The impact of Tom Waits’ music across a variety of music genres is difficult to quantify. However, there is no doubt that his ongoing legacy is ingrained in many an artist’s works, be it subliminally, or directly. Many of his notable songs have attained a wider audience, whilst other songs delve in the darker underbelly of the underground music scene. Regardless, his signature raspy vocal delivery is unmistakable.
Reprising and reinvigorating the Celebrating Tom Waits tour for 2026 sees a selection of highly talented guest vocalists with experience in tackling the vast back catalogue of the unique Tom Waits discography. They include prior contributors Hugo Race [The Wreckery], the sublime Dave Graney [Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes], Peter Fenton [Crow], and making his debut for this latest round of show, Tumbleweed’s Richie Lewis. We took the opportunity to discuss all things Tom Waits related, and anything else that the jovial Fenton and Lewis wanted to discuss.
Tour: https://metropolistouring.com/celebrating-tom-waits-2026/
Richie, what’s your familiarity with Tom Waits’ vast body of music, and has he been a huge influence on you over the years?
Richie Lewis: He has always been an influence. I think I’ve always been influenced by his artistic, sort of creative, and unique approach to everything. When I first sort of discovered him in the early 90s, it was when Bone Machine came out, and so my early assumptions of him were all based around that sort of industrial, swampy, circus style. I think like later on I was sort of like back tracking and forward tracking, and just delving deep in, discovering the length and breadth of his creative work. It’s all quite varied and amazing. Going back to the early Closing Time album and stuff like that, versus all the Americana stuff but he hadn’t discovered that voice yet, and just his character: everything about it. His variety is outstanding and even just him as a character, he is so idiosyncratic and unique. He is physical and there’s no one quite like him. I like the way that he approaches life and the way he puts out his view and perspective on things.
I believe that he is around 76 years old, and he’s still going.
RL: Yeah, and still doing relevant things. I mean, there is that single that came out a few weeks ago, “Boots on the Ground”. It’s still really pushing boundaries, and he did a Massive Attack collaboration which is really awesome. Not many 76-year-olds are out there doing that sort of stuff. He is in a field of his own.
Does approaching a celebration of such an artist present some difficulties given the diversity is massive? So, to have a set list that covers what everybody wants: that’s a challenge, right?
RL: Yeah and there’s a few considerations that I think Paul McDonald, who is the musical director, and Frazer Bourke who is the brainchild promoter of this whole shebang have thought about. They put the set list together over time. This tour happened just after COVID when there was a lot of lockdown and was with Peter [Fenton], Hugo [Race], and Dave Graney. So, I’m a new recruit happy to be it, but apparently the first time they figured out what worked and what didn’t work that first time. There’s a little bit of that but there are considerations such as which songs suit which singers. So, that’s one thing that they’re thinking about. They’re thinking about also hitting those marks of the favorite songs the people go and they buy the tickets to see, and they don’t want to miss that song, so there’s the big moments. They’re all there, but also, we’re all asked a question like, ‘What song means something to you? What is the song that you want to do?’ It was nice to have that as well as they took that into consideration and then, I don’t know how they did it but also taking into account that it’s set up into two sets. The whole show has to flow, so there’s some other considerations.
Peter Fenton: It just kind of shows how much ground this guy covers, you know, he starts off sort of as a folk musician, because he’s kind of the doorman somewhere at a club and he’s attracted to it. So, there’s early songs of piano and I think that was in San Diego, and then he moved to L.A. and he took piano lessons, but he doesn’t stop evolving as an artist. I was listening to this song, “Rainbirds” [instrumental] from Swordfishtrombones, thinking, ‘What’s that instrument?’ It’s this kind of really talkative sort of sound, and it’s a glass harmonium. So, within his considerable repertoire, there’s a lot of instrumentation, and there’s obvious kind of piano and guitar stuff. “Big in Japan”, which part of our set, begins with a beat that he fashions from a suitcase in a Japanese hotel. I didn’t have to choose the set list too much. I mean, I kind of sent through a sort of a wish list, but that’s why you have people like the musical director, Paul McDonald, because he’s got a lot of canvas to cover.
Does Tom Wait’s singing style challenge you as a vocalist in the same way that it might be challenging to Dave Graney or Hugo?
PF: You know, I did the tour before with those gentlemen, and initially I was kind of a struck because I am a huge Waits fan. He’s a guiding light for me. His voice is distinctive and I sort of actively resisted the idea of playing him as a character. I mean, I do inhabit, and you can’t avoid inhabiting the songs, but I simply found that just using my speaking voice and just kind of pushing that seemed to do the trick. I didn’t want to impersonate him but you’ve sort of jumped in there. Dave Graney was even more Dave Graney than Dave Graney. He was totally himself and totally comfortable in being himself and interpreting the songs.
Both Tumbleweed and Crow really hit their stride in the 90s’. A lot of Tom Wait’s discography seems to be most prolific in the 70s’. So, subconsciously Waits may have had some influence on your music? He was always this kind of off-beat character you might catch on ABC TV’s rage.
RL: Yeah, exactly, you would and it would always, always stand out when, you know, it’s three in the morning when you did see it on rage, and it was not like anything else. I think so, I think it did influence, but you know most of the music that I’ve always been into has been before my life started anyway.
PF: You were always here Richie, you were always around.
RL: Ha-ha, I was omni-present. But, I’m a big fan of 60’s music, whereas 90’s music actually is the music I probably hate the most but I think that he stood completely separate from the 90’s. Even though I was from the 90’s, maybe that’s why I have a sort of problem with it.
Yeah, it was very categorised but whereas in the 80’s everything had to go through radio or say Countdown, so it was a different era.
RL: I’ve always been a fan of artists that do their own thing.
PF: Yeah, when I talk about what makes Tom a guiding light, the guiding light was to be true to yourself and do your own thing. If everyone just did their own thing, the world would be a wild and great place but instead you’re faced with an industry that demands bandwagons and trends and conformity. Waits is a hero in that regard.
RL: Yeah, I think he also kicked against it in a lot of ways like yeah when he just started, he was beginning to get pigeonholed. He’d kick against it, and do something completely unexpected, and that’s another thing that makes him so interesting and vital.
Even branching out into musicals in the 90’s was something that you didn’t expect.
RL: Yeah, and he’s done big band stuff as well as sort of like doing industrial stuff, or whatever. Yeah, he’s always challenging himself creatively, satisfying himself creatively, and is on his own creative journey. If you jump on and go for the ride, it’s a really exciting ride.
Did you have an opportunity to see him perform live?
RL: Not, I no.
PF: No, the last time he was here, I was in high school and I remember my metal-work teacher saying he went to see Tom Waits and that was in 1980. He described it as pretty sleazy and that was all that I remembered about Tom Waits, and it wasn’t until I caught “Underground” on rage or something that it lit a little spark for me. I did I did go and see The Black Rider production on in Sydney. Black Rider was I think the first one he did and that was great because I had seats on top of the orchestra pit. There was a whole vast array of idiosyncratic instruments.
Crow tended to have that sort of darker, Melbourne vibe to their music. Would that link to how you initially got involved in this project?
PF: We were always Sydney but I get asked so much that we were from Melbourne. Maybe we invited that with the four layers of clothes and also an interest in football, but music as well. That’s a really interesting question about why were we chosen to play and it is difficult for me to say, but maybe maybe we inhabit the same musical landscape or that perception space in Australian music that as Tom has characters in Tom Waits’ songs; the outsiders, not the pin-up boys, the people kind of like hovering on the edge, you know just out of view people. I don’t know.
Crow was quite loud, too.
PF: Yeah, we were and Tom Waits, conversely, was loud but it wasn’t sort of guitar driven, you know, it wasn’t sort of sheets of sonic guitar sound hurled at the audience. It was more sort of rhythmic. That’s what I think I love doing these shows. The rhythms and the melody are just so great, plus the stories.
How much time do you have to spend on the arrangements?
PF: We’re kind of lucky because we’ve got officer status and we just turn up with our driving gloves and just turn up and sing the songs, but I would think there’s considerable amount of discussion and work that goes into the parts.
RL: Paul has been getting individual musicians up to his place up in the Blue Mountains, and sort of going through it for quite a while. I was up there last weekend, and it was just Paul and saxophone player, and that was really cool. So yeah, he’s sort of working one-on-one with people and then he’ll bring in a larger ensemble, and then we’re going in to do a bunch of rehearsals over a few days.
Tom Waits doesn’t strike me as a person who would have embraced necessarily the digital age.
RL: Yeah, he seems a little bit more sort of an analogue kind of guy. I’ll go along with that. Even hitting stuff, and I think there’s a large amount of creativity that just happens with what you got, you know, and I think that he’s more inclined see use what’s lying around? ‘What can I do, what can I use? I’ve got this thing. What can I make with it?’ That kind of thing. So I suppose why it is unique.
PF: Well, I mean, that’s really interesting as he lives in the country somewhere, and I imagine there’s sort of a barn, you know, with old kinds of machinery and stuff. He’s definitely more rural than say country.
Is there a particular track in the Tom Waits body of work that stands out for both of you?
RL: Yeah, it’s hard to choose just one, but a song I’m really digging at the moment is “Hold On” off Mule Variations, just because of the warmth of it. It’s like a warm blanket and it’s like a lot of his songs, they are amazing stories about, I suppose, escape and connecting with another human being, and unforeseen circumstances in the cold swaying, you know, just like really is attention to tiny details is what sort of paints the songs in such a clear and emotional way. You think of details that you often just don’t see: you have a look, it’s not part of the story of part of what you think is the story, but yet those little details end up being the story. So, I think “Hold On” is one of them for me.
PF: I was talking about the song today, also with Richie; “Rainbirds”, which is an instrumental song, but it’s just so amazing in its simplicity, really. I think of the songs that I’m doing for the show, “Alice” is really incredible just in the evocative nature of how we can paint cinematic vividness, but also this sense of the absurd and things cut out, then pasted together, almost like a crooked sort of a pantomime or puppet theatre, or something; the way he kind of works in the shadow, but that sings in the light is really great.
Does dissecting another artist’s music and having to perform it live potentially have an effect on your future songwriting?
RL: I hope so, you do a lot worse. Also, yeah, it does and there’s a lot to discover lyrically, and it’s like another world. That’s a lifetime quest to be able to write like that. Yeah, but I think a lot of restraint is a wonderful lesson, and also freedom is a huge one; things that are bigger sort of like that, maybe, rather than sort of you know, ‘I’m going to write a song like that,’ more like just the motivations and the limitlessness of his songwriting. That’s definitely something that’s inspiring me already.
Tom Waits has not just been covered by people, but has also written songs for some major artists
PF: Well, you know, there’s Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart had some hits with his songs, Tori Amos.
RL: The Eagles.
PF: Yeah, The Eagles. Tom Waits isn’t just an artist in the American songbook, you know, he’s a significant visionary and you know, just to go to your question previously about how he influences you: once you get into Waits, you start looking at the world differently. You look at say a homeless alcoholic person with compassion because Waits teaches you that there’s a story there. I think that that’s an incredibly profound lesson to learn that everyone has a story and I think Tom Waits, showed me the way not just to express myself in a somewhat masculine kind of world, but also how to see the world.
That makes that makes perfect sense because I suppose as you were saying earlier about the music industry; it tends to want everybody to stay in the age group of your early twenties, which is just an absurd proposition.
PF: I mean the music industry, you know, don’t get me started but I was out somewhere yesterday listening to the playlist, and I just thought that playlist this playlist is exactly like AM radio when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. There’s parts of the music industry have got some psychological issue and have arrested development, you know, and they infantilise men and women. They want you one when your 18 to 24, but outside of that, your experience of the world that doesn’t count so much.
Yeah, it’s quite extraordinary. Thank you very much for your time. I’ll let both of you go. I’m looking forward to seeing this live.
PF: Oh yeah, see you there, come and say hello. Thanks.