The Ballad of the Tom Waits Ticket – Part 2

Continued from Part 1…

That night, as one could probably imagine, after the harrowing feat of trying for a month and a half to get the perfect ticket to see Tom Waits and narrowly succeeding only a few hours before needing to get on the plane for Ohio, I could not sleep. Excitement had overtaken me, or quite possibly total madness. I didn’t even care if the show was going to be any good at this point; it was simply now about actually going there, doing this beyond insane activity, and so on.

I think I slept about 2 hours. I’m normally a very late riser but I needed to catch a rather early flight which meant awakening at around 5am.

I got ready, threw some clothes in a small suitcase, and headed off towards the airport. I had no idea what kind of mess awaited me there due to the recent change in flight regulations. Surprisingly, once I stepped into the check-in area, I was a little shocked to see what I’d consider business as usual and no bizarre lines forming at the security counter at all.

I picked up an egg and cheese breakfast sandwich and sipped on something from Caribou Coffee as I waited for my flight to arrive. The wait passed quickly, nothing unusual happened, and soon I was off to the Cleveland, OH, airport.

I must explain at this point that I had been to Cleveland just a month or so prior for work purposes. Since I didn’t know the area that well I decided to book the same hotel that I had previously stayed at in North Olmsted, a decent hotel that unfortunately had some sort of contract with the Sleep Number Bed system and had them in select rooms (repeat after me…never buy a Sleep Number Bed…never…). The strangest part was that I needed to return to Cleveland the very next week for work once again, and, as you guessed, I would be staying at the same hotel. A feeling of déjà vu was bound to erupt sooner or later.

When I had come out for work in June I was in a mild debate with the management since they for some odd reason insisted that I take a taxi around the area and would not allow me to rent a car. Having traveled many times before with a different company, this made close to no sense at all to me, and not being the taxi type it made my downright uncomfortable. The only reason for this I could get was “rental cars cost too much money”. On this trip out and it having nothing to do with work, I of course needed to rent a car since I’d be driving from North Olmsted down to Akron and then back to Cleveland. I was shocked to see that the rental car rate was exactly $13 per day. It was then I realized just how cheap my company was, or was it simply a power thing? Who knows... Either way, I no longer work for them so it doesn’t really matter anymore but I know they’re not doing the greatest financially and I’m sure it’s due to all those rental cars in the past.

I checked into the hotel and was horrified to find that I was given one of the rooms with a Sleep Number Bed. I admit I was skeptical, especially since I’ve had a top of the line Sealy for the past decade and literally swear by it, but I promised myself that I’d remain open minded. After pushing the buttons, trying different settings, etc., my mind promptly closed. The thing was completely idiotic and I wanted to change rooms but it didn’t seem worth pursuing.

I managed to sleep about an hour and then the alarm went off. I showered, got ready, ate some dinner, and headed off to the Akron Civic Theater for the evening’s festivities. Akron is only about an hour away but the speed of travel is rather slow throughout Ohio so it seemed to take longer than I was used to. The map I was using was slightly bizarre in its’ directions and I took at least 2 wrong turns, one time landing me in a rather interesting part of town. Upon correcting my path, though, I found myself in the general vicinity of the theater and due to some sort of street fair I had to park a few blocks away. My initial thought was that the street fair was in conjunction with the Tom Waits show, a sort of rejoicing in the street, if you will. Of course, only I would do something like that and I soon discovered that it was merely a coincidence.

There was a line already forming out of the theater but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I also had figured that there would be tons of people looking for tickets or begging to be your “buddy” if you had an extra one, but quite honestly there wasn’t much of a commotion at all. Maybe it was because it was Akron? I have no idea. I know that when I was in line in L.A. in 1999 it was close to total chaos, and there were people acting strange all around me in line. This line was almost exactly the opposite and if I didn’t know better I would have thought I was waiting to see Tony Bennett or someone similar.

I listened to a few conversations around me in line and was completely appalled. There were people who were asking each other things like “when did Waits’ last put out an album” or “yeah, I always kind of liked that…what’s it called…um, ‘Frank’s Wilder Days’ album or something like that”. These people got tickets? A lot of them didn’t seem worthy. They didn’t even know the name of his last album for cryin’ out loud! It was like I was surrounded by my nightmare anti-fan crowd, and considering how tough it was to get a ticket it simply didn’t seem right. I even heard someone’s date ask, “Who are we here to see? Who is this guy? What kind of music does he play?” I just about had a coronary. I decided to do the only safe thing - tune everyone out.

The big question in my mind, of course, was my two ticket purchase mishap. I had never received a confirmation from the second ticket (the good seat) so I was slightly paranoid. I was completely ready to start a fight if for some reason they tried to stick me with row X after all this. To my relief, though, everything worked just fine.

I entered the lobby and nearly fainted. The Akron Civic Theater lobby is simply to die for and it’ll take your breath away. No words can describe it except maybe Fantasyland in Disneyland meets Phoenix’s Orpheum Theater. Wow.

And now to finally see the seat that I was given… I walked into the theater, a gorgeous palace, of course, and could barely believe I was there after all that effort. I made my way down the aisle to the very very front. I found that my seat really wasn’t in row 4 – it was row 2, and there was my folding chair. Sure, I was sitting off to the side but I was literally about 4 feet from the stage with Wait’s being only about 8 feet away. Ah, payoff.

The gentleman next to me started up a conversation that would continue right up until Waits’ took the stage. He was a very interesting man, probably in his early 50’s, and was there with his son who was around 22. He told me how he had seen Waits’ in ’78, and then in ’83, and then again in ’85. You can probably imagine how green with envy I was. We discussed all sorts of different shows we had seen, places we had traveled to, etc. He was a true fanatic, not unlike myself, and I was grateful to not be sitting next to one of those “who are we seeing again” people.

We then got into a conversation about films, mainly films that Waits’ had starred in or composed music for. This led to talking about Jim Jarmusch, the director who had most recently done “Broken Flowers”, and as if on cue the guy next to me looks over my shoulder and says, “Speaking of which, there’s Jim Jarmusch now!” I turned my head around and sure enough, standing directly in front of me and talking to the usher was Jim Jarmusch and wife/girlfriend/friend. They kept looking sort of in my direction, as if they were expecting their seats to be right where I was sitting. Could it be that there was some sort of mistake and I ended up getting one of their seats? After discussing it a few times, the usher led them towards the middle area of the theater, not far away from row X where I would have originally sat. I got a better seat than Jim Jarmusch – go figure!

The show started about 35 minutes late. Ironically it was only about half as good as the performance that I had seen back in ’99 but for some reason that didn’t even really matter to me anymore. I was simply happy to be there. If you’re curious about the setlist there’s a different blog dedicated to that where you can get all the details. He played songs from various albums, of course, and the one’s I was most pleased to hear were “Postcard from a Hooker in Minneapolis”, “Tom Traubert’s Blues”, and “God’s Away on Business” which was without a doubt the best song he played that night. He simply looked so insane while singing it…it was priceless. Overall, the feel and style of this set and backup band was completely different from the ’99 tour, this one taking on a more bluesy lounge singer sort of appeal rather that the bizarre insane “Get Behind the Mule” Tour which seemed to showcase the more strange side of Waits’ and his music.

I had read on blogs that Waits’ had been forgetting his lyrics throughout the tour. In the middle of the song “Dead and Lovely”, he repeated a line that reads “…were never broken.” Somehow he said that line three times throughout the song by mistake, and instead of being embarrassed Waits’ laughed gruffly and adlibbed: “(heh) 3 times broken…now that’s really broken.” Of course, random people yelled out things like “I love you, Tom” and he would simply respond with a noise that was not unlike something a pig with a bellyache would make followed by a sarcastic “I love you too, man”.

In the middle of the performance, there was some sort of mild ruckus coming from around the area where I was supposed to sit. I later found out the next day that a fight had broken out in Row Z, directly behind the seat that I held in Row X. Make of that what you will.

At about 10pm I started getting edgy, knowing that I had an hour plus ride up to Cleveland. How was Tom precisely going to do this: literally run out of this show and head straight up there? It seemed absurd and yet that was evidently the plan. The Akron show ended at around 10:15pm and on my way out of the auditorium I heard almost everyone comment that they were going to the House of Blues show as well. This was going to be quite a trick.

I ran out to my car and got onto the freeway as quickly as I could but it took awhile since I was parked so far away. By then, the freeways were rather full and whereas there wasn’t exactly a traffic jam we still were moving slowly. I felt like I was with a caravan slowly making our way up the freeway to Cleveland on a quest for more Tom Waits.

I had joked with some friends a few weeks prior how it would be amusing to be following the tour bus up the freeway to the House of Blues. As I approached downtown Cleveland and again didn’t know where I was going, I noticed that I was now traveling only a couple cars behind the tour bus indeed! I decided to follow the tour bus since they should know where they’re going, right? We exited the freeway and I was lost but I just kept following the bus. Then, it turned in a direction that seemed to go against my map and so I chickened out and went in the direction that I thought I should be heading. Perhaps it wasn’t Waits’ tour bus, you know? I could just imagine me following some high school band’s bus into Pennsylvania, convinced that I was following Tom Waits’. I made a couple turns and voila, there was the bus again. It evidently was his bus; it was just that there was more than one way to get there. I again followed the bus and it lead me directly to the House of Blues where I immediately let out a “oh my freakin’ hell…” kind of statement when I saw the line wrapped around the building.

I parked in the first lot I could find. I quickly ran over and started following the line, trying to find the end of it. Every time I thought I was getting closer to finding the end I was let down to see that it turned in a different direction and simply continued on. The line in total wrapped around half of the entire block of buildings in the shape of an ‘E’ missing the middle line. It didn’t look like all the people in line could possibly even fit in the House of Blues! Worse yet, they were still coming long after I got in line. It was now 11:15pm and the show was supposed to start at midnight. It didn’t seem possible that we’d all get in by then.

Well, I called it right…at midnight we had barely moved. I was standing next to these 2 guys who were probably barely drinking age. The one guy was okay but the other was either a) completely drunk, b) high, c) had been sniffing something that wasn’t meant to be sniffed, d) all of the above, or e) was just an all around strange kid. Every time he spoke it was like listening to a record being slowed down and then sped up again in mid-sentence. I normally just smiled and nodded, not having understood a single word he said.

The line inched at a snail’s pace. I finally got inside the building at about 1:05am. The place was already mobbed and everyone was squeezing there way in. The show began at 1:15am and the place went nuts. It was hard to see but I had a semi-decent view for most of it. Believe it or not he played almost a completely different set except for only one song…amazing. The highlight of the set was “November” off of “The Black Rider”, and at the part where the drums come in and Waits’ sings, “…with my hair slicked back, with carrion shellac, and the blood from a pheasant and the bone from a hare…” he then paused, grunted, and said, “(grunt)…that was good, let’s do that again.” And so they did: “With my hair slicked back, with carrion shellac...”

The only song that bombed all evening was “The Circus”, the other spoken weird tune ala “What’s He Building in There?” It was the first time that I heard the crowd talking over the band. Otherwise, it was a good set with a completely different feel since it was in a small club and they ended up doing a couple cover tunes as well. Like before, some woman yelled out, “I love you, Tom,” and he simply responded with “Eeeeaaaaahhh” while wearing a sarcastic grin.

Shockingly, as gruff as he sings, Waits’ voice held up all night and showed no real signs of dying out, even after 4+ hours of singing. The show ended at 3:20am, a definite record for being the latest running performance that I had ever seen. As much as neither performance would make the list as some of the greatest performances that I’d ever seen nor would they come even close to comparing to his show back in ’99, it was definitely a most bizarre and yet interesting experience. Dare I say it was worth the trip.

Keep in mind that I had barely slept the night before and I had been up since 5am. Needless to say, the drive back to the hotel was interesting. I climbed into the Sleep Number Bed at 4am exactly and passed out until my alarm went off at 9am. I had the great foresight to book a 10:30am flight...hurray for me.

I dropped off my rental car and waited in the airport for my flight. It was nearly deserted, as in no one in sight. I ate another icky breakfast sandwich and sipped coffee that this time tasted like it had literally been excreted from a Caribou rather than from the popular chain.

Upon getting home, I collapsed from exhaustion, with a slight smile on my face. Against the odds and even against the pocketbook, I had achieved what I had set out to do…and I learned a lot of new words from the Ticketmaster site in the process.

I shudder to think what will happen the next time Tom Waits’ decides to perform live…