When this Tom Waits song turned up during the closing credits of the latest “Knives Out” movie, Wake Up Dead Man, we heard shouts from all around the Floodisphere: “Whoa! What a great tune that would be for The Flood!”
We agree. We only wish we’d thought of it earlier. After all, “Come On Up to the House” has been around for more than a quarter of a century, appearing as the closing track on Waits’ 1999 Grammy-winning Mule Variations album.
Oh, but how our late co-founder Dave Peyton would have loved to have had a piece of this goofy/gritty gospel groove!
A Little Waitsian Exegesis
Tom Waits, one of the world’s smartest songwriters, created a tune chock full of literary and philosophical references, as well as clever cultural shout-outs.
Country music lovers, for instance — at least those with long memories — will recognize a kiss being tossed in Tom’s repeated line in the chorus: “The world is not my home, I’m just passing through.”
Don’t get it? Think all the way back to 1962 and to the great Jim Reeves crooning:
This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
But ”Come On Up to the House” has more on its agenda than simply quoting 60-year-old classics. Waits surely is the only songwriter in the house to zip from 20th century country cool to 17th century political philosophy.
What? It’s true. By the second verse, the lyrics are reaching back to source material predating Jim Reeves by a good three centuries. Philosophy students perk up when “House” takes a moment to direct our attention to Thomas Hobbes’ famously dark assessment of human life: “Nasty, brutish and short.”
A Peyton-Worthy Punch Line
The song’s funniest, sassiest lines — the ones Dave Peyton certainly would have relished — have the most obscure provenance. Who doesn’t smile when Waits’ lyrics get to this entreaty:
Come down off the cross — We can use the wood!
This bit of irreverent humor generally is attributed to the late comedian/satirist Bill Hicks, whom Waits once described as being “like a reverend waving a gun around.”
While there’s no evidence that the “cross/wood” lines are original with Hicks — some think Lenny Bruce might have fashioned them a couple of decades earlier — it is for sure that Bill popularized the comment in his stand-up routines in the 1980s and early 1990s.
And we do know that Tom Waits is a big Bill Hicks fan. In fact, a few years ago when someone asked him to compile a list of his all-time favorite albums, Tom put Hicks’ 1990s Rant in E Minor in his top 20.
Waits on Waits
Finally, “Come On Up to the House” also has a sample of Tom Waits sampling Tom Waits.
The song’s line “whipped by the forces that are inside of you” was used in another Waits’ song — “Spidey’s Wild Ride” — released on 2006’s Orphans, Brawlers, Bawlers & B******s album. (This album compiled outtakes that were recorded from 1984 to 2005, so it is possible that song was written before “Come on Up to the House.”)
For certain we know that a variation on the line came up in a 2002 newspaper article. Austin Chronicle writer Margaret Moser, interviewing Tom over the phone, asked the songwriter where he was as they spoke.
“I’m out on my own recognizance in the day room,” Waits replied, “gluing pieces of macaroni on cardboard and painting it gold. After that I get to make a belt that says, ‘Whipped by the forces within me’ on the back.”
Ah, aren’t we all, Tom? Aren’t we all…?
More Gospel from The Flood?
If all this has you craving a little gospelizing by the boys in the band, remember The Gospel Hour playlist in The Flood’s free Radio Floodango music streaming service. To read all about it, click the link below.
