Transcription
[Music] Dogs, the garage, over last I need lives I need Liv for the master, master, what? [Music] Master, the master will [Music] come. Window only, so this is a spot, huh, for recording? Bow machine. Yeah, yeah. Was all this—did you just bring all this stuff in yourself? Not all on one day. I mean, like, accumulated over the years. Um, but yeah, this where we recorded.
So these um, is this what you call the conundrum behind your head? Um, it's a little like a torture device. Does a bit, it's, you know, it does, it does various things, but you know, it's not, it's not that surprising. It's really just a [Music] you know, it's just a uh, a rattling uh, configuration of of metal. If you find a good room, the room is kind of an instrument itself. Does it somehow, you know, tweak a different musical part of you when you pick up an instrument you're not used to? Always does. Yeah, you know these, for example [Music] are wow, this is a—these are hard to find. So probably even harder to find people who are really Masters at at playing it too. I'm no master. I I just rattle it, hit it.
So these are essentially the bones on bone machine? Well, the bones are usually the nothing of it, not the what the what it is of it. It's usually, if you find a good room, the room is kind of an instrument itself. It's kind of um, it's what you don't play that gives it a bony quality, not what you do play. So there any actually bones on it? No, no actual bones, sorry. Oh yes, they were bones, there were actual bones. Uh, there's a cemetery right over here, and I have a little shovel in the corner. I go out every night and—no, it's just these are some things I like to hear uh, the basic elements of of of music really: wood, metal, glass, skin and uh, and feel. Yeah, how you put it all together. You—I don't need no makeup, I goty I got hair on my chest, I look good without a shirt. Well, I don't look—my composure in a house—keep you—
You did a duet with Keith Richards on this record called "Feel," and you've worked with him in the past. You two have a lot in common, don't you? I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, he's great. He's he's um, he's made out of, you know, mud and blood and bone, you know, and hair. He's really um, he's really um um natural uh musician. It's just music really follows him around, you know. His arms are like a fisherman, you know, physically very strong and um, and really um, you know, he can go up like 20 flights of stairs like that and just boom boom bo, he's gone. Rain Dogs, those are the ones you see wander around after rain on—you can't find a way back home. See the rain washes off the sand off all the mailboxes, lamp post, fire hydrant. Rain Dogs, for I am a rain dog.
How much did the fact that this place is a chicken ranch have to do with you choosing to record here? For some reason, yeah, I've always—chickens have been part of my life. When I was a kid, I I had a chicken claw on a tether around my neck for a whole summer. Was my my ambulet when I was about 7 years old. And um, for some reason, yeah, you find little themes in your life. Chickens seem to be one of mine. Dogs are one of yours too. They figure prominently a lot. I can't have a dog because I am a dog. Uh, so we already have a dog at our home, but yeah, dogs show up up a lot in the songs. You know, you find things that that um that you like to put in songs. Everybody has certain material they feel like they can use. Televisions [Music] [Applause] Televisions. You used to spend um a lot of time moving around city to city in the back of cars and stuff. You seem to have really put down some roots these days. Um, no, no longer living in a in a vehicle, but um—well, the thing about living in a small town is like um, you see people that are really trapped in it, you know. It's one thing when you've been to a lot of places. I've been to, you know, Japan and Australia and you know, you go—a small town is not a prison if you've seen the world. If you haven't seen the world, a small town is a crummy little shoe box, and you want to get the hell out of there and never come back, you know. So um, so I can enjoy it more than the people who live here, I think. I don't know.
You notice different things. You've been around for a while. Um, a lot of vultures around here and uh, an inordinate amount of vultures. I noticed them up there. Turkey vultures. Yeah. Now, sometimes in the morning, you'll see them all lined up on each with their own individual fence post and their wings spread out, drying their feathers in the sun. It's it's rather dramatic. Make you nervous? No. Why? Keep moving. Comforting. Do you feel like a little bit like a lightning rod for song that they're just going to come to you? Do you have to go out there with a butterfly net and get them, even if they don't want to come? I don't know. Um, sometimes they come like good little children, sometimes they don't. Um, the best ones really do come out of the ground like a potato for me uh, and uh, a lot of them you've seen them before. You you you already dug it up once and and then buried it again, and then you dug it up again and you thought it was new. Uh, it's just it's partially decomposed, but uh, you uh, some—every song has a different way of um being hatched somewhere. They're all different. Some of them come willingly, some of them need to be, you know, tied up and told to behave.
You used to spend um a lot of time moving around city to city, living in the back of cars and stuff. You seem to have really put down some roots these days. No, no longer living in a in a vehicle, but um—well, the thing about living in a small town is like um, you see people that are really trapped in it, you know. It's one thing when you've been to a lot of places. I've been to, you know, Japan and Australia and you know, you go—a small town is not a prison if you've seen the world. If you haven't seen the world, a small town is a crummy little shoe box, and you want to get the hell out of there and never come back, you know. So um, so I can enjoy it more than the people who live here, I think. I don't know. Has being a dad changed your look on things? Oh yeah, sure, of course. Oh yeah, dramatically. Dramatically. Yeah, I think I'm more of a kid now. My kids are growing up and I'm getting smaller. I'm getting like, you know, I don't know, it's uh, yeah, it's—that's what's happening. Are you trading innocent—maybe I'm encouraging them to become more mature, m while I become more childlike, which is probably illegal. I mean, in some states, I don't [Music] know. Put out a record a year, and lately you've been doing movie a year. You shipped it a little bit in your—not consciously. I, you know, uh, been a while since I had a studio album out, but you know, hey, you got to wait till it fills up again, and then you know—do movies and music play off each other? Did did does one affect the other? Yeah, sometimes. Uh um, you see, I I believe that all that all things really aspire to to the condition of music, including films and stories, and that if it has some has music in it, then it has value. I don't think songs try to be films. I think films try to be songs. Um, it's a pure form of expression, and it's a very simple one, and it's one that anyone can do. Any—you don't have to have a lot of gear. You can do—you can do it on a drum. Kids write thousands of songs before they learn to talk. Everybody has music that they just have to try and get out.
Are you getting out what's actually in your head? Are you close to letting us hear what you hear? Sometimes you um, you know, it always seems to me like that thing at the carnival where you—the little steam show that goes down a big pile of pearls and watches and candy. You you you never get the watch, you never get the pearls, you you get the little wax candy. And if you're lucky. Um, lately I've had kind of a burst of ideas, and um, so it's been a good period for me musically. I frightened myself a couple of times, and it was thrilling. I was scared and screaming and being hosed down in a unane asylum, and I was—I've never been so happy in all my life. Why do you think Cop is attracted to you and you to him? Why can you work together so well? I told him I was Renfield. I say I, you know, and I said, "You got to get me in there." He hadn't cast Renfield yet. He had cast all the other parts, and uh, and I think I I cuz I really kind of came at it like a kid. Like I said, you know, "Friend, make me Renfield, make me Renfield!" Like, and if you come at him like that, then he comes back at you like a kid. Huh? H. Okay. Yeah, you would make a good run—you would make a good Renfield. You think you'd make a good Renfield? Okay. I need lives. I need lives for the master, master, for what? Master, the master will come, and he has promised to make me [Music] immortal.
What is it about you that appeals to the abstract so much, do you think? Gee, I don't know. Um, you think it's abstract? Yeah. Well, it's it's it's outside—I don't know. I I don't know where what outside is really, you know. This is um, just a room that really sounded good because it never really had been used for music. A lot of studios sound—they're designed for to sound a certain way. I like things that just sound good without knowing it. I guess knowing that they sound good and then they only sound good to me, you know. I like experimenting with sounds, and that's what we do here. We uh, we bring them in here, we tie them up, we slit their throat, and um, this is the slaughterhouse and uh, it's not pretty. Not pretty. Thank you. C. People assume that you're just playing a character, that that you know that Tom Waits really isn't like that. Does does that intrigue you a little bit to think that people think you're too unreal to be real? Well, hey, everybody in show business has some kind of ventriloquist D going. It's survival. You got to do it, you know. You going—you're you're not going to hang your underwear out there for the whole world to see. You got to do a do an Edgar Bergen to get by. So you mean the underwear that you hang in your songs isn't really your underwear? It's somebody else's underwear? I thought—which is—I like to put other people's underwear in my songs and I—which again is probably illegal. I don't know if there's an ordinance against it here in the in the county or not, but I guess we find out. So people who know your songs don't know you? No, they know the underwear of strangers. [Music]