Jacksonville? Get bent.

I can deal with the fact that once in the town, you’ve got to drive for at least one hour to find food. I can make peace with most of your buildings looking as if they haven’t been occupied for ten years or more. I can even get over the idea that the place is just flat-out creepy. But when you decided to heckle Tom Waits for two hours straight… that’s where I’ve gotta draw the line.

It all started out fine. Tom opened the show with a stop/start medley of “Lucinda” and “Ain’t Goin’ Down To the Well”, all while standing on a riser covered in dust, ensuring that every time he’d do his trademark “stomp dance”, a thick layer of what looked like talcum powder would rise up in time to the music. And the audience was seemingly appreciative.

Things started going downhill when he broke out the megaphone for what started out as a rousing rendition of “Chocolate Jesus”… and had to stop the song to tell the crowd to stop trying to clap in time with the song, because they were terrible at it, and it was throwing the band off. Mr. Waits ain’t exactly the type of performer to just come out and say “you are a bad audience”, but he came close several times on this evening.

Every single time the band would hit a quiet ebb, or worse yet, stop altogether, the audience saw this as an oppourtunity to either yell out things that you pretty much knew you weren’t gonna hear (”Mr. Siegal”? “Freebird”??? Get real, folks). And all too often, these outbursts would drown out the band completely. And while it might seem as if we were the only ones annoyed with this crap, you have to keep in mind that after Waits demanded that the crowd quit all the clapping nonsense, they kept sarcastically doing it off of the beat. During like every fucking song. He actually attempted to correct them during the medley of “Rain Dogs/Russian Dance” by clapping himself… showing Jacksonville how it’s done.

But Tom did the best he could under the circumstances. A loud and obnoxious screamer threatened to totally derail Tom’s quiet reading of the classic “On The Nickel”, but he played through, only missing the first line of the verse at hand. He put on a two hour show that put most other touring acts to shame. And during those few moments that Tom had balled up his fists, looking as if he was gonna head for the door, he still kept his composure and gave the somewhat confounding audience his all.

The most telling point of the night was when Tom returned for a single encore - “House Where Nobody Lives” - and quickly left the stage before the last notes had rung out. When the house lights came on, about two-thirds of the audience booed loudly. Some might have been pissed that he didn’t do more (and honestly, previous setlists have shown that Tom left out a lot during this encore, specifically the point where he’s been turning into a human mirror ball during “Eyeball Kid”) but others just couldn’t be pleased.

Tom Waits, a living legend, came to Jacksonville, played a two hour show with a top-notch band that included two of his sons, made it rain glitter and dust, played school bells with his feet and even tossed us a few songs we couldn’t have predicted with a fortune teller. It somehow wasn’t good enough for this crowd. Their loss, and I’d better not hear any complaining when Florida is left off of his next touring itinerary.

Setlist:
Lucinda / Ain’t Goin’ Down To the Well
Down In The Hole
Falling Down
All The World Is Green
Chocolate Jesus
Cemetery Polka
Get Behind The Mule
16 Shells From A 30.6
Hang Down Your Head
Trampled Rose
Dirt In The Ground
Black Market Baby
Rain Dogs / Russian Dance
On The Nickel
I Can’t Wait To Get Off Work
Invitation To The Blues
Lost In The Harbour
Circus
Hoist That Rag
Lie To Me
Anywhere I Lay My Head
Singapore
Cold, Cold Ground
Make It Rain
House Where Nobody Lives (encore)