"Chase the Clouds Away"
'The Black Rider' theatrical production demo, 1990
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“Chase the Clouds Away” is a song Tom wrote for The Black Rider stage play that he did not record for his album of the same name. It’s one of four songs from the production that didn’t make the album.
This one and “In the Morning,” which we’ll get to in the I’s, we can hear Tom perform thanks to leaked demos. The other two we can’t hear Tom perform, so we won’t get to ever. But you can hear one of the casts perform them, so I’ll throw them in here. Here are the Munich Black Rider casts singing Tom’s compositions “But He’s Not Wilhelm” and “News from the Duke” (click links to see lyrics).
You can see why Tom might not have bothered recording those himself. It sounds like they’re extremely tied in to the plot of the play (not that some of the other songs aren’t). More to the point, they’re only about a minute long. I would like to hear Tom break into that Sound of Music bit in the middle of “News from the Duke” though.
“Chase the Clouds Away,” though, definitely should have made the album. Tom plays pump organ and groans about knocking on the hickory of a peg-leg man while he waits to murder his lover. He leaps into operatic falsetto to return to the briar and the rose motif, then ends on a demonic chortle. It’s eerie and theatrical and slightly unhinged. What more could you want from a Tom Waits song?