“Keep Austin Weird” emerged as a popular slogan for Texas’ capital city—always a bastion of abnormality within a far more broadly conventional region—some eight years ago. Tom Waits is currently touring his way across the underbelly of the United States in which he’s musically assaulting the earth on a 13-town zigzag from the Southwestern desert territories to the god-fearing and snugly Bible-belt South. He has already visited Texas on his now-underway Glitter and Doom jaunt, but he has consequently snubbed Austin, instead hitting said state’s other urban hubs: Dallas, Houston and El Paso.
Waits, who is skipping almost every major market in the nation on this landlocked trek, seems to have a genuine interest in our middle country’s cultural rating on the odd-o-meter: Namely, he wants to up it. Unofficially and implicitly expanding upon Austin’s outsider-adopted motto, the 58-year-old avant icon seems to be on an all-too-fitting, coast-defying (New York? Los Angeles? No way.) quest, one single-handedly achievable, perhaps, only by ol’ Tom: Keep America Weird.
And everything was undoubtedly and joyously weird in Columbus, Ohio, last Saturday night—at least within the confines of the just-under-3,000-capacity Ohio Theatre—as Waits took the stage at half past eight for a de-ordained musical sermon, and I had devoted my entire weekend solely for a few hours of sittin’ in the pews. Having very-temporarily abandoned Brooklyn for this Buckeye State mini-metropolis, I had loaded myself up, pre-show, with Korean bibimbap and hot sake (come to think of it, two pretty weird things to ingest in, of all places, Columbus, Ohio), though my post-meal stomach growl could not hope to compete with Waits’ trademark throat-ripping, blood-soaked baritone as he led his five-man backing group through two-plus hours of ear-defying, spontaneously combusting hollers (“Jesus Gonna Be Here”), and gone-to-hell, post-apocalyptic rumbas (“Hoist That Rag”).
No later than the set’s second song and the audience was erupting—and the word “erupting” has almost never been used so literally to describe the un-choreographed action of spontaneous human mass—at the slinky, opening swivel of “Way Down In The Hole.” Waits, hunched demonically forward, kicking up spookily atmospheric smoke clouds off a weight-supporting wooden plank with his work boots, hissed preacherly advice—“Walk the straight and narrow path”—with a condemner’s fury. It was true and troubled spirituality, the kind that paradoxically commands the reverent to exclaim a spoken-in-tongues “Goddamn!”
Backed by shadowy men on stand-up bass, saxes, harmonicas, trickily minimalist percussion (with occasional congas) and ever-angular guitars, America’s most beloved unknown shuffled his way through a riveting, 25-song set, for one song shaking maracas or for another shouting warbly disconnects (“I’ve got the window/ but not the shutter”) through a bullhorn. Able to shift effortlessly between two entirely distinct, signature grumbles (one preposterously deep, the other a madcap nasal vibrato), he found his third vocal option in a frantically nervous, hiccupy caterwaul for “Lie To Me,” a breakneck, near collision of steampunk and hip-hop encouraging a lover to slather the narrator in sleazy falsehoods.
Waits spent all but three songs slouching on his two feet, half-upright in front of a center stage mic, a crooked halo of ancient loudspeakers and slanted lights dangling above him, occasionally playing an acoustic or electric guitar; but the trio of dark-hearted orphans he played on the keys gave him a chance to banter, his neck bent sideways as he faced the rapt crowd. Tom had been in Oklahoma (the oft-neglected Tulsa, of course) a few days prior, and he lectured us on the peculiarities of the state’s supposed laws.
“It’s weird there,” he said, conjuring an imagined old, weird America. “You can’t eat at a restaurant if it’s on fire”—the audience laughed—“which really limits your choices”—more laughter—“You can’t get a fish drunk.” This was the audience favorite—we all howled—but Waits gave a straight-faced response, implying the crowd’s shared dismay. “I know. I know,” he sighed.
Inside the theater and even outside it, if but for a few hours, Columbus was, indeed weird, too. But what of every city Waits won’t visit on this tour? My concert companion, who had traveled up from Lexington, Kentucky, brought with him bad tidings of said city’s slow-burn fate: The greatest strip in downtown Lex, home of quintessential bar Busters and even the city’s most reliable music venue, The Dame—the latter being the only place I ever saw renowned lunatic Wesley Willis play before his passing, and that quite recently hosted brother-loving ruckus bringers Man Man, Philadelphia’s own band of stomp-minded Waitsian outlaws—are being demolished and replaced in short order (perhaps, even, as you read this) with a luxury hotel.
Ours is a nation that Tom Waits can re-imagine and render strange every time he takes a sip from his flask; but the flask may be about empty, with the country not so far behind it.
Lie to me, Tom. Lie to me.
Greg Burgett keeps it weird at songsaboutknives.com
Waits, who is skipping almost every major market in the nation on this landlocked trek, seems to have a genuine interest in our middle country’s cultural rating on the odd-o-meter: Namely, he wants to up it. Unofficially and implicitly expanding upon Austin’s outsider-adopted motto, the 58-year-old avant icon seems to be on an all-too-fitting, coast-defying (New York? Los Angeles? No way.) quest, one single-handedly achievable, perhaps, only by ol’ Tom: Keep America Weird.
And everything was undoubtedly and joyously weird in Columbus, Ohio, last Saturday night—at least within the confines of the just-under-3,000-capacity Ohio Theatre—as Waits took the stage at half past eight for a de-ordained musical sermon, and I had devoted my entire weekend solely for a few hours of sittin’ in the pews. Having very-temporarily abandoned Brooklyn for this Buckeye State mini-metropolis, I had loaded myself up, pre-show, with Korean bibimbap and hot sake (come to think of it, two pretty weird things to ingest in, of all places, Columbus, Ohio), though my post-meal stomach growl could not hope to compete with Waits’ trademark throat-ripping, blood-soaked baritone as he led his five-man backing group through two-plus hours of ear-defying, spontaneously combusting hollers (“Jesus Gonna Be Here”), and gone-to-hell, post-apocalyptic rumbas (“Hoist That Rag”).
No later than the set’s second song and the audience was erupting—and the word “erupting” has almost never been used so literally to describe the un-choreographed action of spontaneous human mass—at the slinky, opening swivel of “Way Down In The Hole.” Waits, hunched demonically forward, kicking up spookily atmospheric smoke clouds off a weight-supporting wooden plank with his work boots, hissed preacherly advice—“Walk the straight and narrow path”—with a condemner’s fury. It was true and troubled spirituality, the kind that paradoxically commands the reverent to exclaim a spoken-in-tongues “Goddamn!”
Backed by shadowy men on stand-up bass, saxes, harmonicas, trickily minimalist percussion (with occasional congas) and ever-angular guitars, America’s most beloved unknown shuffled his way through a riveting, 25-song set, for one song shaking maracas or for another shouting warbly disconnects (“I’ve got the window/ but not the shutter”) through a bullhorn. Able to shift effortlessly between two entirely distinct, signature grumbles (one preposterously deep, the other a madcap nasal vibrato), he found his third vocal option in a frantically nervous, hiccupy caterwaul for “Lie To Me,” a breakneck, near collision of steampunk and hip-hop encouraging a lover to slather the narrator in sleazy falsehoods.
Waits spent all but three songs slouching on his two feet, half-upright in front of a center stage mic, a crooked halo of ancient loudspeakers and slanted lights dangling above him, occasionally playing an acoustic or electric guitar; but the trio of dark-hearted orphans he played on the keys gave him a chance to banter, his neck bent sideways as he faced the rapt crowd. Tom had been in Oklahoma (the oft-neglected Tulsa, of course) a few days prior, and he lectured us on the peculiarities of the state’s supposed laws.
“It’s weird there,” he said, conjuring an imagined old, weird America. “You can’t eat at a restaurant if it’s on fire”—the audience laughed—“which really limits your choices”—more laughter—“You can’t get a fish drunk.” This was the audience favorite—we all howled—but Waits gave a straight-faced response, implying the crowd’s shared dismay. “I know. I know,” he sighed.
Inside the theater and even outside it, if but for a few hours, Columbus was, indeed weird, too. But what of every city Waits won’t visit on this tour? My concert companion, who had traveled up from Lexington, Kentucky, brought with him bad tidings of said city’s slow-burn fate: The greatest strip in downtown Lex, home of quintessential bar Busters and even the city’s most reliable music venue, The Dame—the latter being the only place I ever saw renowned lunatic Wesley Willis play before his passing, and that quite recently hosted brother-loving ruckus bringers Man Man, Philadelphia’s own band of stomp-minded Waitsian outlaws—are being demolished and replaced in short order (perhaps, even, as you read this) with a luxury hotel.
Ours is a nation that Tom Waits can re-imagine and render strange every time he takes a sip from his flask; but the flask may be about empty, with the country not so far behind it.
Lie to me, Tom. Lie to me.
Greg Burgett keeps it weird at songsaboutknives.com
