News

Sep
18

Seeds On Hard Ground, 3rd Edition

Tom Waits is releasing a third print edition of his poem, Seeds On Hard Ground, originally released in 2011 to raise awareness and funds for homeless services. The poem is a long lyrical ballad in the voices of those who walked, fell or were pushed to the margins of our communities. All proceeds from this printing will be donated to the following charities:
• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
• Redwood Empire Foodbank
• The Caritas Village Project - Catholic Charities
• The Society of St. Vincent De Paul

The new chapbook edition underscores the persistence of this condition. Waits appears in a recent episode of the Italian documentary series, The Human Factor, where his poem "Seeds on Hard Ground" provides a throughline to the stories of unhoused Americans living on the fringes of society.

Seeds On Hard Ground, 3rd Edition, will be limited to 2000 copies.
Purchase Seeds On Hard Ground
Watch Tom Waits on The Human Factor Read More

Aug
25

Nighthawks At The Diner 50th Anniversary Re-Issue

This October marks the 50th anniversary of Tom Waits’ 1975 album ‘Nighthawks at the Diner.’ Taking its title from Edward Hopper’s painting, the record captures the singular spirit of Waits’ early live performances; intimate, theatrical evenings where inventive songwriting mingled with storytelling and sharp-witted asides.

Recorded over four sessions at Los Angeles’s Record Plant with a small invited audience, ‘Nighthawks’ stands as a rare artifact of this formative period, crystallizing the persona that would bridge ‘The Heart Of Saturday Night’ and his early opus, ‘Small Change,’ as well as feature some of his most iconic songs of the era like, “Eggs And Sausage,” “Warm Beer And Cold Women,” and the epic, rambling “Spare Parts.”

Pre-Order Now Read More

Aug
19

On Not Saying Farewell to Our Friend Robert Wilson

Over 40 years of loving Bob and still he astounds…. his vodka paintbrush of absurdity, vaudeville, heartbreak and forgiveness and imagination of the infinite is still wet and painting backdrops backwards behind the Mirror into the wee hours of the morning of his opening night! We will always be suspended in his orbit……

No one could paint like Bob with light…he collaborated with great lighting designers who patiently, arduously, took his elaborately detailed visions and precise instructions into the days that became nights….he found all the things that live between the membrane and the weathervane…..

Bob was among the artists who see, feel, hear, and sense the world in a way that most don’t experience it and want that experience to be shared and to connect others also immersed and suspended between the breaths of Life.

Bob set course for the unseen portals of his imagination and gathered brave, adventurous, devoted, gifted, and brilliant artists, and crews and devotees and opened many hearts and eyes. Bob had to be valiant, dictatorial, curious, ever listening, wily, playful, deluded, strategic, flirtatious, fallible, political, and willing to protect and persevere against all doubters, critics, compass navigators, naysayers well intentioned or not.

Bob was an absolute amethyst of an actor…. a space floating astronaut and, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll’s Queen in ALICE, he regularly dreamed 6 impossible things before breakfast to stage, to paint, to costume, to build, draw, perform, choreograph, film, design…….to light into Life and darkness.

He could make his mind as still as the surface of an evening summer lake then shift into scribbling dance — epileptic, musical, static and trancelike… He trusted and confided in his Muses and created a field of concentration calm as a stoic monolithic rock rising out of rollicking sea.

To get Bob, first, you must believe in the dandelion floatness in the smokey pale light horizon beyond the proscenium…. then smooth out the blanket of time and pour a bottle of ink on the emptiness and call its shape the title of your new show!

Always attune, to a finger, a face, a chin, a leg, a tear, a gesture, a shape, an ear, a branch, a child under the table, the stalk of blooming cactus…..or an unplanned sneeze that turns on the Christmas lights as you the say the word….SCHLEP! His actors ever game and skillful would, upon Bob’s suggestions and their imaginations, would turn their bodies into the letter G or throw up their arms like the wings of a crow and open their mouths in a silent scream…. Bob s-l-o-w-e-d everything down, the actors moved as if underwater….the audience experienced a flower blooming in real time.
Robert Wilson. Bob. Beloved Bob. Biscuits and Gravy Bob, Elegant Bob.

And…with his down-home heart and pure prisms of light mind and a wild and wicked Texas cackle ripping up yellow lightning in a black sky desert…Forever Bob….

Tom and Kathleen Read More

Feb
25

"The Last Ride"

Tom Waits performs & reads poetry in the new documentary about homelessness in the American South. Read More

Oct
15

‘The Heart of Saturday Night’ 50th Anniversary

In honor of The Heart Of Saturday Night’s 50th Anniversary, ANTI- is reissuing the album in two limited edition vinyl colors:
Slightly Gold – (Limited to 800 copies - SOLD OUT) Mailing list subscribers get first listen on new releases and first dibs on merchandise which is often in limited editions in the Tom Waits Webstore. Read More

Mailing List

Add the RSS News Feed

Tom Waits