The Black Rider is an album by Tom Waits

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 1993 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...

. The album contains studio versions of songs Waits wrote for the play The Black Rider

The Black Rider

The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets is a self-billed "musical fable" in the avant-garde tradition created through the collaboration of theatre director Robert Wilson, musician Tom Waits, and writer William S. Burroughs. Wilson was largely responsible for the design and direction....

, directed by Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson (director)

Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...

 and co-written by William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

. The play is based on the German folktale Der Freischütz

Der Freischütz

Der Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...

, which had previously been made into an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

  by Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....

.

The Black Rider premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater

Thalia Theater (Hamburg)

The Thalia Theater is one of the three state-owned theatres in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded in 1843 by Charles Maurice Schwartzenberger and named after the muse Thalia...

 in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. Its world English-language premiere occurred in 1998 at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival

Edmonton International Fringe Festival

The Edmonton International Fringe Festival produced by the Fringe Theatre Adventures is an annual event held every August in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada....

.

Waits's collaboration with Wilson would later continue with the plays Alice (1992) and Woyzeck

Woyzeck

Woyzeck is a stage play written by Georg Büchner. He left the work incomplete at his death, but it has been variously and posthumously "finished" by a variety of authors, editors and translators. Woyzeck has become one of the most performed and influential plays in the German theatre...

(2000), the music to which was released on the albums Alice and Blood Money, respectively.

There is a German vinyl release of this album featuring quite different tracks. It was released by Alka-Seltzer Medien GmbH in 1999 containing some liner notes concerning the Black Rider stage play. The vinyl is transparent red printed only with the letters "A" and "B" on either side's label.

There is also another previous release by Alka-Seltzer Medien GmbH in 1992, without specific content and mistakes on titles. The vinyl is black printed with green side labels and no inscriptions on it.

Track listing

All songs written by Tom Waits, except where noted. Recorded in 1989 by Gerd Bessler at his Music Factory in Hamburg, Germany (2, 3, 6–9, 14–16, 19, 20), and in 1993 by Tchad Blake at the Prairie Sun Recording Studios in Cotati

Cotati, 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....

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 (1, 4, 5, 10–13, 17, 18). Musical Director Greg Cohen. All songs mixed by Biff Dawes At Sunset Sound Factory, Hollywood, CA.

1. "Lucky Day (Overture)" – 2:27
   • Tom Waits
     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."...
     
      – vocal, calliope
     Calliope (music)
     A calliope is a musical instrument that produces sound by sending a gas, originally steam or more recently compressed air, through large whistles, originally locomotive whistles....
     
     
   • Ralph Carney
     Ralph Carney
     Ralph 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....
     
      – sax
     Saxophone
     The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
     
     
   • Bill Douglas – bass
   • Kenny Wollesen – percussion
   • Matt Brubeck – cello
     Cello
     The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
     
     
   • Joe Gore – banjo
     Banjo
     In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
     
     
   • Nick Phelps – French horn
   • Kevin Porter – trombone
     Trombone
     The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
     
     
2. "The Black Rider" – 3:21
   • Greg Cohen
     Greg Cohen
     A native of Los Angeles, bassist Greg Cohen has been playing in various acclaimed music groups since the '60s. He is perhaps best known for his work with John Zorn's Masada quartet; more recently he has been touring with Ornette Coleman, and performed on Coleman's much-praised Sound Grammar...
     
      – bass, percussion, banjo, viola
     Viola
     The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
     
     
   • Tom Waits – organ, vocal
3. "November" – 2:53
   • Tom Waits – piano
     Piano
     The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
     
     , banjo, vocal
   • Greg Cohen – bass, accordion
     Accordion
     The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
     
     
   • Don Neely – saw
4. "Just the Right Bullets" – 3:35
   • Matt Brubeck – cello
   • Kenny Wollesen – percussion
   • Joe Gore – banjo
   • Ralph Carney – bass clarinet
     Bass clarinet
     The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
     
     
   • Tom Waits – vocal, piano
   • Larry Rhodes – bassoon
   • Bill Douglas – bass
   • Francis Thumm – organ
5. "Black Box Theme" (instrumental) – 2:42
   • Tom Waits – Chamberlin
     Chamberlin
     The Chamberlin is an electro-mechanical keyboard instrument that was a precursor to the Mellotron. It was developed and patented by Iowa, Wisconsin inventor Harry Chamberlin from 1949 to 1956, when the first model was introduced. Various models and versions of these Chamberlin music instruments...
     
     
   • Don Neely – saw
   • Bill Douglas – bass
   • Matt Brubeck – cello
   • Kenny Wollesen – percussion
   • Nick Phelps – French horn
   • Larry Rhodes – bassoon
     Bassoon
     The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
     
     
   • Joe Gore – banjo
6. "'T' Ain't No Sin" (Walter Donaldson
   Walter Donaldson
   Walter Donaldson was a prolific United States popular songwriter, composing many hit songs of the 1910s and 1920s.-History:...
   
    / Edgar Leslie
   Edgar Leslie
   Edgar Leslie was an American songwriter. His first song Lonesome in 1909 was an immediate success, recorded by the Haydn Quartet and again by Byron G. Harlan. Other notable artists he worked with are:...
   
   ) – 2:25
   • William S. Burroughs
     William S. Burroughs
     William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
     
      – vocal
   • Tom Waits – marimba
     Marimba
     The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...
     
     , Emax
     E-mu Emax
     The Emax was a line of samplers, developed, manufactured, and sold by E-mu Systems from 1986 to 1995. Sold alongside their more expensive Emulator II and III samplers, the Emax line was conceived after the release of the Akai S-612 and Sequential Prophet 2000, and was designed to compete for the...
     
     
   • Greg Cohen – bass clarinet, Emax
7. "Flash Pan Hunter/Intro" (instrumental) – 1:10
   • Henning Stoll – Contrabassoon
     Contrabassoon
     The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
     
     
   • Stefan Schäfer – bass
   • Volker Hemken – clarinet
8. "That's the Way" (music: Waits, lyrics: Burroughs) – 1:07
   • Hans-Jorn Braudenberg – organ
   • Henning Stoll – viola
   • Stefan Schäfer – bass
   • Volker Hemken – clarinet
   • Tom Waits – vocal
9. "The Briar and the Rose" – 3:50
   • Hans-Jorn Braudenberg – organ
   • Henning Stoll – viola
   • Stefan Schäfer – bass
   • Volker Hemken – clarinet
   • Tom Waits – vocal
10. "Russian Dance" (instrumental) – 3:12
    • Tom Waits – Emax strings
    • Matt Brubeck – cello
    • Linda Deluca – viola
    • Bill Douglas – bass
    • Kathleen Brennan
      Kathleen 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...
      
      , Clive Butters, Tom Waits, Francis Thumm, Joe Marquez – boots
11. "Gospel Train/Orchestra" (instrumental) – 2:33
    • Linda Deluca – viola
    • Nick Phelps – French horn
    • Larry Rhodes – bassoon
    • Kevin Porter – trombone
    • Ralph Carney – bass clarinet
    • Joe Gore – guitar
    • Kenny Wollesen – percussion
    • Bill Douglas – bass
    • Matt Brubeck – cello
12. "I'll Shoot the Moon" – 3:51
    • Kevin Porter – trombone
    • Francis Thumm – organ
    • Bill Douglas – bass
    • Ralph Carney – sax
    • Kenny Wollesen – percussion, marimba
    • Joe Gore – guitar
    • Matt Brubeck – cello
    • Tom Waits – vocal
13. "Flash Pan Hunter" (music: Waits, lyrics: Burroughs) – 3:10
    • Ralph Carney – bass clarinet
    • Matt Brubeck – cello
    • Joe Gore – banjo
    • Larry Rhodes – bassoon
    • Bill Douglas – bass
    • Francis Thumm – organ
    • Kenny Wollesen – percussion
    • Don Neely – saw
    • Tom Waits – vocal
14. "Crossroads" (music: Waits, lyrics: Burroughs) – 2:43
    • Tom Waits – guitar, Chamberlin, vocal
    • Greg Cohen – bass
    • Gerd Bessler – viola
15. "Gospel Train" – 4:43
    • Tom Waits – train whistle
      Train whistle
      A train whistle or air whistle, , is an audible signaling device on a steam locomotive used to warn that the train is approaching, and to communicate with rail workers....
      
      , vocal, conga
      Conga
      The conga, or more properly the tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban drum with African antecedents. It is thought to be derived from the Makuta drums or similar drums associated with Afro-Cubans of Central African descent. A person who plays conga is called a conguero...
      
      , log drum
      Log drum
      A log drum is a type of unpitched percussion instrument.*see drum for the history of log drum and information on the log drum as a means of communication in ancient cultures* see also:**Tongue drum**Slit drum**Bosalabos**Wood block...
      
      
    • Greg Cohen – percussion, bass
    • Ralph Carney – bass clarinet
    • Bill Douglas – bass
16. "Interlude" (Greg Cohen) (instrumental) – 0:18
    • Henning Stoll – bassoon
    • Christoph Moinian – French horn
    • Volker Hemken – clarinet
17. "Oily Night" – 4:23
    • Matt Brubeck – cello
    • Kenny Wollesen – percussion
    • Bill Douglas – bass
    • Ralph Carney – sax, bass clarinet
    • Nick Phelps – French horn
    • Kevin Porter – trombone
    • Larry Rhodes – contra bassoon
    • Joe Gore – banjo, guitar
    • Linda Deluca – viola
    • Featuring "The Boners"
18. "Lucky Day" – 3:42
    • Tom Waits – organ & vocal
    • Bill Douglas – bass
    • Ralph Carney – baritone horn
      Baritone horn
      The baritone horn is a member of the brass instrument family. The baritone horn has a predominantly cylindrical bore as do the trumpet and trombone. A baritone horn uses a large mouthpiece much like those of a trombone or euphonium, although it is a bit smaller. Some baritone mouthpieces will sink...
      
      
    • Matt Brubeck – cello
    • Kenny Wollesen – percussion
    • Joe Gore – guitar
19. "The Last Rose of Summer" – 2:07
    • Tom Waits – organ, vocal, Chamberlin
    • Greg Cohen – bass
20. "Carnival" (instrumental) – 1:15
    • Tom Waits – Chamberlin, Emax
    • Greg Cohen – bass

Hans-Jörn Brandenburg, Volker Hemken, Henning Stoll, Christoph Moinian, Dieter Fischer, Jo Bauer, Frank Wulff, and Stefan Schäfer were The Devil's Rhubato Band (Hamburg); Ralph Carney, Bill Douglas, Kenny Wollesen, Matt Brubeck, Joe Gore, Nick Phelps, Kevin Porter, Lawrence "Larry" Rhodes, Francis Thumm, Don Neely, Linda Deluca were The Rhubato West Group (San Francisco).

Songs performed in the play, but not included on the album: "Chase the Clouds Away" and "In the Morning".

Side one

1. "Black Rider (Opening)"
2. "November"
3. "The Right Bullets"
4. "The Briar and the Rose"
5. "George Schmid"
6. "Chase the Clouds Away"
7. "Flash Pan Hunter"

Side two

1. "Instrumental"
2. "? by W. S. Burroughs"
3. "In the Morning"
4. "Gospel Train"
5. "I'll Shoot the Moon"
6. "Instrumental"
7. "The Last Rose of Summer"

Trivia

Waits's wife Kathleen Brennan

Kathleen 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...

 contributed one of her paintings for the sleeve insert.

Frank Black and the Catholics covered The Black Rider on their 2002 album, Black Letter Days

Black Letter Days

Black Letter Days is the first of two albums by Frank Black and the Catholics simultaneously released in 2002...

.