As is the case with a select few genre-defining artists such as Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell,Tom Waits, over the course of his nearly forty-year career, has operated under the maxim “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

Refusing to stay still and rest on his laurels, Waits has continuously sought new influences, dramatically reinventing himself and his art along the way. In the process, he has forged a highly original, personal, and idiosyncratic musical lexicon, resulting in one of the most distinctive, rich, and diverse bodies of recorded work in American popular music history.