the CIVIL warS: A tree is best measured when it is down

This Old Clotheshorse knows the importance of Robert Wilson. The Keeper told him.

Tacks on the Kitchen Floor - Robert Wilson

So the Keeper of the Boneyard was dusting off the headstones, muttering about Wilson:

"Words for Bob are like tacks on the kitchen floor in the dark of night and you’re barefoot. So Bob clears a path he can walk through words without getting hurt. Bob changes the values and shapes of words. In some sense they take on more meaning; in some cases, less.”

The Keeper of the Bamba

Southside Johnny and the LaBamba Big Band

So it appears the Keeper of the Graveyard has been haunting the world of Southside Johnny. You couldn't find a better world to haunt. Anyway along with the LaBamba Big Band, Johnny has released an album of Tom Waits covers. The Keeper himself sings along on "Walk Away."

Apparently Southside Johnny and the LaBamba Big Band are "appearing" at the Nokia Theater in New York City on Friday, October 24th. While the Keeper will not be there in person, his spirit has already his train ticket booked.

Harbor Lights - Elvis Presley (1954)

I'm sure the Keeper of the Graveyard would appreciate this

Tom Waits Dublin 2008 31.07.08

This old clotheshorse wishes he could have been there. Sorry Keeper of the Graveyard.

Tom Waits Dublin 2008 31.07.08

The Keeper of the Park - Coz He Has No Time

Showbiz.ie trying to get a photo of the Keeper on the streets of Dublin bemoaning their bad luck.

Comments anyone:

"celebrities eh?"...........lads if ye had any idea of how stupid that sounds when ur talkin bout tom waits......the man couldnt be further from that,ever wonder why ye wouldnt know him from a line up.........coz he has no time for the rubbish that goes with so called "celebrity".........unlike most of the bimbos on this!


"Waits is a TOTAL legend. Great concert in the pheonix park last night, best I've been at in a long time. TOM WAITS IS A GOD!!!!"

You Dated My Mother - Tom Waits Press Conference

The Keeper of the Graveyard dated my mother too. She is not doing well.

Vietnam - Don't Even Turn The Car Off

This Old Clotheshorse likes the sweater, the turned up sleeves, the tall neck. Oh yeah the flowers in the gun barrels too. So I am wondering about the hipster in question and turn to The Keeper of the Graveyard since I know he knows these things.

Turns out the hipster is none other than Joel Tournabene.

"So who's Joel Tournabene, Tom?"

"He's in the concrete biz. Mob guy. He was the grandson of Sam Giancana from Chicago. He did some yard work for me, and I hung out with him most of the time. He died in Mexico about five years ago. He was a good friend of [producer/composer] Hal Wilner, and he was a good guy. He had an errant--I don't know how to put this--he used to go around, and when he saw something he liked in somebody's yard, he would go back that night with a shovel, dig it up and plant it in your yard. We used to get a kick out of that. So I stopped saying, 'I really like that rosebush, I really like that banana tree, I really like that palm.' Because I knew what it meant. He came over once with twelve chickens as a gift. My wife said, 'Joel, don't even turn the car off. Turn that car around and take those chickens back where you found them.' He was a good friend, one of the wildest guys I've ever known."

"How's It Gonna End?"

"...Drag your wagon and your plow

Over the bones of the dead

Out among the roses and the weeds

You can never go back

And the answer is no

And wishing for it only

Makes it bleed

Joel Tornabene was broken

On the wheel..."

Down At The Tropicana

Thing is, we are down at the Tropicana.

Rikki is in the background,

soon to take the foreground.

What a vagabond.

Singing 'Easy Money' at The Troubadour

gotta ask yourself, what for?

Some romantic dreamer

stuck in the wrong time zone.

Gotta buy a pair of high heels

falling off your shoes in low style

Santa Monica Boulevard

looking like a little girl.

I wish I was in New Orleans

stealing my own car

with a beret and a mojo

taking it all too far.

Just swimming and imagining

feeling like a movie star

Little Amy playing pi-an-o

singing Wish Upon A Star.

Walking round the same streets

jazz side of life.

I really am that girl.

I'm really not that wife.

Young blood and coolsville

Chuck. E.'s out of love

lost in the bullshit

swallowed up in drugs.

Filling in the darkness

L.A. streets at night

things I saw as a little girl

empty and quiet.

Life, so serious

and hard

and cruel.

In the Salvage Business

This old clotheshorse was wondering about Chuck E. Weiss recently. That other old clotheshorse set him to the wise.

"Chuck E. Weiss is a mensch, a liar, a monkey, and a pathological Vaudevillian. He is a distant relative of Houdini's; he's a praying mantis riding an egret through a bad neighborhood. He's a reverend waving a pistol around. Basically, he's in the salvage business and you should do everything he tells you."

The Devil Incarnate

So Mr. Nick is thinking souls, is thinking imaginarium. Valentina is the prize, but the prize is the deal, the bet. There is not a song he has written that promises anything less.

Parnassus is trying to bring amazement to people, and not doing a very good job of it, because they aren't paying attention to him. But if they will enter his mirror, and allow their imagination to mix with his, they enter these extraordinary worlds, and they come back transcendent -- or they strangely disappear...

Straight Trees and Crooked Trees

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.