UPDATE APRIL 23: In a Tweet posted last week, Waits’ team announced that these forthcoming late-night TV appearances are off, for the moment: “Tom is postponing his appearances on Letterman and Fallon and will reschedule at a later date TBA”
ORIGINAL REPORT APRIL 9: Tom Waits is trotting out his songs from “Bad As Me” for the first time since the album release with a couple of performances lined up on national television.
The veteran songwriter head to the “Late Show With David Letterman” on April 24 and to “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” the next night on April 25. He’ll be sitting down for an interview with each, too, which might prove to be just as entertaining as the songs themselves.
He’s visited with Letterman before, but this will be a first for “Fallon”; considering that host’s rivalries, I’d expect a stop-off at “The Colbert Report,” or maybe just a return to “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.
Waits has yet to announce any tour dates behind “Bad As Me,” but this may signal that organizing may just be ramping up for a trek. He only played eight shows in support of his 2006 album “Orphans,” then took up a much more complete itinerary two years later. He’s known to play with the dates surrounding his album releases, and in a series of stops that don’t always land in major cities.
These performances may also answer the question of: if Waits were to tour, what cracker-jack band would he take with him? During the 2008 Glitter and Doom tour, it was with backers like Vincent Henry on woodwinds, his son Casey Waits on drums, Omar Torrez on guitar/banjo, Patrick Warren on keyboard and Seth Ford-Young on bass. On this record, Casey was all over the thing and Warren was on half; Ford-Young, Henry and Torrez are nowhere to be found; andclassic collaborators like Marc Ribot and special guests like Keith Richards and Flea abounded.
This is all speculation of course. Waits may be already hard at work on something else as soon as the cameras hit “stop.”