| Format: | CD |
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With undeniable cultural gravity, the team of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan join luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Randy Newman, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Leonard Cohen, Lee Hazlewood, Brian Wilson and Laura Nyro in Ace Records’ long-running series of multi-artist compilations celebrating the great American songwriters of the modern era. Hundreds of artists from all walks of music have recorded songs from Waits and Brennan’s matchless catalogue, 19 of the finest of which comprise this hand-picked selection, including many chosen by the songwriters themselves.
Few artists have remapped the terrain of popular music, and culture at large, like Tom Waits. Over the course of five decades, he has forged a singular aesthetic that defies genre and turns the marginal into myth. His work is neither fully inside nor outside the mainstream tradition but moves restlessly between them, drawing from vaudeville, blues, jazz, folk, theatre – and just about anything else that catches his ear – to craft something wholly his own. His influence reverberates not just through the underground and avant-garde, but across theatre, film, literature, and visual art. With his long-time creative partner and wife Kathleen Brennan, he has dismantled and reassembled the idea of song itself, crafting works that exist as both raw expression and high art. This collection honours not only the extraordinary versatility of Waits and Brennan’s songwriting, but the importance of an artist who continues to haunt and inspire from the edges inward.
Ace’s selection is sequenced chronologically by song, opening with Bruce Springsteen’s live recording of ‘Jersey Girl’, Waits’ ode to Brennan from 1980’s Heartattack And Vine, and closing with folk matriarch Joan Baez’s version of Waits and Brennan’s anti-war ‘Day After Tomorrow’ from Waits’ more recent Real Gone. “All the great things that came out of New Jersey don’t hold a candle to Kathleen Brennan, at least not in Tom’s eyes,” Bob Dylan said on his Theme Time Radio Hour show. “She rescued me,” reflected Waits in an interview for The Guardian. “Maybe I rescued her too, that’s often how it works. Upshot is that we both got into the same leaky boat. Everybody knows she’s the brains behind Pa, as Dylan might have said. I’m just the figurehead. She’s the one who’s steering the ship.”
In addition to “steering the ship”, Brennan became Waits’ songwriting partner. The couple’s first-released joint composition, ‘Hang Down Your Head’ from Rain Dogs, is heard here in a raunchy rendition by country-blues heroine Lucinda Williams. Elsewhere, performers from the worlds of jazz, blues, gospel, soul and rock put their own stamps on great songs with which Waits devotees will be familiar on Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Big Time, Bone Machine, Mule Variations, Real Gone and Orphans. Pride of place – because it’s a particular favourite of Waits and proved incredibly challenging to license – goes to the heart-wrenching recording of ‘Down There By The Train’ from Johnny Cash’s late-life masterpiece American Recordings.
Made with the blessing, approval and involvement of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, Where The Willow And The Dogwood Grow is an essential collection for any fan of this remarkable artist’s unique work.
1. JERSEY GIRL ● BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND
2. 16 SHELLS FROM A THIRTY-OUGHT-SIX ● BOB SEGER & THE SILVER BULLET BAND
3. GIN-SOAKED BOY ● SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY & THE ASBURY JUKES
4. JOCKEY FULL OF BOURBON ● LOS LOBOS
5. HANG DOWN YOUR HEAD ● LUCINDA WILLIAMS
6. TEMPTATION ● DIANA KRALL
7. YESTERDAY IS HERE ● BETTYE LaVETTE
8. WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE ● THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA
9. STRANGE WEATHER ● MARIANNE FAITHFULL
10. I DON’T WANNA GROW UP ● RAMONES
11. DOWN THERE BY THE TRAIN ● JOHNNY CASH
12. HOUSE WHERE NOBODY LIVES ● KING ERNEST
13. PICTURE IN A FRAME ● WILLIE NELSON
14. HOLD ON ● MADISON CUNNINGHAM
15. THE LONG WAY HOME ● NORAH JONES
16. 2:19 ● JOHN HAMMOND
17. DIAMOND IN YOUR MIND ● SOLOMON BURKE
18. TRAMPLED ROSE ● ALISON KRAUSS / ROBERT PLANT
19. DAY AFTER TOMORROW ● JOAN BAEZ
