^^ Daniel Durchholz
DOWNTOWN TRAIN With a voice described by music 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,” Tom Waits is more often known for his own songs sung by others. He was born in California so I suppose Springsteen’s more famous rendition of Waits’ “Jersey Girl” can be tolerated, and though Rod Stewart’s popular version of “Downtown Train” does sound clearer, it lacks the passion and grit its composer brings to it. Waits once said New York is a “big ship with the water on fire,” and his song “Downtown Train” is a love song as much to Downtown as to the girl he sings to: “Outside another yellow
moon/ Punched a hole in the nighttime, yes/ I climb through the window and down the street/ Shining like a new dime.” Appearing on his 1985 album Rain Dogs, his voice with all the grovel and allure of the Lower East Side, the song is filled with passion and yearning: “Will I see you tonight/ On a downtown train/ All of my dreams just fall like rain/ All upon a downtown train.” Hard to place in a category, part rock and roll, part blues, Waits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria just last year. “They say I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with,” he said during his acceptance speech, then added, “like it’s a bad thing.”
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