"Bone Chain"
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I’ve been scouring my brain thinking of anything to say about “Bone Chain.” We’re 38 songs in now, and it’s the first time this has happened.
You’ll likely guess the reason when you listen to it. This newsletter’s called Every Tom Waits Song, but “Bone Chain” isn’t really a song. And I can’t really figure out what it is.
Orphans’ liner notes are frustratingly sparse. They don’t list the musicians on any particular track, or where they come from. Is this short instrumental an outtake from 2004’s Real Gone? Kind of has that aggressive rhythmic sound. Does it date back as far as 1992’s Bone Machine? The titles “Bone Chain” and Bone Machine are extremely similar. Or was it one of the tracks recorded specifically for Orphans?
It sounds like something not meant to stand on its own. I could envision it either as an unused piece composed for some soundtrack, meant to accompany visuals or even play under dialogue, or as a backing track Tom built to undergird a song he never finished. It’s primarily beatboxing, a wide array of clattering of percussion, and harmonica. I saw speculation that this latter was courtesy legendary blues harp player Charlie Musselwhite, a regular Waits collaborator who is credited as playing somewhere on the third disc of Orphans (like I said, the liner notes leave a lot to be desired), which feels plausible.
In my Googling around to find something — anything — about “Bone Chain,” I came across some obsessive who reviewed every single track on the Orphans compilation when it came out. Here’s all it says about this one:
“I can’t figure out much to say about Bone Chain. It’s pretty non-descript, and I have no idea why its sixty-three seconds were included on the album.”
That reviewer was, I was surprised to discover, me! Apparently in 2006, right when I was getting into Waits in my early days of college, I dove deep into my first “new” Waits album.
No recollection of this, but lots of notes I might refer back to for other Orphans tracks later. But I was no help to my future self on this one. There wasn’t much to say about “Bone Chain” then and, 16 years later, there still isn’t.
It sure sounds like Charlie Musselwhite. Adding him to the roster was one of Tom's masterstrokes. His playing draws out the Chicago blues elements in Waits' sound without creating a pastiche or something imitative. Charlie is a master of blues harmonica and a perfect Waits collaborator. There's one thing to talk about here - Charlie's tone! Magnificent. I could listen to this all day!