Tom Waits Interviews Tom Waits
Q: Most interesting recording you own?
A: It’s a mysteriously beautiful recording from, I am told, Robbie Robertson’s label. It’s of crickets. That’s right, crickets, the first time I heard it… I swore I was listening to the Vienna Boys Choir, or the Mormon Tabernacle choir. It has a four-part harmony it is a swaying choral panorama. Then a voice comes in on the tape and says, “What you are listening to is the sound of crickets. The only thing that has been manipulated is that they slowed down the tape.” No effects have been added of any kind except that they changed the speed of the tape. The sound is so haunting. I played it for Charlie Musselwhite and he looked at me as if I pulled a Leprechaun out of my pocket.
NPR: Tom Waits Interviews Tom Waits
“We get a lot of promotional press releases from labels and normally don’t run a word of them. They are, after all, promotional and full of an often comical amount of untethered praise for an artist. But when Anti records sent us this interview Tom Waits did with himself, we had to pass it along.”