Crossroads, The Black Rider, Tom Waits [217]

Another Waits-does-Burroughs track this week, as we’re joined by stage manager and Black Rider alumnus Penny Foxley for some discussion of her first-hand experience working on the play. We talk through Robert Wilson’s micromanagement of actors’ gestures, the fun of doing the show compared to its bleak content, and the presence of the crossroads myth in the 1930s blues of Robert Johnson. website: songbysongpodcast.com twitter: @songbysongpod e-mail: [email protected] Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include: Crossroads, The Black Rider, Tom Waits (1993) Cross Road Blues, King of the Delta Blues Singers, Robert Johnson (1937) We think your Song by Song experience will be enhanced by hearing, in full, the songs featured in the show, which you can get hold of from your favourite record shop or online platform. Please support artists by buying their music, or using services which guarantee artists a revenue - listen responsibly. Lyrics - Crossroads Now, George was a good straight boy to begin with, but there was bad blood in him someway he got into the magic bullets and  that leads straight to Devil's work just like marywanna leads to heroin You think you can take them bullets and leave 'em, do you? Just save a few for your bad days.  well... Well, now we all have those bad days when we can't hit for shit. The more of them magics you use,  the more bad days you have without them So it comes down to finally all your days being bad without the bullets It's magics or nothing. Time to stop chippying around and kidding yourself, kid, you're hooked, heavy as lead And that's where old George found himself. Out there at the crossroads. molding the Devil's bullets. Now a man figures it's his bullets,  so it'll hit what he wants to hit.  But it don't always work out that way You see, some bullets is special for a single aim. A certain stag, or a certain person And no matter where you aim, that's where the bullet will end up. And in the moment of aiming, the gun turns into a dowser's wand, and point where the bullet wants to go (George Schmid was moving in a series of convulsive spasms like someone in an epileptic fit with his face distorted, and his eyes wild, like a lassoed horse bracing his legs but something kept pulling him on. And now he is picking up the skulls and making the circle.) I guess old George didn't rightly know what he was getting himself into, the fit was on him and it carried him right to the crossroads.