Tom Waits' limited edition single for April 18, Record Store Day

By April MacIntyre Apr 9, 2009, 0:59 GMT

In honor of “Record Store Day” on April 18, Waits is releasing an exclusive limited edition 7” single on Anti-Records, because he believes in the importance of the independents. Waits says, “The record store is the livery stable where I can tie up, feed and groom my ears.” - Photo by Michael O\'Brien

Singer, songwriter and actor Tom Waits is releasing a limited edition 7" single to be sold in independent music stores, which he strongly supports.

In honor of “Record Store Day” on April 18, Waits is releasing an exclusive limited edition 7” single on Anti-Records, because he believes in the importance of the independents. Waits says, “The record store is the livery stable where I can tie up, feed and groom my ears.”

The songs were recorded during last summer’s critically acclaimed “Glitter & Doom” tour--side A features “Lucinda/Ain’t Goin’ Down to the Well” (recorded at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, GA) and side B contains “Bottom of the World” (recorded at the Edinburgh Playhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland).

Paste magazine voted Waits’ Atlanta “#1 Best Live Music Act of 2008” for his “Glitter & Doom” tour in the US, while Rolling Stone noted: “Waits ultimately spent the night demonstrating that he’s one of the last remaining character actors in American music: a self proclaimed ‘moonlighting’ thespian who’s always known that music is another kind of theatre—a very particular storytelling practice—and that it’s all in the delivery.”

Of the Edinburgh show, The Guardian raved: “Waits is an utterly magnetic performance…it seems less like you’ve bought a ticket to a concert than to a different world,” while The London Times concurred: “Waits wove a spell as intricate and engaging as that of any performer I can remember seeing on a musical stage.” Elsewhere,  London’s Daily Telegraph declared: “For a couple of hours every night on the Glitter and Doom tour, with Waits as lightning conductor, whipping up the band, stirring up his demons and roaring up a storm, he puts on what is, quite simply, the greatest show on earth.”