STORYTELLER:

TOM WAITS

From the wonderful blog 'Midnight Cafe' comes a re-post of a Tom Waits live set in LA from my favourite period of Tom's at the time of 'Big in Japan' which I was introduced to driving across the Golden Gate Bridge on my way to work in San Francisco (aw come one how cool is THAT?) with my then boss, Katie Burke, over at Pomegranate Inc. It remains a favourite album for that very reason, a memorable experience and rarely have I been so totally blown away by a new album release from someone I thought I knew everything by. I enjoyed working for Pomegranate in that I got to hurtle around the planet at 35,000 feet in a metal tube with wings on and land in places like San Francisco (which I adored) and New York, Scotland and Europe (mostly Germany for the Book Fair in Frankfurt) and Pomegranate staff were all such fun and they made such nice things and I hoped them for a while

Certain tracks stood out for me 'Hold On', 'What's He Building In There', 'The House Where Nobody Lives', 'Get Behind The Mule' . . . aww heck pretty much all of them! If you do one thing today download this!

VH1 Storyteller -Tom Waits 1999 (here)

Tom Waits – Lead Vocal, Guitar, Piano, tambourine 
Smokey Hormel – Guitar, Banjo, everything else not mentioned
Larry Taylor – Bass

As Matt Brewster adds in comments section very usefully 

My understanding is that VH1 asked Tom Waits to do a Storytellers for their channel, set him up and filmed it but for whatever reason never actually aired the footage. Eventually the audio leaked out and has been traded in bootleg circles ever since. It is essential listening as Tom Waits sure knows how to tell a story (and write a song.)