keyboard player who doubles on accordion, a guy on stand-up bass, a horn player that plays a range of instruments – saxophones, clarinets, harmonicas, etc. Tom’s son, Casey, is the drummer. A chip off the old block, Casey Waits bangs on any percussion instruments he can get his hands on. But it’s That Voice that defines the Tom Waits sound. Perpetually whiskey-drenched, the word gruff doesn’t quite do it justice. As I write this, I’m listening to my Dad’s dog barking and am picking up similarities.

“Way Down in the Hole”, was the theme song from HBO’s The Wire. It was the first tune most people recognized and got a huge response. As usual, it sounded like Satan singing gospel music. Then the miracle of miracles: “I’ve come five hundred miles just to see your halo…”, the first notes of my favorite song. “She wants you to steal and get caught, she loves you for all that you are not/When you’re falling down, you’re falling down, she loves you when you’re falling down."

“Black Market Baby” name checks nearby Moberly, Missouri. (I know of at least three Waits songs that reference St. Louis, but he played none of them.) “All the World is Green” was the night’s only selection off 2002’s Blood Money and featured an even lovelier clarinet solo than on the album. “Heigh Ho” is also off Orphans and is indeed the same song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, though you’d barely recognize it. The clanging-around-the-cellar arrangement seems appropriate given Waits’ fascination with dark fairy tales and is consistent with his workman-like, experimental musical identity. He’s eccentric, for sure, but strangely pragmatic and utilitarian of spirit, once pleading in song, “Come down off the cross, we can use the wood”.

“Get Behind the Mule” is the de-facto title track from Waits' 1999 offering, Mule Variations, the bluesiest and best-selling album of his career. This rendition was reworked but still rides its familiar bass line and blues harp. And all the great lyrics are still there – he’s still “digging all the way to China with a silver spoon/ while the hangman fumbles with the noose” and still “stirring my brandy with a nail, boys”. This song is one of the all-time keepers: “Pin your ear to the wisdom post, pin your eye to the line/ Never let the weeds get higher than the garden, always keep a sapphire in your mind/ Always keep a diamond in your mind.”

“Day After Tomorrow” is an achingly beautiful ballad about a soldier longing for home and found Waits strumming a guitar for the first time on the night. It was played to reverential silence and brought a standing ovation. Then Waits, known for unusual and joking stage commentary, addressed the crowd for the first time, introducing “Cemetery Polka” as written about some once-visiting relatives, who “came too early and left too late.” The song is from Rain Dogs, Waits album from 1985 that happens to be the best record anybody has ever made. Waits then moved to the keyboard for the first time and played another Rain Dogs cut, a strikingly re-worked “Hang Down Your Head”.

A run of songs performed at the keyboard and pump organ followed and found Tom in a more conversational mood between numbers, noting first that the band had just come from Oklahoma, then sharing a list of things he learned are illegal there, such as “shooting off a policeman’s tie” and “eating in a restaurant that’s on fire… that one’s just a misdemeanor though.” He also noted that his family disapproves of the money he spends on unusual Ebay items, remarking that he recently purchased “the last dying breath of Henry Ford”, which he keeps sealed in a Coke bottle. Tom also shared another factoid: One ejaculation of semen produces 20 million sperm but only one of them survives to fertilize an egg. “So, remember, by the time we’ve all made it here, we’re already winners.”

“Lucky Day” is a barroom weeper from The Black Rider, a stage show score Waits once composed with Beat god William Burroughs, heavily influenced by a more European-inspired avant-garde sound. “Johnsburg, Illinois” is less than 2 minutes long but, among many candidates, is the most gorgeous piano melody the man ever wrote. His voice, harsh and broken, can still reach and find painfully delicate notes you’d never dream he could actually hit. Believe it or not, he has a falsetto. “Lost in the Harbour”, performed solo at the pump organ, was that one song of the night that always seems to happen. You're familiar with it, but don’t realize until you've heard it live that you loved it all along.

Tom returned to his platform for the night’s highlight, a four-year-old tune, “Make It Rain”. “Without her love, without her kiss/ Heaven can’t burn me more than this/ I’m burning up all this pain/ Open up the Heavens, make it rain.” He again stomped up a dust cloud throughout before the final chorus brought glitter showering down on the stage. And the Tom Waits 2008 Glitter and Doom Tour found its name.

“Lie to Me”, a Chuck Berry-on-the-Moon rave-up kept the momentum going. The tunes stayed relentless. “Other Side of the World” is obscure and lovely. “Singapore” is a jaunty gem and reminds that “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. “Dirt in the Ground” moans along and is cool in its morbid way. “What’s He Building in There?” is a spoken-word character piece in the voice of a paranoid man wondering about noises from his neighbor’s house. A single light bulb was lowered from the ceiling. Waits flicked it once with his thumb and forefinger and the light went out. “I broke it,” he said.

Tom Waits appeared on the music scene in the early ‘70’s, gaining cult fame as an oddball Beat poet and pianist, favoring jazz arrangements, telling tale tales on stage, and seemingly having just swam out of the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Esoteric stuff, definitely, with a melancholy streak and an ear for heartbreaking melodies. It was nine albums into his career, however – with 1983’s Swordfishtrombones – that the act turned truly strange. Waits had married Francis Ford Coppola’s personal assistant, gave up drinking and smoking, and fathered three kids. His stage presentation, always theatrical, became more roughshod and psychedelic. The lyrics, rhythms and arrangements began to expand beyond jazz and folk stylings, to suddenly fit no established genre. Whereas his previous music had been set in late night jazz clubs and was populated by down-on-their-luck dudes in rumpled suits, now his music was set at the carnival and was populated by circus freaks. Waits also began work as a film actor in a surprising number of big-name movies, always playing a character stranger than the last.

On this night, Waits played not one song from those first nine albums. Considering each of those records is filled with any number of sentimental fan favorites, Waits makes a case for being one of the most prolific and consistently brilliant songwriters we have, especially as you acknowledge that he's ignoring half of his back catalog. With “16 Shells from a 30-ought-Six”, which was the centerpiece of Swordfishtrombones, and then the title track of Waits’ next – and best – album, Rain Dogs, the man led us out of the main set.

“Goin’ Out West” was the first encore, notable as the only Tom Waits song I’ve ever seen on a jukebox in Cedar Rapids – at Bricks, a downtown bar recently flushed out with river water. My brother has instructions to play “Anywhere I Lay My Head” at my funeral, though this live version fell an inch short of the album track, sans the memorable coda of a New Orleans funeral band.

Then with everyone already on their feet, Waits, still sitting at his keyboard, led everyone in a sweet-as-summer sing-along, a natural and bittersweet finale: “It’s such a sad old feeling, the hills are soft and green/ It’s memories that I’m stealing, but you’re innocent when you dream”.

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