Watch: Tom Waits Contributes Performances and Poetry to New Documentary on Homelessness
Photo Credit: Luigi Montebello and Davide Rinaldi
Tom Waits works entirely on his own terms. Since 2011’s Bad As Me, he’s been extremely selective in his public appearances and new material; we’re lucky to get an anniversary reissue or film cameo every few years. Yesterday, the legendary artist returned to the limelight with a surprise contribution to the eighth episode of Italian documentary series Il Fattore Umano (The Human Factor), bringing words and songs to a critical examination of homelessness in the American South.
“Ultima Fermata,” or “The Last Ride,” is the final installment of a broader series surveying the ways in which human rights are breached by governing bodies. This last chapter’s focus is shifted to Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana with an eye for the integrity and perseverance of people cast off to the fringe. Encounters with some of the many who make their lives in the margins reveal the neglected causes and human cost of poverty, declaring the personhood of those deemed disposable.
To support this message, Waits adds treatments of “Tom Traubert’s Blues,” his unforgettable pained piano ballad of a vagabond from 1976’s Small Change, and “The Fall of Troy,” first offered with the soundtrack for 1995’s Dead Man Walking. He also reads a selection from his 2011 poetry collection Seeds on Hard Ground, which was inspired by Michael O’Brien’s portraits of homelessness. His performances score the program with both piano and guitar.
“I am an individual who is deeply concerned with the inequities as we all are,” Waits detailed in a statement, “but ill equipped to solve any of them. I tell the world in the only way I know how: through my music. I don’t deal with politics or laws, and I don’t have answers to the big questions that concern us all. All I can do is try – through songs and poems – to inspire someone. I’m here to open up the window and open up our eyes. I guess a little bit, if I can.”
“The Last Ride” is available to watch now. Learn more about the outreach organizations mentioned in the documentary at thebeattn.org, showerthepeople.us and shepherdofthegulf.org.
