♬ Tom Waits – Bad As Me

I’ll be here through eternity,
If you want to know how long,
If they cut down this tree,
I’ll show up in a song.

Some might imagine the voice of god as peaceful or authoritative. To some, god sounds like James Earl Jones. My god’s voice is a combination of of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits.

I once had a dream that I was riding a motorcycle through the desert – Arizona? Utah? – and stopped into a roadside tavern to escape the midday heat. The world inside the bar existed in high-contrast black and white and there was a man sitting at the bar under a single exposed light bulb with a bottle of Old Grandad, two glasses and a dirty ashtray. The man turned around, tipped his hat & asked in voice consisting mostly of tar & gravel “Thirsty, stranger? Sit down & tell me your story.” I’m still not sure if the man was Tom Waits or Lee Marvin, but I think of that dream – my version of heaven – every time that I listen to a Tom Waits song.

“They say I have no hits and I’m difficult to work with, and they say that like it’s a bad thing.” – Tom Waits

The 61 year old Waits released his latest collection of gruff-but-oh-so-lovable metaphor ridden waltzes, ballads and shuffles, Bad As Me, this week and I’m ecstatic to say that it’s his most enjoyable work in years. He’s currently “washing the dishes”, his term for promoting new material after “the feast” that was the creative process of writing and recording a new album.