Misfit King

Tom Waits

Lisa Renee

Dec 7, 2017·6 min read

“I wanna pull on your coat about something here tonight.”

I was 15 years old — a moody, swooning teen shut up in a fern-papered bedroom, spinning tunes and parsing Kerouac— when I discovered Tom Waits. I was weaned on jazz and blues by my sweet poet daddy. The culture gave me dreamy Jackson Browne, mischievous Tull, psychedelic Floyd, and a funk backbeat. Throw…