Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan are to be celebrated by artists such as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Randy Newman, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Leonard Cohen, Lee Hazlewood, Brian Wilson and Laura Nyro as part of Ace Records’ long-running series of multi-artist compilations celebrating the great American songwriters of the modern era with the album Where The Willow And The Dogwood Grow. The album features 19 hand-picked tracks, including many chosen by the songwriters themselves from Wait’s post-1980 career and is out on the 29th of May.
Over the course of five decades, Waits has forged a singular aesthetic that often defies genre, and his influence reverberates across theatre, film, literature, and visual art as well as music. This collection should demonstrate not only the extraordinary versatility of Waits and Brennan’s songwriting but also the importance of Waits as an artist. The album can be pre-ordered here.
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 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 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, Frank’s 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.
“Where The Willow And The Dogwood Grow” Tracklisting:
1. Jersey Girl – Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band (Live at Meadowlands Arena, NJ – July 1981)
2. 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six – Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band
3. Gin-Soaked Boy – Southside Johnny and 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 Want To 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 and Robert Plant
19. Day After Tomorrow – Joan Baez
