Tom Waits: Hold On

Gravelly-voiced Tom Waits went on a six-year hiatus from recording after Black Rider. But he came back in a big way in 1999 with one of his best albums, Mule Variations.

And Waits has had some great ones.

"Hold On" from that collection gained Waits some new fans, particularly through the then-nascent internet radio platform. Broadcast radio has for the most part kept its distance from him.



"Hold On" is a tale of love among the poverty-stricken, more timely for 2010 than the boom years of late '90s. Waits is a Californian, but his wife and co-composer, Kathleen Brennan, is from Johnsburg, Illinois--and the Midwest figures into much of his work.

Related post:

Tom Waits, "Downtown Train"

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