Bang on target: 19 shells from the Waits and Brennan cannon.
Since Tom Waits’ last studio album, Bad As Me (2011), apart from the odd reissue and a contribution to Marc Ribot’s Songs Of Resistance 1942 – 2018, big-screen appearances have kept the Waits fire burning – with the likes of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Dead Don’t Die and Father Mother Sister Brother. Until this year, when, out of the blue, came the sound of Boots on the Ground, a collaboration with Massive Attack that sent this Bristol-based reviewer scurrying to the local supermarket hoping to catch sight of Waits and Daddy G hobnobbing in the biscuit aisle. And there was more good news on the horizon; up in the AUK crow’s nest, Keith Hargreaves spotted Ace Records’ Where The Willow And The Dogwood Grow – Words And Music Tom Waits And Kathleen Brennan. This multi-artist compilation celebrates the work of the “Innocent When You Dream” team, whose paths first crossed thanks to an unwitting act of matchmaking by Francis Ford Coppola. One From The Heart may not be the famed filmmaker’s finest hour, but it appears to have acted as the catalyst for the Brennan/Waits romantic and songwriting partnership, cemented a few months later at Los Angeles’ Always Forever Yours Wedding Chapel. Waits and his Jersey Girl were wed, and the song he wrote for her featured on his final Asylum Records label release, Heartattack and Vine.
For this covers album, Ace Records have raided the vinyl vaults for 19 shells from the Waits and Brennan canon. Presented chronologically, it gets off to a strong start with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s version of Jersey Girl. This was first released as the B-side of Springsteen’s 1984 Cover Me single and later rounded off his five-album Live/1975–85 box set. There are no prizes for guessing that this song was recorded live in New Jersey, given the crowd reaction each time the Garden State gets a mention.
Experienced Waits watchers have sensed Brennan’s influence on his Swordfishtrombones album, although she is not a credited co-writer. Waits’ automotive workshop workout, 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six, is revved up into a full-throttle old-time rock and roller by Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band. Meanwhile, Jersey Shore music stalwarts Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes flex their bar-band musculature in Gin-Soaked Boy. Southside Johnny also served up 13 more helpings of Waits with La Bambas Big Band on their 2021 album, Grapefruit Moon.
Los Lobos enter Waits’ Rain Dogs territory, slipping into their racing silks for a Jockey Full Of Bourbon. The veteran Mexican American music torchbearers are natural stewards for the Latin flavour and unbridled spirit of the song.
Brennan’s first co-writing credit comes five tracks in, with the Southern drawl of Lucinda Williams hauling heartache down a gravel road on Hang Down Your Head. In the first of three covers from Waits’ Frank’s Wild Years, Diana Krall succumbs to Temptation, exchanging the original’s forced falsetto and crazed caterwauls for a voluptuous veil of seduction. Bettye LaVette’s Gershwinesque rendition of Yesterday Is Here is up there with her interpretation of Springsteen’s Streets Of Philadelphia. The Blind Boys Of Alabama go Way Down In The Hole. The first few notes from Danny Thompson’s bass will have you renewing your HBO subscription and binge-watching its small screen epic The Wire, whose Waits-penned theme song was performed by a different artist in each of its five seasons.
English chanteuse Marianne Faithfull welcomes us to the cabaret whilst plumbing the depths of her contralto register as she issues a Met Office warning of Strange Weather, with Garth Hudson’s accordion drifting by on a Parisian breeze. Next, The Ramones offer an elixir of youth, I Don’t Want to Grow Up, tailor-made for a three-minute thrash that may stimulate the odd pensioner’s pogo receptors. Adding gravitas to the proceedings, Johnny Cash offers a ride to redemption for the sinners and the forsaken on Down There By The Train. This song was commissioned from Waits for Cash’s 1994 American Recordings. The final line of the first verse gives the Ace compilation its title.
Next come a trio of heartstring tuggers from Waits’ Mule Variations. King Ernest assumes the role of sentimental estate agent eyeing up a vacant property in House Where Nobody Lives; sadly, he never got to hear his Blues Got Soul album, losing his life on a California highway a few days after completing recording. Willie Nelson sands the rough edges off Picture In A Frame and serves it with a side of slide. Waits diehards might miss the original’s keyboard clank, romantic rasp and mournful brass enhancements. Madison Cunningham’s lo-fi makeover of Hold On is this compilation’s most recently recorded song, first appearing on her audacious COVID-19 pandemic EP, Wednesday, on which she also tackled songs by The Beatles, Radiohead and Jeff Buckley.
A pair of foundlings follow that originate from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards, Waits’ 2006 collection of outcasts and oddballs. There is no more honeyed voice than that of Norah Jones to take The Long Way Home to its intended destination. This song was written specifically for her.
John Hammond’s rendition of 2:19 is one of 12 Waits’ covers featured on the late great white blues musician’s album, Wicked Grin, produced by Waits.
Solomon Burke knocks it out of the park with Diamond In Your Mind, which might be the collection’s least familiar song, its origin being the art musical, Woyzeck. This Waits/Brennan collaboration with Robert Wilson was based on a 19th-century play fragment by Georg Büchner. Rounding off the collection are two from Waits’ Real Gone. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Trampled Rose has an eerie background presence reminiscent of the sound of Leland Sprinkle’s Great Stalacpipe Organ, the world’s largest musical instrument, located in the depths of Virginia’s Luray Caverns. The contrast between Waits’ Real Gone guttural growl and Krauss’s crystalline clarity from Raising Sand could hardly be greater. Finally, prepare to have your Rockford Red Heel socks blown off by Day After Tomorrow, delivered with grace and dignity by renowned peace ambassador Joan Baez. Her version is unlikely to find a place on any U.S. Department of War motivational playlist.
There have been previous multi-artist compilations paying tribute to Waits, notably the Manifesto Records pair Step Right Up: The Songs of Tom Waits and New Coat Of Paint (Songs of Tom Waits), and Dualtone Music Group, Inc.’s Come On Up To The House: Women Sing Waits (2019). However, Where The Willow And The Dogwood Grow is the definitive resumé of the songwriting chemistry of Waits and Brennan, providing 19 answers to the question: What makes a good cover? Compiled by Ace origination department manager, Mick Patrick, with the input of Waits and Brennan, this collection not only celebrates the pair’s unique creative talents, but also the interpretive skills of its eclectic cast of contributors across multiple genres. Fans of Waits are in for a treat. For those yet to be converted or those deterred by Waits’ vocal characteristics, Where The Willow And The Dogwood Grow could provide a golden gateway to the gifted songwriting partnership that is Waits and Brennan.
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