Tom Waits -His Father was an Exhaust Manifold and His Mother a Tree
Happy birthday Tom Waits.
See and hear Gun street girl (youtube)
Kronos
Tom Waits Kronos String Quartet Bridge School Cold Ground
Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.
Tom Waits
More “Wit and Wisdom” from his homepage.
1) I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that’s all there was on the jukebox.
2) The blues is like a planet. It’s an enormous topic. You can’t ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It’s a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don’t know where I would be. It’s indelible and indispensable.
3) I love Burroughs (William S. Burroughs). He’s like a metal desk. He’s like a still, and everything that comes out of him is already whiskey.
4) He is one of the standards by which I measure all singers. (On Harry Belafonte) (via IMDB)