My beloved and I spent eight hours in a car yesterday heading up to Atlanta. Now we’re sleepy and pretty delirious. But that’s okay; in less than 12 hours, we’ll be seeing Tom Waits perform.

My heart is certainly aflutter.

Most of us over here at retrolowfi.com respect the hell out of this man, and no one can really complain that he came in at No. 4 on Paste’s list of best living songwriters. The fact that he announced a few weeks ago that he’d be doing only eight shows around the country as part of his Orphans tour got this writer squealing, hence the willingness for delirium.

Point is, in a few short hours, we’ll be seeing this man who hardly EVER performs, and who the hell knows what he’ll be playing. It’s very possible that he could extend the Real Gone tour and just play songs from the last album. Cool. It’s also possible that, given that he’s releasing a box set of rarities in the near future, he could play songs that no one knows. Even if that were the case, personally, I can’t complain too much.

Until then, we’ll be checking out bitchin’ Atlanta record stores and eating at diners (where we secretly hope Mr. Waits will join us for pie and tell us the glories of artificial turf).

Enjoy: