tom waits

maybe it was memphis, or maybe it was the ghost of howlin' wolf that tom waits had in mind.
we made the 10 hour journey to memphis on august 4th, principally to see mr. waits in a rare live appearance. only 8 shows on this "tour" to tout his upcoming three cd box set of rare material. of course, in typical tom form, he performed nothing from the box set. the opening was pure theater: the lighting was such that you could see the elongated shadows of the band behind the curtain of the historic orpheum theater as they took the stage. when they were all in place except for tom, his shadow appeared behind the curtain as a loud cheer went up. he immediately bent over and struck a nosferatu pose, with his arms outstretched and his fingers crooked like gnarly tree branches. quite effective. once onstage, he launched right into "singapore." i noticed that duke robillard was playing guitar with the band. the song was played more smoothly than in the past with the jazzy/bluesy elements brought to the fore. this was to set the tone for the evening. tom played electric guitar through half the show and, maybe because the duke was playing with him, the music was less angular, more blues-influenced than usual. after that, another vampire pose and then into an intense version of "make it rain" gesturing and stomping it out . He dipped a bit more into his older material as the concert went on, singing, rather than talking, through "shore leave", strapping on electric guitar for "tango till they're sore," doing a howlin wolf version of "heart attack and vine" which sequed nicely into "spoonful" with duke robillard doing his best hubert sumlin solo. in between songs there was not as much patter as in his past concerts, but he still spoke to the audience as they shouted at him between songs. he did nice verbal riffs on square watermelons you can buy in japan, the gentrification of 9th and hennepin, and the difficulty these days of finding a really bad cup of coffee. at one point, a piano was wheeled out and he did some solo tunes accompanied only by larry taylor on bass. starting with a perfect version of "the house where nobody lives" and then, after fielding requests, too many of which prompted him to threaten a medley, he went into a spoken word version of "the ocean doesn't want me." Then he again strapped on the electric guitar and the band retook the stage for killer versions of "shake it" which had the audience laughing after some of the lyrics and then singing along with "rains on me." finally, after a very lowdown dirty blues of "get behind the mule," "murder in the red barn," and a rockin' version of "goin out west" which had members of the audience leaping up and screaming "i look good without a shirt!", he walked off stage to a standing ovation. The encore was two songs, starting with an acoustic version of "the day after tomorrow" which garnered loud applause for the anti war lines, he ended with "sins of the father." an informal poll of the audience revealed that none of the people i talked to were from memphis, some coming from europe, and other states, to see him. the online chat groups expressed some disappointment that duke robillard and not mark ribot or smokey hormel was playing with him on this tour, but i didn't mind his presence. although some might feel that he "watered down" the music to make it more accessible, i think it was good that memphis brought out the blues behind tom's material. he was clearly energized by the audience and i was struck by how powerful his voice is live. he has lost nothing to the years of singing and touring. he was clearly having a ball and the band, which included his son on percussion, were all totally into the music. the famed bullhorns only came out once or twice, although a huge array of them littered the stage. i noted that there were cameras and recording equipment at the venue, so this was professionally filmed. hopefully a long awaited dvd is on the way. all in all, it was about 20 hours of travel for 2 and a half hours of tom waits. it was a fair trade.