Bone Machine
Encyclopedia
Bone Machine is a critically acclaimed and award-winning album by Tom Waits
, released in 1992
on Island Records
. It won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album
, and features guest appearances by Los Lobos
' David Hidalgo
, Primus
' Les Claypool
, and The Rolling Stones
' Keith Richards
.
Bone Machine marked a return to studio material for Waits, coming a full five years after his previous studio album, Franks Wild Years
(1987). The album is often noted for its dark lyrical themes of death and murder, and for its rough, stripped-down, percussion-heavy blues rock style.
in a room of Studio C known as "the Waits Room," in the old cement hatchery rooms of the cellar of the buildings.
Mark "Mooka" Rennick, Prairie Sun studio chief said:
Waits said of the bare-bones studio, "I found a great room to work in, it's just a cement floor and a hot water heater. Okay, we'll do it here. It's got some good echo." References to the recording environment and process were made in the field-recorded interview segments made for the promotional CD release, Bone Machine: The Operator's Manual, which threaded together full studio tracks and conversation for a pre-recorded radio show format.
with horns and protective goggles
, was taken by Jesse Dylan
, the son of Bob Dylan
. He wears this same outfit in the video for "Goin' Out West" and "I Don't Wanna Grow up".
s, and have been covered by artists in varying genres.
"Earth Died Screaming" is featured in the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys
, while "Jesus Gonna Be Here" is featured in the 2005 film Domino
, in which Waits appears. "Goin' Out West" is featured in the 1999 film Fight Club
and has been covered by Queens of the Stone Age
, Gomez
, Widespread Panic
, Gov't Mule
, and Australia
n blues
guitarist Ash Grunwald
. "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" was covered by Ramones
for their album Adios Amigos, by Petra Haden
and Bill Frisell
on their collaboration Petra Haden & Bill Frisell (2003), by ayes Carll] on his Trouble In Mind
(2008), and by Scarlett Johansson
on her debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head
(2008). Danish band Kellermensch
covered "Dirt in the Ground" on their debut album.
, except where noted.
Produced by Tom Waits.
Associate Producer: Kathleen Brennan
Recorded by Biff Dawes, except " Whistle Down the Wind" and "A Little Rain" recorded by Joe Marquez. Mixed by Tchad Blake, Biff Dawes, and Joe Marquez. "That Feel" mixed by Joe Blaney at Studio 900.
2nd Engineer: Joe Marquez,
3rd Engineer: Shawn Michael Morris
Musical Security Guard: Frances Thumm.
Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
, released in 1992
1992 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1992.-January–February:*January 11**Nirvana's Nevermind album goes to #1 in the US Billboard 200 chart, establishing the widespread popularity of the Grunge movement of the 1990s....
on Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
. It won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album
Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album
The Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album is an award presented to recording artists for quality albums in the alternative rock genre at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards...
, and features guest appearances by Los Lobos
Los Lobos
Los Lobos are a multiple Grammy Award–winning American Chicano rock band from East Los Angeles, California. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional Spanish and Mexican music such as cumbia, boleros and norteños.-History:The...
' David Hidalgo
David Hidalgo
David Hidalgo is an American singer-songwriter, best known for his work with the band Los Lobos. He is also a member of the supergroup Los Super Seven and of the Latin Playboys, a side project band made up of some of the members of Los Lobos...
, Primus
Primus (band)
Primus is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, currently composed of bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane. Primus originally formed in 1984 with Claypool and guitarist Todd Huth, later joined by Lane, though the latter two departed...
' Les Claypool
Les Claypool
Leslie Edward "Les" Claypool is an American musician and writer, best known as the lead vocalist and bassist in the band Primus. Claypool's playing style on the electric bass mixes tapping, flamenco-like strumming, whammy bar bends and slapping.Claypool has also self produced and engineered his...
, and The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
' Keith Richards
Keith Richards
Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...
.
Bone Machine marked a return to studio material for Waits, coming a full five years after his previous studio album, Franks Wild Years
Franks Wild Years
Franks Wild Years is an album by Tom Waits, released 1987 on Island Records. Subtitled "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts", the album contains songs written by Waits and collaborators for a play of the same name...
(1987). The album is often noted for its dark lyrical themes of death and murder, and for its rough, stripped-down, percussion-heavy blues rock style.
Recording and production
Bone Machine was recorded and produced entirely at the Prairie Sun Recording studios in Cotati, CaliforniaCotati, California
Cotati is an incorporated city in Sonoma County, California, U.S.A., located about north of San Francisco in the 101 corridor between Rohnert Park and Petaluma....
in a room of Studio C known as "the Waits Room," in the old cement hatchery rooms of the cellar of the buildings.
Mark "Mooka" Rennick, Prairie Sun studio chief said:
[Waits] gravitated toward these "echo" rooms and created the Bone Machine aural landscape. [...] What we like about Tom is that he is a musicologist. And he has a tremendous ear. His talent is a national treasure.
Waits said of the bare-bones studio, "I found a great room to work in, it's just a cement floor and a hot water heater. Okay, we'll do it here. It's got some good echo." References to the recording environment and process were made in the field-recorded interview segments made for the promotional CD release, Bone Machine: The Operator's Manual, which threaded together full studio tracks and conversation for a pre-recorded radio show format.
Artwork
The cover photo, which consists of a blurred black-and-white, close-up image of Waits in a leather skullcapSkullcap
Skullcap or skull cap may refer to:* Calvaria , in anatomy, the top part of the skull* Headgear:** A Kippah or yarmulke, a small cloth skullcap worn by Orthodox Jewish men and some Jewish women...
with horns and protective goggles
Goggles
Goggles or safety glasses are forms of protective eyewear that usually enclose or protect the area surrounding the eye in order to prevent particulates, water or chemicals from striking the eyes. They are used in chemistry laboratories and in woodworking. They are often used in snow sports as well,...
, was taken by Jesse Dylan
Jesse Dylan
Jesse Dylan is an American film director, and the founder, CEO and creative director of the media production company Wondros.-Personal Life:...
, the son of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
. He wears this same outfit in the video for "Goin' Out West" and "I Don't Wanna Grow up".
Covers and soundtracks
A number of the songs from Bone Machine have been used in a number of film soundtrackSoundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
s, and have been covered by artists in varying genres.
"Earth Died Screaming" is featured in the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys
Twelve Monkeys
12 Monkeys is a 1995 science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 short film La jetée, and starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer....
, while "Jesus Gonna Be Here" is featured in the 2005 film Domino
Domino (film)
Domino is a 2005 American action film directed by Tony Scott and written by Richard Kelly. It is inspired by the story of Domino Harvey, the English daughter of stage and screen actor Laurence Harvey, who became a bounty hunter working in Los Angeles. The film stars Keira Knightley as Domino and...
, in which Waits appears. "Goin' Out West" is featured in the 1999 film Fight Club
Fight Club (film)
Fight Club is a 1999 American film based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The film was directed by David Fincher and stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. Norton plays the unnamed protagonist, an "everyman" who is discontented with his white-collar job...
and has been covered by Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age is an American rock band from Palm Desert, California, United States, formed in 1997. The band's line-up has always included founding member Josh Homme , with the current line-up including longtime members Troy Van Leeuwen and Joey Castillo , alongside Michael Shuman and...
, Gomez
Gomez (band)
Gomez are an English indie rock band from Southport, comprising Ian Ball , Paul "Blackie" Blackburn , Tom Gray , Ben Ottewell and Olly Peacock . The band is distinguished for having three singers and four songwriters, employing traditional and electronic instruments...
, Widespread Panic
Widespread Panic
Widespread Panic is an American rock band from Athens, Georgia. The current lineup includes guitarist/singer John Bell, bassist Dave Schools, drummer Todd Nance, percussionist Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz, keyboardist John "JoJo" Hermann, and guitarist Jimmy Herring...
, Gov't Mule
Gov't Mule
Gov't Mule is a Southern rock jam band formed in 1994 as an Allman Brothers Band side project by Warren Haynes and Allen Woody.The band released their debut album Gov't Mule in 1995...
, and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
guitarist Ash Grunwald
Ash Grunwald
Ash Grunwald is an Australian radio announcer and blues musician.-Early career:...
. "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" was covered by Ramones
Ramones
The Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
for their album Adios Amigos, by Petra Haden
Petra Haden
Petra Haden is an American violinist and singer. She is or has been a member of several bands, including That Dog, Tito & Tarantula, and The Decemberists; has contributed to recordings by The Twilight Singers, Beck, Mike Watt, Luscious Jackson, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Queens of the Stone Age,...
and Bill Frisell
Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...
on their collaboration Petra Haden & Bill Frisell (2003), by ayes Carll] on his Trouble In Mind
Trouble in Mind (album)
Trouble In Mind is an album by Elkie Brooks and Humphrey Lyttelton named for a classic eight-bar blues song "Trouble in Mind".Recorded in 2002 at Woody Bay Studios, the album was released on CD in 2003 by Classic Pictures.-Track listing:...
(2008), and by Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson is an American actress, model and singer.Johansson made her film debut in North and was later nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her performance in Manny & Lo . She rose to further prominence with her roles in The Horse Whisperer and Ghost World...
on her debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head
Anywhere I Lay My Head
Anywhere I Lay My Head is the debut studio album by actress Scarlett Johansson, released through Atco Records on May 20, 2008. Dave Sitek produced the album, and David Bowie contributed to two tracks, "Falling Down" and "Fannin Street."...
(2008). Danish band Kellermensch
Kellermensch
Kellermensch is a Danish band. The band was formed in Esbjerg in 2006, they started out under the name Brudevalsen , and took their name from the German translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella Notes from Underground....
covered "Dirt in the Ground" on their debut album.
Chart information
| Chart | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... |
21 |
| The Billboard 200 (1992) | 176 |
Track listing
Songs written by Tom Waits and Kathleen BrennanKathleen Brennan
Kathleen Brennan is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and artist. She was born in Johnsburg, Illinois, as noted by her husband and musical collaborator Tom Waits, in the song of the same name. Brennan and Waits met in 1980 during the filming of the Francis Ford Coppola film One from...
, except where noted.
Credits
- Tom WaitsTom WaitsThomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
- Vocals (all songs), Chamberlin (1,6,9), Percussion (1,3,4,5,6,15), Guitar (1,3,5,12,14,16), Sticks (1), Piano (2,13), Upright Bass (7), Conundrum (9), Drums (10,11,12,16), Acoustic Guitar (14) - BrainBryan MantiaBryan "Brain" Mantia is a contemporary rock drummer. He has played with bands like Primus, Guns N' Roses, Praxis and Godflesh, and with other popular performers such as Tom Waits, Bill Laswell, Bootsy Collins and Buckethead...
- Drums (3,9) - Kathleen BrennanKathleen BrennanKathleen Brennan is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and artist. She was born in Johnsburg, Illinois, as noted by her husband and musical collaborator Tom Waits, in the song of the same name. Brennan and Waits met in 1980 during the filming of the Francis Ford Coppola film One from...
- Sticks (1) - Ralph CarneyRalph CarneyRalph Carney is an American musician. While his primary instruments are various saxophones and clarinets, Carney collects and plays many instruments, often unusual or obscure ones....
- Alto Sax (2,3), Tenor Sax (2,3), Bass Clarinet (2) - Les ClaypoolLes ClaypoolLeslie Edward "Les" Claypool is an American musician and writer, best known as the lead vocalist and bassist in the band Primus. Claypool's playing style on the electric bass mixes tapping, flamenco-like strumming, whammy bar bends and slapping.Claypool has also self produced and engineered his...
- Electric Bass (1) - Joe Gore - Guitar (4,10,12)
- David HidalgoDavid HidalgoDavid Hidalgo is an American singer-songwriter, best known for his work with the band Los Lobos. He is also a member of the supergroup Los Super Seven and of the Latin Playboys, a side project band made up of some of the members of Los Lobos...
- Violin (13), Accordion (13) - Joe Marquez - Sticks (1), Banjo (11)
- David Phillips - Pedal Steel Guitar (8,13), Steel Guitar (16)
- Keith RichardsKeith RichardsKeith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...
- Guitar (16), Vocal (16) - Larry TaylorLarry TaylorLarry Taylor is an American bass guitarist, best known for his work as a member of Canned Heat from 1967. Before joining Canned Heat he had been a session bassist for The Monkees and Jerry Lee Lewis...
- Upright Bass (1,2,4,5,8,9,10,11,12,14,16), Guitar (7) - Waddy WachtelWaddy WachtelRobert "Waddy" Wachtel is an American musician, composer and record producer, most notable for his guitar work...
- Guitar (16)
Produced by Tom Waits.
Associate Producer: Kathleen Brennan
Recorded by Biff Dawes, except " Whistle Down the Wind" and "A Little Rain" recorded by Joe Marquez. Mixed by Tchad Blake, Biff Dawes, and Joe Marquez. "That Feel" mixed by Joe Blaney at Studio 900.
2nd Engineer: Joe Marquez,
3rd Engineer: Shawn Michael Morris
Musical Security Guard: Frances Thumm.
Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk