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The announcement of Willie Nelson’s 76th studio album, Last Leaf on the Tree, comes with good news and better news. The good news is that the lead single is Nelson’s cover of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf,” a track that Waits cut with Keith Richards for 2011’s Bad as Me. The better news is that Nelson sings it à la Nelson and doesn’t attempt a gravel-throated Waits impression. Instead, Nelson’s rendition features impressionistic guitar ear candy, a little accordion, and drums that sigh along with Nelson as...

To mark the 25th anniversary of both Tom Waits’ Mule Variations and the record label Anti, an unreleased “Spiritual” rendition of the standout “Get Behind the Mule” has been unearthed for the first time.

While the album version of “Get Behind the Mule” features a lineup of all-star musicians like guitarist Smokey Hormel, bassist Larry Taylor, harpist Charlie Musselwhite and percussionist Stephen Hodges, the “Spiritual” rendition — a variation on Variations, if you will — features Waits alone with his Wurlitzer electric piano, putting additional emphasis on the murder ballad lyrics penned...

Several more musicians have paid tribute to Shane MacGowan, including Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave, and Bono.

Waits addressed McGowan’s passing in a rare public statement issued with his wife, Kathleen Brennan. “Ah, the blessings of the cursed. Shane McGowan’s torrid and mighty voice is mud and roses punched out with swaggering stagger, ancient longing that is blasted all to hell. A Bard’s bard, may he cast his spell upon us all forevermore.”

Waits and Brennan closed their statement by quoting a lyric from The Pogues’ “If I Should Fall from Grace with God”: “Let him go boys, let him go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry…”

Bruce Springsteen and Nick Cave also shared new tributes to MacGowan.

“The passion and deep intensity of his music and lyrics is unmatched by all but the very best in the rock & roll canon,...

Tom Waits marks the upcoming 20th-anniversary reissues for his Alice and Blood Money by unearthing a pair of unreleased performances of songs from those 2002 LPs.

The flamenco-flavored spin on Blood Money’s “All the World Is Green” was recorded in Milan, Italy, 2008 as part of Waits’ Glitter & Doom Tour, while the stripped-down piano rendition of Alice’s “Fish and Bird” was performed in London in 2004:

Both Alice and Blood Money were the result of Waits and co-writer Kathleen Brennan’s recent collaboration with playwright Robert Wilson, who they previously...

Suzanne Fletcher and Ann Magnuson in Sara Driver’s Sleepwalk Photo: Nan Goldin

Sara Driver’s spellbinding Sleepwalk, co-written with Kathleen Brennan and Lorenzo Mans, shot by Jim Jarmusch and Frank Prinzi, with a score by Phil Kline, and starring Suzanne Fletcher with Ann Magnuson, Steve Buscemi (coming to the Tribeca Film Festival to present Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’s Fargo), Linda Yablonski, Sally Venue (aka Sally Berg), Richard Boes, Ako, Stephen Chen, Tony Todd, Dexter Lee, Harvey Perr, Barbara Klar, Cheryl Dyer, Rebecca Wright, and William Rice (aka Bill Rice) was a New Directors/New Films at 50: A Retrospective pick. Sara also participated in an HBO sponsored live virtual Free Talk, moderated by Wendy Keys. Ed Bahlman (99 Records founder and producer) and I sent in greetings to Sara. The exchange is below our conversation.

Sara Driver on New York City in the Eighties: “When I was making Sleepwalk,...

Bruce Springsteen has no shortage of original songs about New Jersey that he could have played near the end of the Jersey 4 Jersey fundraising event on Wednesday night. “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” would have been a touching tribute to his adopted boardwalk town, while “My Hometown” would have been a bittersweet look at his childhood in Freehold, and “My City of Ruins” would have gone back to its original, pre-9/11 meaning as an elegy for the struggling community of Asbury Park, now devastated once again due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tom Waits and collaborator and wife Kathleen Brennan penned a tribute to late producer and longtime friend, Hal Willner. Willner died last week at the age of 64. The cause of death has not yet been publicly confirmed, but he was reportedly suffering from symptoms consistent with the coronavirus.

In 1974, the pair met after one of Waits’ shows when he was 24 and Willner was 18. Calling the producer “more than kin and more than kind, more than friend and more than fiendish in his daunting pursuit of the lost and buried,” Waits...

“You seem to find what’s appropriate for the worlds you create. A lot of your songs are like little films to me.”—Jim Jarmusch to Tom Waits1In late October of 2013 I arrived at the Orly airport in Paris via Rome and took a taxi to the apartment my friend and I had arranged to rent in the Bastille arrondissement of the city. My cab driver was a friendly middle-aged man of Algerian descent who immediately made me feel at ease, chatting cheerfully on the drive and offering me dates from a brown paper bag. He spoke little English and my French was woeful, a linguistic Frankenstein pieced together from the French songs and films I love, and my attempts at “French-ifying” my knowledge of basic conversational Italian. And yet, despite our language barrier, through humorous gesticulations and the odd familiar word I learnt that the dates were from his garden,...

People will tell you Tom Waits’ best album is Rain Dogs. This is not strictly true. It is perhaps the most Waits-ian of Tom Waits albums, by virtue of having a Waits lookalike on the cover and a song selection that ranges across virtually every genre of music (and combinations thereof) Waits could wrangle. But the best Tom Waits album is not Rain Dogs. Instead it’s Bone Machine (which netted Waits his first Grammy in 1993), and it turns 25 years old today.

Waits explained Rain Dogs’ titular inspiration to Spin in 1985: “You know, dogs in the rain lose their way back home.

From world premiere musicals “October Sky” and “The Black White Love Play” to new spins on classics like “The Tempest” and “Treasure Island,” Chicagoans are in for a treat this season. “October Sky” (Opened Aug. 19 at the Marriott Theatre)The Marriott Theatre adapts the 1999 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Laura Dern into a world premiere musical. Although set in an Appalachian mining town amid the international space race, it’s a timeless tale of hope and resilience. “American Idiot” (Opened Aug. 28 at the Den Theatre’s Heath Main Stage)You may know Green Day’s seminal rock album and the Broadway musical on which it’s based, but Chicago-grown company the Hypocrites promises to turn that understanding upside down with this revival, directed by Steven Wilson. “The Tempest” (Opened Sept. 8 at the Courtyard Theater)Aaron Posner and Teller (of Penn & Teller) conjure a distinctly fantastical world in the first production...

The American Repertory Theater A.R.T. at Harvard University, under the leadership of Diane Paulus, Artistic Director and William Russo, Managing Director present the last production of its 201314 Season, The Tempest, adapted and directed by Aaron Posner and Teller from the play by William Shakespeare, with magic by Teller, music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and movement by Matt Kent of Pilobolus.

The American Repertory Theater A.R.T. at Harvard University, under the leadership of Diane Paulus, Artistic Director and William Russo, Managing Director presents the last production of its 201314 Season, The Tempest, adapted and directed by Aaron Posner and Teller from the play by William Shakespeare, with magic by Teller, music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and movement by Matt Kent of Pilobolus.

The American Repertory Theater A.R.T. at Harvard University, under the leadership of Diane Paulus, Artistic Director and William Russo, Managing Director presents the last production of its 201314 Season, The Tempest, adapted and directed by Aaron Posnerand Teller from the play by William Shakespeare, with magic by Teller, music byTom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and movement by Matt Kent of Pilobolus. Scroll down for a first look at the production...

The American Repertory Theater A.R.T. at Harvard University, under the leadership of Diane Paulus, Artistic Director and William Russo, Managing Director, presents the last production of its 201314 Season, The Tempest, adapted and directed by Aaron Posner and Teller from the play by William Shakespeare, with magic by Teller, music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and movement by Matt Kent of Pilobolus.

The American Repertory Theater A.R.T. at Harvard University, under the leadership of Diane Paulus, Artistic Director and William Russo, Managing Director announced today the company for the last production of its 201314 Season, The Tempest, adapted and directed by Aaron Posner and Teller from the play by William Shakespeare, with magic by Teller, music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and movement by Matt Kent of Pilobolus.

In the new documentary Tim’s Vermeer, Texas-based inventor and non-painter Tim Jenison attempts to prove that seventeenth century artist Dutch Johannes Vermeer used an optical device to craft his masterpieces by adopting that technique to painstakingly recreate Vermeer’s The Music Lesson. If that sounds like a snooze on paper, the film is anything but, partly thanks to Penn Jillette’s enthusiastic narration, and his magic-partner Teller’s assured direction. but mostly because of the possibility Jenison might actually drive himself insane attempting to complete his Herculean task. (EW’s Owen Gleiberman recently described the movie as “exquisitely fun” in his “A”-grade review.

For his 20th studio album, Tom Waits’ wife and longtime musical collaborator, Kathleen Brennan, advised the gravelly voiced Rock and Roll Hall of Famer to keep it simple. No long, winding epic songs about soldiers at war, no massive, meandering epics. “Get in, get out. No fucking around,” Waits told Pitchfork. Much of Bad as Me sticks to this modus operandi, especially its best tracks like quick, horn-led opener “Chicago,” the hiccuping, rollicking “Get Lost” and monster single “Bad as Me.” Bottling Waits’ overflowing personality and unusual voice serves to make it that much more frenetic and affecting. Elsewhere, he...

It's decades since Tom Waits had a drink and his music has just got weirder and better. With his 17th album out, he heads for his local roadhouse (for coffee) and talks about songwriting, hard living and his fear of phones

"I used to think that all great recordings happened at about 3am," Tom Waits is telling me, in the conspiratorial, wasted and wounded voice that still seems made for those early hours. "So my first studio experiences, I wanted to be recording after the bars closed. I just thought that's when it all happened. And it worked for me for a while, I guess. But I don't believe that so much any more. I realise now there's more than one way to sneak up on a herd of cattle…"

Waits is sitting in the back room of a roadhouse near his home town of Santa Rosa, where the industrialised...

Tom Waits' second single .Back in the Crowd,. from the upcoming new album Bad As Me is now available at all the regular digital retail outlets. "Bad As Me" is Tom Waits. first studio album of all new music in seven years. Waits, in possibly the finest voice of his career, worked with a veteran team of gifted musicians and longtime co-writer/producer Kathleen Brennan. From the opening horn-fueled chug of .Chicago,. to the closing barroom chorale of .New Year.s Eve,. Bad As Me displays the full career range of Waits. songwriting, from beautiful ballads like .Last Leaf,. to the avant cinematic soundscape of .Hell Broke Luce,. a battlefront dispatch. On tracks like .Talking at the Same Time,.

News on Tom Waits gets a little rare these days, considering the singer-songwriters has been quietly working on new material with wife Kathleen Brennan. But for fans, there's two little reasons to celebrate: the veteran songsmith is releasing a limited edition, two-song 78 rpm vinyl record and he performed a piece by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti for our benefit last week. First, “Tootie Ma Was A Big Fine Thing” b/w “Corrine Died On The Battlefield” was recorded last year with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for the "Preservation: An Album To Benefit Preservation Hall & The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program" compilation....

On this week's episode of "American Idol," the remaining seven finalists will take on the Lennon/McCartney song book. It's not the first time they have tapped into the Beatles catalog — they made a big deal about clearing those songs back in the seventh season (featuring Brooke White singing "Let It Be" and David Cook's run through "Elanor Rigby") and a number of songs have cropped up since then.

It's a fitting tribute, as the two primary Beatles have contributed some of the most wonderful melodies in the history of popular music and both Lennon and McCartney had versatile voices (something that every "American Idol" contestant aspires to). But there are plenty of other legendary songwriting pairs who deserve a tip of the hat. Here are five tag teams who deserve the "American Idol" tribute treatment.

Burt Bacharach and Hal David

A quintessential songwriting pair, Bacharach and David are...

Delightful debut from a new blade of bluegrass

Eighteen-year-old bluegrass whiz Sarah Jarosz will have just graduated from high school when her first album is released this summer, but her age is nearly beside the point. She's a wildly talented instrumentalist, wielding her mandolin and claw-hammer banjo like an old pro alongside actual old pros like Tim O'Brien, Abigail Washburn and Chris Thile (all of whom make guest appearances). Her voice is lovely, glowing and unfurled at only the right moments, and two well-done covers—Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's “Come on up to the House” and The Decemberists' “Shankhill Butchers”—attest to her skill as much as her taste. But the songs Jarosz wrote herself more pull their own weight. The eleven originals bubble with questions, toe-tapping impatience and a dreamy yearning, and they're strung through with twinge of poignancy that's completely refreshing. She's neither a cloyingly precious...

With "The Tiger and the Snow", writer-director Roberto Benigni once again uses the backdrop of war to validate the resilience of the human spirit, but unlike his Oscar favorite "Life Is Beautiful", his latest tragicomedy, taking place in war-torn Baghdad, yields less beautiful results.

Released in his native Italy last year to boxoffice that didn't live up to expectations, "Tiger" certainly isn't lacking those Chaplin-esque/Fellini-esque qualities that worked to that acclaimed 1997 film's considerable advantage, but the sentiments feel recycled this time around.

Here we have Benigni playing the role of Attilio, a poet and university lecturer whose sleeping hours are taken up by recurring dreams of marriage to the lovely but unattainable Vittoria (his real-life wife and usual co-star Nicoletta Braschi), an author who, during his waking hours, finds herself being constantly bombarded (in some states they would call it stalking) with declarations of his undying love for her.

But Attilio's head-in-the-clouds daily existence receives a rude awakening in the form of a phone call from Fuad (Jean Reno), an Iraqi colleague, with news that Vittoria, who had returned to Baghdad with him to put the finishing touches on his biography, received a critical head wound during an Anglo-American bombing raid.

Despite all obstacles, Attilio somehow manages to find his way to Vittoria, who lies unconscious in a seriously depleted Iraqi hospital, refusing to abandon hope for his true beloved.

While the decision to set this love story in contemporary Iraq (played by Tunisia) would seem like a bold proposition, Benigni -- aside from making some benign observations about the folly of conflict -- has been careful not to let international politics intrude upon his meditation on the healing power of passion.

Perhaps a greater passage of time was needed to provide a more effective historical perspective, but "Tiger" has a bigger problem with a dramatic structure that sags conspicuously in the middle, never to completely correct itself.

The picture is not without its lyrically absurdist moments of pleasure, especially during Attilio's dream sequences, which feature a guest appearance by Tom Waits in the role of Tom Waits. His performance of the yearning, mournful "You Can Never Hold Back Spring", which he co-wrote with Kathleen Brennan especially for the film, is woven in and out of composer Nicola Piovani's typically lush score.