Song by Song is a podcast celebrating the music of Tom Waits, hosted by podcaster-musician Martin Zaltz Austwick and actor-musician Sam Pay. Sam and Martin set themselves the goal of listening to Tom Waits’s back catalogue from beginning to end, and devoting an episode to discussing each track. Song by Song is in no way officially linked to Tom Waits, or endorsed by Tom Waits, or associates. All excerpts are used for criticism purposes - please purchase your own copies of the music at your favourite shop, app, or platform to get the full experience and support musicians' work.
http://songbysong.libsyn.com/website
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 6 days 3 hours 32 minutes
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episode 10: Gospel Train / Orchestra, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [214]
The mental gymnastics are in full force for this odd atonal instrumental, as Martin and Sam are joined by Jenny Conley-Drizos of the Decemberists to discuss the orchestral creation of “the essence of train”, Scott Johnson’s intense 80s editing...
episode 11: I'll Shoot The Moon, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [215]
A second week with Jenny Conley-Drizos sees her talking with Sam and Martin about restraint, morbidity and violence in this crooner ballad. With some of Sam’s “Overworked Lyric Unpicking” (patent pending) and Martin’s Smooth Marble Egg theory...
episode 12: Flash Pan Hunter, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [216]
Waits returns to more directly narrative material through the lyrics of William Burroughs, as Jenny, Sam and Martin talk about vocal quality, musical dissonance, and the extraordinary musical stylings of Björk. website: songbysongpodcast.com twitter:...
episode 13: Crossroads, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [217]
Another Waits-does-Burroughs track this week, as we’re joined by stage manager and Black Rider alumnus Penny Foxley for some discussion of her first-hand experience working on the play. We talk through Robert Wilson’s micromanagement of actors’...
episode 14: Gospel Train, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [218]
Penny Foxley returns to give Martin & Sam some more context and detail for the Black Rider play from 2004. The cacophony of the music (and the evolution of that music), Marianne Faithfull’s tailcoat, and the raw energy of early-2000s girlband...
episode 15: Interlude, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [219]
A short episode for the shortest of short tracks, as Penny, Martin and Sam discuss this 18sec Greg Cohen extract from the Black Rider score. Now with even less Tom Waits! website: songbysongpodcast.com twitter: @songbysongpod e-mail:...
episode 16: Oily Night, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [220]
A fourth week with Penny Foxley sees her talk with Sam and Martin about more cacophonous instrumental music, this time with a vocal to put even Waits to shame. website: songbysongpodcast.com twitter: @songbysongpod e-mail: songbysongpodcast@gmail.com...
episode 17: Lucky Day, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [221]
Theatre-maker David Shopland joins his collaborator and returning guest Callum Hughes (plus the usual goofs Martin & Sam) to listen to this climactic track from The Black Rider. We discuss fusion of Waits’s traditional mode of writing with the...
episode 18: The Last Rose of Summer, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [222]
Moving into a coda of sorts (both in the album and the play) Callum, David, Sam & Martin discuss the way Waits winds down The Black Rider with this final “proper” song. With some full-blooded disagreement over comparison between the theatre...
episode 19: Carnival, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [223]
A third week with David & Callum brings Sam & Martin to the end of The Black Rider album, although we reach back to much earlier in the play. Ideas of carnival celebrations in a British context are compared to the American funfair/freakshow...