Kathleen Brennan

Last updated

Kathleen Brennan
Born
Kathleen Patricia Brennan

1955 (age 68–69)
Cork, Ireland
NationalityAmerican
Notable work Franks Wild Years
The Black Rider
Woyzeck
Alice
Blood Money
Spouse
​
(m. 1980)​
Children3

Kathleen Patricia Brennan (born 1955) is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and artist. She is known for her work as a co-writer, producer, and influence on the work of her husband Tom Waits.

Contents

Biography

Brennan was born in Cork, Ireland and grew up in Johnsburg, Illinois in the US, after her family moved there when she was young. [1] Brennan and Waits first met in 1978 when Waits made his acting debut in Paradise Alley while Brennan was a scriptwriter, [2] and then again during production of the Francis Ford Coppola film One from the Heart . [3] At the time, Brennan worked at the American Zoetrope studio as a script analyst, while Waits composed the score for One from the Heart. [4] According to Waits, they met on New Year's Eve. [5]

Waits dedicated his 1980 song "Jersey Girl" to Brennan, [6] and they were married later that year [2] in the Always Forever Wedding Chapel. [7] After they married, Brennan encouraged Waits to become his own producer. [8]

Brennan is generally regarded as the catalyst for Waits' shift towards more experimental sound [9] [10] beginning with the 1983 album Swordfishtrombones , [2] [11] [12] which Waits produced on a dare from Brennan. [7] Her first co-writing credit appears on Rain Dogs in 1985 for "Hang Down Your Head", and by 1992 she was his main producer and constant song-writing partner; her record collection introduced him to the music of Captain Beefheart. [13] Her work includes co-writing and collaboration on the albums Franks Wild Years (1987), [14] [15] Alice (2002), and Blood Money (2002), as well as the musicals The Black Rider (1989) and Woyzeck (2000). [16] [17]

Waits has described Brennan as "a remarkable collaborator.... She's bold, inventive and fearless. That's who you wanna go in the woods with, right? Somebody who finishes your sentences for you." [18] Waits has also said: "She doesn't like the limelight, but she's an incandescent presence on all songs we work on together." [19] In 2008, Waits described their collaboration as "one person holds the nail and the other one swings the hammer". [20] In 2020, Brennan described Waits' songs as either "grim reapers" or "grand weepers". [21]

In 2023, Waits and Brennan oversaw reissues of remastered versions of Swordfishtrombones, RainDogs, Frank'sWildYears, BoneMachine, and The Black Rider. [22] The remasters used original master tapes [23] and were marketed as "The Island Years", because they were originally released on Island Records. [24]

Honors and awards

In 2015, Brennan and Waits were honored as part of the This Is Dedicated: Music's Greatest Marriages show by Jarrod Spector and Kelli Barrett. [25]

In 2016, Brennan was honored, along with Waits and John Prine, at The Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Awards from PEN New England. [26] [27] The event was hosted by the JFK Library; during the event Colum McCann honored the creative partnership of Brennan and Waits, stating, "The world as we have it is their lucky anthem. They fling it open with their lives and a few strings and a voice that was somehow scratched by heaven.". [28]

Personal life

Brennan and Waits live in northern California with their three children. [29]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Waits</span> American singer-songwriter and actor (born 1949)

Thomas Alan Waits is an American musician, composer, songwriter, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He began in the folk scene during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected the influence of such diverse genres as rock, country, Delta blues, opera, vaudeville, cabaret, funk, hip hop and experimental techniques verging on industrial music. Per The Wall Street Journal, Waits “has composed a body of work that’s at least comparable to any songwriter’s in pop today. A keen, sensitive and sympathetic chronicler of the adrift and downtrodden, Mr. Waits creates three-dimensional characters who, even in their confusion and despair, are capable of insight and startling points of view. Their stories are accompanied by music that’s unlike any other in pop history.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Captain Beefheart</span> American musician (1941–2010)

Don Van Vliet was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. Conducting a rotating ensemble known as the Magic Band, he recorded 13 studio albums between 1967 and 1982. His music blended elements of blues, free jazz, rock, and avant-garde composition with idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist wordplay, a loud, gravelly voice, and his claimed wide vocal range. Known for his enigmatic persona, Beefheart frequently constructed myths about his life and was known to exercise an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians. Although he achieved little commercial success, he sustained a cult following as an influence on an array of experimental rock and punk-era artists.

<i>Rain Dogs</i> 1985 studio album by Tom Waits

Rain Dogs is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1985 on Island Records. A loose concept album about "the urban dispossessed" of New York City, Rain Dogs is generally considered the middle album of a trilogy that includes Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years.

<i>Swordfishtrombones</i> 1983 studio album by Tom Waits

Swordfishtrombones is the eighth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released in 1983 on Island Records. It was the first album that Waits produced himself. Stylistically different from his previous albums, Swordfishtrombones moves away from conventional piano-based songwriting towards unusual instrumentation and a somewhat more abstract and experimental rock approach. It is often considered the first in a loose trilogy that includes Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years. Per The Guardian, "These are records of startling originality and playfulness, of cacophonous discord and sudden heartbreaking melody, in which it seemed the artist was trying to incorporate the whole history of American song into his loose-limbed poetic storytelling."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Prine</span> American singer-songwriter (1946–2020)

John Edward Prine was an American singer-songwriter of country-folk music. Widely cited as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation, Prine was known for his signature blend of humorous lyrics about love, life, and current events, as well as serious songs about melancholy tales from his life. His songs would often have elements of social commentary and satire. He was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death.

<i>Alice</i> (Tom Waits album) 14th studio album

Alice is the fourteenth studio album by Tom Waits, released in 2002 on Epitaph Records. It consists of songs written by Waits and Kathleen Brennan for the opera Alice ten years earlier. The opera was a collaboration with Robert Wilson, with whom Waits had previously worked on The Black Rider. Waits and Wilson collaborated again on Woyzeck; the songs from it were recorded and released on Blood Money at the same time as Alice.

<i>One from the Heart</i> (album) 1982 soundtrack album by Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle

One from the Heart is a soundtrack album of Tom Waits compositions for the Francis Ford Coppola film of the same name. It was recorded from October 1980 to September 1981. It was during this period that Waits met his wife Kathleen Brennan, an employee at the studio where it was recorded. While the film was released in February, the soundtrack album release was delayed until October of 1982 due to a dispute between Columbia Records and Coppola's Zoetrope Studios.

<i>Small Change</i> (Tom Waits album) 1976 studio album by Tom Waits

Small Change is the fourth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released on September 21, 1976 on Asylum Records. It was recorded in July at Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood. It was successful commercially and outsold his previous albums. This resulted in Waits putting together a touring band - The Nocturnal Emissions, which consisted of Frank Vicari on tenor saxophone, FitzGerald Jenkins on bass guitar and Chip White on drums and vibraphone. The Nocturnal Emissions toured Europe and the United States extensively from October 1976 till May 1977.

<i>Blood Money</i> (Tom Waits album) 2002 studio album by Tom Waits

Blood Money is the fifteenth studio album by Tom Waits, released in 2002 on the ANTI- label. It consists of songs Waits and Kathleen Brennan wrote for Robert Wilson's opera Woyzeck. Waits had worked with Wilson on two previous plays: The Black Rider and Alice. Alice was released with Blood Money simultaneously in 2002.

<i>The Black Rider</i> (album) 1993 studio album by Tom Waits

The Black Rider is the twelfth studio album by Tom Waits, released in 1993 on Island Records, featuring studio versions of songs Waits wrote for the play The Black Rider, directed by Robert Wilson and co-written by William S. Burroughs. The play is based on the German folktale Der Freischütz by Johann August Apel, which had previously been made into an opera by Carl Maria von Weber. It is about a clerk who makes a Faustian bargain for magic bullets, with tragic results. The play premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany. Its world English-language premiere occurred in 1998 at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival. Per the Los Angeles Times, "It’s most easily described as a Faustian musical-tragicomedy."

<i>Bone Machine</i> 1992 studio album by Tom Waits

Bone Machine is the eleventh studio album by American singer and musician Tom Waits, released by Island Records on September 8, 1992. It won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and features guest appearances by David Hidalgo, Les Claypool, Brain, and Keith Richards. The album marked Waits' return to studio albums, coming five years after Franks Wild Years (1987).

<i>Franks Wild Years</i> 1987 studio album by Tom Waits

Franks Wild Years is the tenth studio album by Tom Waits, released 1987 on Island Records. It is the third in a loose trilogy that began with Swordfishtrombones. Subtitled "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts", the album contains songs written by Waits and collaborators for a play of the same name. The play had its world premiere at the Briar St. Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, on June 22, 1986, performed by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. "If I Have to Go" was used in the play, but released only in 2006 on Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. The theme from "If I Have to Go" was used under the title "Rat's Theme" in the documentary Streetwise as early as 1984. The title is derived from "Frank's Wild Years", a track from Swordfishtrombones

<i>Real Gone</i> (album) 2004 studio album by Tom Waits

Real Gone is the sixteenth studio album by Tom Waits, released October 4, 2004 in Europe, and October 5 in United States on the ANTI- label. The album was supported by the Real Gone Tour, playing sold out locations in North America and Europe in October and November 2004.

"Jersey Girl" is a song composed and originally sung by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits from his 1980 album Heartattack and Vine.

<i>Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards</i> 2006 box set by Tom Waits

Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards is a limited edition three CD set by Tom Waits, released by the ANTI- label on November 17, 2006 in Europe and on November 21, 2006 in the United States.

<i>Friends of Mine</i> (Ramblin Jack Elliott album) 1998 studio album by Ramblin Jack Elliott

Friends of Mine is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1998.

<i>Bad as Me</i> 2011 studio album by Tom Waits

Bad as Me is the seventeenth and most recent studio album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released on October 21, 2011 by Anti- Records. The album is known to have been recorded as early as February 2011 and was officially announced for release on August 23, 2011 on Waits' official web site and various social media networks. On the same day, the title track, "Bad as Me", was released as the album's first single on iTunes.

Rip Rense is an American music and film journalist, author, poet, and music producer, based in Los Angeles, California. He has written for numerous Los Angeles publications since the 1970s, including LA Weekly, the Valley News, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and the Los Angeles Times. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, and the magazines Billboard, TV Guide, People and Los Angeles, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael A. Russ</span> American photographer (1945–2021)

Michael Andreas Russ was an American photographer, photo designer and film director. In reference to his artistic cooperation Swordfishtrombones album cover production, singer Tom Waits commented on Russ' work: “His approach to photography is with the eyes of a painter working with light. This technique is what drew me to Michael’s work in the beginning”.

Woyzeck is a 2000 musical with music and lyrics by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and book by Robert Wilson, based on the unfinished play Woyzeck by German playwright Georg Büchner. It is Waits, Brennan and Wilson's third collaboration, after the 1990 musical The Black Rider and the 1992 musical Alice. Waits recorded many of the songs from Woyzeck for his 2002 album Blood Money, which was released alongside Alice, his recording of songs from the musical Alice.

References

  1. ↑ Patrick Humphries (December 17, 2009). The Many Lives of Tom Waits. Omnibus Press. p. 199. ISBN   9780857121257.
  2. 1 2 3 O'Hagan, Interview by Sean (October 28, 2006). "Off beat". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved August 11, 2017.
  3. ↑ Maher, Paul (November 1, 2011). Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters. Aurum. ISBN   978-1-84513-827-1.
  4. ↑ Montandon, Mac, ed. (2007). Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits, The Collected Interviews. Orion. p. 257. ISBN   978-0752881263 . Retrieved December 4, 2022. Waits and Brennan met in 1980. He was in a small office at Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope studios, working on the score for One from the Heart. She was a script editor at Zoetrope. He was listening to Captain Beefheart, Howlin' Wolf, and Ethiopian music. She encouraged him to take more risks in his writing—to, Waits says, "distort the world." After they were married, Waits made Swordfishtrombones.
  5. ↑ Montandon, Mac, ed. (2007). Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits, The Collected Interviews. Orion. p. 341. ISBN   978-0752881263. He insists that she's the truly creative force in the relationship, the feral influence who challenges his "pragmatic" limitations and stirs intrigue into all their music. ("She has dreams like Hieronymus Bosch . . . She'll start talking in tongues and I'll take it all down.") He says, "she speaks to my subtext, not my context." He claims she has expanded his vision so enormously as an artist that he can hardly bear to listen to any of the music he wrote before they met.
  6. ↑ Margotin, Philippe; Guesdon, Jean-Michel (October 6, 2020). Bruce Springsteen: All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track. Octopus. ISBN   978-1-78472-725-3.
  7. 1 2 Montandon, Mac, ed. (2007). Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits, The Collected Interviews. Orion. ISBN   978-0752881263.
  8. ↑ "MUSIC; A Poet of Outcasts Who's Come Inside: Music". The New York Times. May 5, 2002 – via ProQuest.
  9. ↑ Taylor, Tom (February 14, 2022). "How Tom Waits' wife revolutionised his musical style". Far Out . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  10. ↑ Waldburger, Marc (July 28, 2008). "The Quietus Looks Back At Tom Waits' illustrious career". The Quietus . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  11. ↑ Robert Christgau (July 9, 2002). "Robert Christgau: Effective but Defective: Tom Waits". robertchristgau.com. Retrieved March 28, 2013.
  12. ↑ Armstrong, Kurt (January 1, 2011). Why Love Will Always Be a Poor Investment: Marriage and Consumer Culture. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN   978-1-62189-233-5.
  13. ↑ Sylvie Simmons (September 2004). "The Mojo Interview: Tom Waits Speaks". Mojo Magazine.
  14. ↑ "Frank's Wild Years - Chicago Creative Team". BroadwayWorld . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  15. ↑ Hochman, Steve (October 8, 1987). "Frank's Wild Years". Rolling Stone . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  16. ↑ Major, Michael (October 4, 2022). "Tom Waits Releases 'Alice' & 'Blood Money' Re-Issues This Friday". BroadwayWorld . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  17. ↑ Yates, Maggie (April 24, 2015). "Review: WOYZECK Burns with Tragic Inevitability". BroadwayWorld . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  18. ↑ Tom Waits Library – Biography – Quotes Archived August 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  19. ↑ Rip Rense (January 1999). "A Q&A About Mule Variations". www.msopr.com. Mitch Schneider Organisation.
  20. ↑ Brackett, Donald (September 30, 2008). Dark Mirror: The Pathology of the Singer-Songwriter: The Pathology of the Singer-Songwriter. ABC-CLIO. p. 79. ISBN   978-0-275-99899-8.
  21. ↑ Waterman, Cole (November 17, 2020). "Between the Grooves: Tom Waits - 'Bone Machine'". PopMatters; Evanston– via ProQuest.
  22. ↑ "Tom Waits Reissuing His Studio Albums From 1983 to 1993". Pitchfork. July 12, 2023. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
  23. ↑ "Tom Waits reissues "The Island Years," five remastered albums". WXPN | Vinyl At Heart. July 14, 2023. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
  24. ↑ "The Island Years: Remastered for release on vinyl, CD, and digital". Tom Waits. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
  25. ↑ Cohen, Alix (October 22, 2015). "Review: Married Broadway Stars Jarrod Spector & Kelli Barrett Rock the Roof Off Feinstein's/54 Below with Celebration of MUSIC's GREATEST MARRIAGES". BroadwayWorld . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  26. ↑ "Tom Waits, Wife Kathleen Brennan and John Prine to Be Honored With Songwriting Award". Billboard . Associated Press. September 19, 2016. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  27. ↑ Marcelo, Philip (September 20, 2016). "Tom Waits, John Prine, Kathleen Brennan Receive Songwriting Awards". KQED . Associated Press . Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  28. ↑ Shanahan, Mark (September 19, 2016). "John Prine, Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan honored for songwriting at star-studded event at JFK library - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved November 28, 2022.
  29. ↑ "Tom Waits". nndb.com. 2012. Retrieved March 28, 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.