Classic Tom Waits Albums Remastered And Available On Vinyl For The First Time In The U.S.

10-07-2023

(UMe) Following the recent releases of Tom Waits remarkable, transformative trilogy of Swordforfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985) and Franks Wild Years (1987), his epic song-cycle, Bone Machine (1992) and the Waits (with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs) musical fable, The Black Rider (1993), are now available on vinyl for the first time in the U.S. and most of the world. All albums have been newly remastered from the original tapes for release, which are also available on CD and for streaming and download via Island/UMe. The remastering process and reissue series has been personally overseen by Tom Waits and longtime songwriting and production partner, Kathleen Brennan.

The records are available in two vinyl options: 180-gram black vinyl and a limited edition color variant available exclusively via TomWaits.com and UDiscover Music. The Black Rider is on opaque apple red vinyl and Bone Machine is on translucent milky clear vinyl. Swordfishtrombones is on canary, Rain Dogs on opaque sky blue, Franks Wild Years on opaque gold vinyl.

Purchase or stream the albums here: https://tomwaits.lnk.to/IslandVinylReissuesPR

The reissues of Waits spectacular middle-period albums - released on Island Records between 1983 and 1993, coincide with the 40th anniversary of Swordfishtrombones and the 30th anniversary of The Black Rider, which were both in September, and celebrates this acclaimed musical era for Waits and Brennan which was ushered in with their transformative creative breakthrough, Swordfishtrombones.

All albums were mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering under the guidance of Waits' longtime audio engineer, Karl Derfler. Swordfishtromboneswas sourced from the original EQ'ed 1/2" production master tapes while Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Bone Machine and The Black Rider were sourced from the original ½" flat master tapes. Bellman meticulously transferred the tapes and then remastered the audio in high resolution 192 kHz/24-bit. The lacquers for all titles were cut by Alex Abrash at AA Mastering. The new vinyl editions include specially made labels featuring photos of Waits from each era in addition to artwork and packaging that has been painstakingly recreated to replicate the original LPs, which have been out of print since their initial release. Surprisingly, The Black Rider and Bone Machine were never released on vinyl outside of Europe and make their vinyl debut in most of the world.

These critically acclaimed works are a monument to an artist's ability to break through into new creative territory.

Waits went from '70's-era noir romantic wordsmith and melodist with seven albums behind him to sound sculptor, miner of the subconscious, abstract orchestrator, sonic cubist-while retaining his innate lyricism, melodic invention, humanity. A rough analogy: Picasso switching from exquisite literal depictions to pouring his brain and id out onto canvas. Waits was still painting, in other words, but the frames were made of blood and bone and feathers and old carburetors.

Working with experimental composer Francis Thumm, and taking inspiration from the music of found-object composer Harry Partch-plus Waits' friend, Captain Beefheart-the renowned singer-songwriter reinvented his sound, album by album.

As he put it in a 1983 interview: "I tried to listen to the noise in my head and invent some junkyard orchestral deviation-a mutant apparatus to drive this noise into a wreck collection."

Not that Waits' early albums were devoid of artistic progression. There were the piano-based jazz-folk ballads of his remarkable debut, Closing Time (just remastered for its 50th anniversary), the beat/jazzy/smokey flavor of Nighthawks at the Diner, the piano-bass-sax-drums sagas of the landmark, Small Change, the experimental tone poem, "Burma Shave," on Foreign Affairs, the grit and grunge of the stripped-down Heart Attack And Vine... All this would stand alone as a great body of work if the man had never written another note.

But with Swordfishtrombones and the albums that followed, Waits shifted gears, or rather, deliberately ground them. New York Times music critic Stephen Holden wrote: "Miles away from the (music) he used in the '70s to evoke the wrong side of the tracks, his evolved style is an abrasive, lurching honky-tonk that at its most adventurous suggests a fusion of Captain Beefheart's Dadaist extensions of the delta blues with the Kurt Weill of 'Threepenny Opera.'"

THE BLACK RIDER:
The Black Rider, Waits' next project after Franks Wild Years, is an extraordinary melding of the art of three extraordinary persons: Waits, experimental director Robert Wilson, the late legendary writer, William S. Burroughs. (Note: The Black Rider music was written in 1988-89, recorded in '89 and '93, and the Waits album was released in '93.)

Based on the 19th century German/Bohemian folk tale of a young clerk who makes a deal with the devil ("Der Freischütz," famously an 1821 opera by Carl Maria Von Weber), The Black Rider is Waits at his most surreal, playful, musically gnarled. Think: 1929 Berlin cabaret meets "Frankenstein" if F.W. Murnau movie sets could sing. This two-and-a-half-hour musical fable (Wilson calls it an opera) premiered March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany, and is still part of standard repertory in Europe. Waits did not sing or appear in the production, which featured a cast of eleven (Marianne Faithful played "Pegleg"-the devil-in a 2004 Wilson world-touring revival), and has been extensively staged in the U.S., Canada, Australia.

Wilson-famed for staging Philip Glass's opera, "Einstein On the Beach," sought Waits out to write the Black Rider music, and most of the lyrics. Burroughs contributed words to three songs, and wrote the book. Waits moved to Hamburg to compose in collaboration with his longtime bassist, the multi-instrumentalist, Greg Cohen, and Gerd Bessler of The Music Factory studios.

Explained Wilson in an interview: "I love to hear Tom Waits sing. His deep interior sense of music touches me and moves me deeply."

As for Waits, it was an offer he couldn't refuse: "Wilson's stage images," he said at the time, "had allowed me to look through windows into a dusting beauty that changed my eyes and my ears permanently."

The weird and madcap musical fruit of this venture was half recorded in Hamburg in '89, and half at Prairie Sun Recording Studios in Cotati, Calif. Critics seemed confused, with notable exceptions like Rolling Stone, who wrote: "Its songs offer the morbid excitement of a ride on a decrepit old Tilt-a-Whirl," with "dark and wickedly funny melodies." The New York Times said The Black Rider "evokes a playful union of German Expressionism and Japanese Kabuki with American vaudeville, musical comedy and silent-movie clowning." In 2020, the album spawned a doctoral thesis at the University of Michigan by one Jacob Arthur.

The Black Rider is a nearly hour-long rabbit hole of grim narratives, hellacious carnival barking, fragile ballads, the eerie declamation of Burroughs poetry recited by both the author and Waits, and instrumentals. The "house band," dubbed "The Devil's Rhubato," makes liberal use of horns, viola, cello, oddball keyboards, train whistle, contrabassoon, and sinister bass clarinet. The flavor of the music falls between the extremes of the poignant serenade, "The Briar and the Rose," and Burroughs' spooky "Tain't No Sin," which features a lyric that inspired Waits' overall approach to the project:
"'Tain't no sin to take off your skin / And dance around in your bones... "

BONE MACHINE:
Bone Machine was, to borrow a cliché, a smash-released in 1992 to universal critical acclaim, followed by a GRAMMY® for Best Alternative Music Album. Waits co-wrote half of the album's sixteen works with Brennan, and special guests included David Hidalgo, Les Claypool (bass), and Keith Richards (who co-wrote "That Feel.")

Recorded in Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, Calif.-described by Waits as "just a cement floor and a hot water heater"-the album was a radical redesign of Waits' soundscapes and writing technique. The songs weren't composed-they sound more forged, hammered, chiseled, bent. Waits and Brennan seem to have conjured the record out of dirt, cracked pavement, broken tree branches, and bird song. Their move to a rural area of Northern California heavily influenced the ideas and music of the record.

Some of the press: Musician: "a raw-boned masterpiece." New York Times: "Nothing short of breathtaking." Rolling Stone: "Rich with spiritual longing." Chicago Tribune: "bursts with color and emotion." Billboard: "One of the finest records of the year." Washington Post: "His finest album." Melody Maker: "Ragged glory." New Musical Express: "Scary, mournful, morbid and easily one of Tom's best." Select: "Tom Waits' supreme achievement to date, his 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.'"

"Bone Machine" is a sound-sculpture of clattering sticks, rusted farm equipment, choking demons, newspaper clippings, thundering stomps, Biblical myths, phantoms, marching skeletons, madmen, murders, lost friends, little kids, and a little rain. It is a clutch of prayers and short stories and protests and tragedies. The music grabs you by the collar, shakes you around, strokes your head, drops you in a ditch, laughs up its sleeve, tickles, bitches, and comforts. There is righteous indignation ("The bald headed senators / Are splashing in the blood. . .") and world weariness ("I'm not all I thought I'd be / I always stayed around. . .") and devastating journalism ("She was fifteen years old /And never seen the ocean /She climbed into a van / With a vagabond /And the last thing she said / was 'I love you mom'...")

Waits called the songs on Bone Machine "little movies for the ears." He sometimes wrote them entirely from a percussion pattern, which he played on an array of largely homemade instruments. One, the "conundrum," was essentially a large iron crucifix with crowbars and found metal objects hanging off of it. As Tom explained at the time, "I have a lot of very strong rhythmic impulses, but this is not my world. I just pick something up and I hit it, and if I like the sound, it goes on. Sometimes my idiot approach serves the music."

Mortality is a recurrent theme, from "Dirt In The Ground" ("We're all gonna be. . .") to "All Stripped Down," "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me" (a tale of contemplated suicide), "Jesus Gonna Be Here," the rambunctious paean to childhood, "I Don't Wanna Grow Up," and certainly the broken-hearted, confessional classic Waits ballad, "Whistle Down The Wind," which was beautifully covered by Joan Baez on her titular 2018 album. Waits explained at the time: "Yeah, ultimately, it will be a subject that you deal with. Some deal with it earlier than others, but it will be dealt with. Eventually we'll all have to line up and kiss the devil's arse."

The press wrote that this was Waits' first album in five years, but in point of fact, he had been extremely busy since Franks Wild Years with many projects, large and small-from writing and half-recording The Black Rider to the evocative, mostly-instrumental album soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's film, "Night on Earth" (1992, Island Records). Bone Machine further established Tom as one of the most inventive and prolific artists of our time, and presaged even more daring music to come.

THE BLACK RIDER
VINYL
Side A
1. Lucky Day Overture
2. The Black Rider
3. November
4. Just The Right Bullets
5. Black Box Theme
6. 'Tain't No Sin
7. Flash Pan Hunter/Intro
8. That's The Way
9. The Briar And The Rose
10. Russian Dance

Side B
1. Gospel Train/Orchestra
2. I'll Shoot The Moon
3. Flash Pan Hunter
4. Crossroads
5. Gospel Train
6. Interlude
7. Oily Night
8. Lucky Day
9. The Last Rose Of The Summer
10. Carnival

CD/DIGITAL
1. Lucky Day Overture
2. The Black Rider
3. November
4. Just The Right Bullets
5. Black Box Theme
6. 'Tain't No Sin
7. Flash Pan Hunter/Intro
8. That's The Way
9. The Briar And The Rose
10. Russian Dance
11. Gospel Train/Orchestra
12. 'll Shoot The Moon
13. Flash Pan Hunter
14. Crossroads
15. Gospel Train
16. Interlude
17. Oily Night
18. Lucky Day
19. The Last Rose Of The Summer
20. Carnival

BONE MACHINE
VINYL
1. Side A
2. The Earth Died Screaming
3. Dirt In The Ground
4. Such A Scream
5. All Stripped Down
6. Who Are You
7. The Ocean Doesn't Want Me
8. Jesus Gonna Be Here
9. A Little Rain

Side B
1. In The Colosseum
2. Goin' Out West
3. Murder In The Red Barn
4. Black Wings
5. Whistle Down The Wind
6. I Don't Wanna Grow Up
7. Let Me Get Up On It
8. That Feel

CD/DIGITAL
1. The Earth Died Screaming
2. Dirt In The Ground
3. Such A Scream
4. All Stripped Down
5. Who Are You
6. The Ocean Doesn't Want Me
7. Jesus Gonna Be Here
8. A Little Rain
9. In The Colosseum
10. Goin' Out West
11. Murder In The Red Barn
12. Black Wings
13. Whistle Down The Wind
14. I Don't Wanna Grow Up
15. Let Me Get Up On It
16. That Feel

SWORDFISHTROMBONES
VINYL
Side A
1. Underground
2. Shore Leave
3. Dave The Butcher
4. Johnsburg, Illinois
5. 16 Shells From A 30.6
6. Town With No Cheer
7. In The Neighbourhood

Side B
1. Just Another Sucker On The Vine
2. Frank's Wild Years
3. Swordfishtrombone
4. Down, Down, Down
5. Soldier's Things
6. Gin Soaked Boy
7. Trouble's Braids
8. Rainbirds

CD/DIGITAL
1. Underground
2. Shore Leave
3. Dave The Butcher
4. Johnsburg, Illinois
5. 16 Shells From A 30.6
6. Town With No Cheer
7. In The Neighbourhood
8. Just Another Sucker On The Vine
9. Frank's Wild Years
10. Swordfishtrombone
11. Down, Down, Down
12. Soldier's Things
13. Gin Soaked Boy
14. Trouble's Braids
15. Rainbirds

RAIN DOGS
VINYL
Side A
1. Singapore
2. Clap Hands
3. Cemetery Polka
4. Jockey Full Of Bourbon
5. Tango Till They're Sore
6. Big Black Mariah
7. Diamonds And Gold
8. Hang Down Your Head
9. Time

Side B
1. Rain Dogs
2. Midtown
3. 9th & Hennepin
4. Gun Street Girl
5. Union Square
6. Blind Love
7. Walking Spanish
8. Downtown Train
9. Bride Of Rain Dog
10. Anywhere I Lay My Head

CD/DIGITAL
1. Singapore
2. Clap Hands
3. Cemetery Polka
4. Jockey Full Of Bourbon
5. Tango Till They're Sore
6. Big Black Mariah
7. Diamonds And Gold
8. Hang Down Your Head
9. Time
10. Rain Dogs
11. Midtown
12. 9th & Hennepin
13. Gun Street Girl
14. Union Square
15. Blind Love
16. Walking Spanish
17. Downtown Train
18. Bride Of Rain Dog
19. Anywhere I Lay My Head

FRANKS WILD YEARS
VINYL
Side A
1. Hang On St. Christopher
2. Straight To The Top (Rhumba)
3. Blow Wind Blow
4. Temptation
5. Innocent When You Dream (Barroom)
6. I'll Be Gone
7. Yesterday Is Here
8. Please Wake Me Up
9. Franks Theme

Side B
1. More Than Rain
2. Way Down In The Hole
3. Straight To The Top (Vegas)
4. I'll Take New York
5. Telephone Call From Istanbul
6. Cold Cold Ground
7. Train Song
8. Innocent When You Dream (78)

CD/DIGITAL
1. Hang On St. Christopher
2. Straight To The Top (Rhumba)
3. Blow Wind Blow
4. Temptation
5. Innocent When You Dream (Barroom)
6. I'll Be Gone
7. Yesterday Is Here
8. Please Wake Me Up
9. Franks Theme
10. More Than Rain
11. Way Down In The Hole
12. Straight To The Top (Vegas)
13. I'll Take New York
14. Telephone Call From Istanbul
15. Cold Cold Ground
16. Train Song
17. Innocent When You Dream (78)