I discovered Tom Waits (not that he was exactly missing) seventeen odd years ago while touring as a circus roustabout, which is, I suppose, about as apt as you can get. If my driving partner were forced to choose between rescuing her boyfriend or her copy of Swordfishtrombones from a burning building I suspect her SO would have been on his own, and we listened to that album repeatedly and at high volume for months.

In the time since, he has toured this country exactly twice, and last night I got to go.

It was pretty cool.

Side note to those apparently numerous Tom Waits fans who need to be introduced to the business end of a slapjack:

"Tom" is not singing to you. He is not talking to you. He doesn't care that you know the names of the songs on his old albums or that you can Wah Bark like a chimp. He doesn't give a shit what you think and you're annoying the hell out of the rest of us who just want to hear the music. You're all upper middle-class white people, I'm sure your mothers taught you manners; act like it.