Happy birthday

On December 7, 1949, Thomas Alan Waits was born to Jesse Frank Waits and Alma Johnson McMurray.

Complete video of Tom Waits’ Dead Man Walking benefit show available online

A new (?) version of Tom Waits' performance at the Dead Man Walking benefit concert has surfaced on the Oddities&Rarities Youtube account. The post also includes a download link for the 4k video. 

The setlist: 

Walk Away

Gun Street Girl

The Fall of Troy

Goin' Out West

Big Black Mariah

Yesterday Is Here

Innocent When You Dream

The band consisted of Stephen Hodges (drums), Smokey Hormel (guitar, banjo), Larry Taylor (bass) and Ralph Carney (saxes).

For the closing song, Innocent When You Dream, Waits was joined by Bonnie Raitt on guitar and John Densmore on tambourine, and Eddie Vedder, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett and filmmaker Tim Robbins on backing vocals. 

The event at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium was organized on March 29th 1998 to benefit the organization Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation and featured performances from artists on the Dead Man Walking movie soundtrack, including Eddie Vedder, Ani DiFranco, Lyle Lovett and Steve Earle.

 

First glance at ‘Wildwood’ trailer/making of

Laika studios has released (some sort of) trailer for the upcoming Wildwood, an animated movie which counts Tom Waits as one of its cast. The release is expected somewhere next year.

Re-issue of the Waits/Corbijn book available for pre-order

The book Waits/Corbijn ‘77-’11 is back in print in a slightly smaller version than the original edition. It's due for release on October 21 in Europe and December 9 in the US and is available for pre-order at the Tom Waits store.

The book documents over 30 years of collaboration between Tom Waits and Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn. It features over 200 pages of Tom Waits portraits by Anton Corbijn, alongside "the first published collection of Waits' own musings and photography".

Third edition of Tom Waits' ‘Seeds On Hard Ground’

Tom Waits is releasing a third print edition of his poem, Seeds On Hard Ground. The chap book was originally released in 2011 to raise awareness and funds for homeless services. The new edition underscores the persistence of this condition and all proceeds will be donated to NAMI and the Redwood Food Bank, among others.  This edition will be limited to 2.000 copies. You can order it at the TW store.

‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ wins Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival

Jim Jarmusch’s movie Father Mother Sister Brother was awarded with the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In the movie, Tom Waits stars alongside Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling and Cate Blanchett.

Tom Waits in documentary on homelessness 'Ultima Fermata'

Italian tv channel RAI3 is showing Ultima Fermata (Last Stop) on Thursday evening (11.10 pm), a documentary by Angelo Loy, Martino Mazzonis and Luigi Montebello about homeless people in the US. According to RAI3, Tom Waits “returns to play exclusively” for this program in the Il Fattore Umano series. “With the poems taken from Seeds on hard ground, the musician acts as a counterpoint to the landscape of faces and situations recounted in the documentary.”