Tom Waits has shared a previously unreleased version of “Get Behind the Mule.” The song, which originally appeared on his Grammy-winning 1999 studio album Mule Variations, is coming out to ring in the LP’s 25th anniversary. Give “Get Behind the Mule (Spiritual)” a listen below.
“Definitely part of the original idea was to do something somewhere between surreal and rural,” Waits said in a statement. “We call it surrural. That’s what these songs are: surrural. There’s an element of something old about them, and yet it’s kind of disorienting…”
The drought of new music from Waits continues onwards, as is now tradition for the eccentric musician. The same year that he released his most recent album, 2011’s Bad as Me, Waits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Since then, however, Waits has continued his lifelong acting career in feature films such as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths.
Last year, Waits made a rare public appearance to present Nicolas Cage with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the SFFilm Awards to honor his Rumble Fish co-star. He also penned a similarly uncommon public statement just a week before, honoring the late Pogues frontman Shane Macgowan. Waits’ next project is a starring role in Jim Jarmusch’s upcoming movie Father Mother Sister Brother.
Revisit “A Deep Dive Into Tom Waits’ Best Rare and Unreleased Material.”
