Feb 26, 2020
Alice Fraser of The Bugle and The Last Post joins Martin and Sam to take a look at Waits's geocached conquest spreadsheet and the blue consequences thereof. The sexual politics of "having" and "virginity" gets serious consideration, as well as more discussion of the survivability of material outside the live...
Feb 19, 2020
Is this a tender song, a wry observation about the music industry, or a badly-placed bit of bawdy humour? Helen & Amy rejoin Martin & Sam to listen to a Tom Waits track that may have killed at the Troubadour, but does not seem to land on the album. And then it all kicks off over poor, poor Billy Joel. He never asked for...
Feb 12, 2020
A second week with Amy and Helen sees everyone feeling that the work is slighter and possibly understanding why this track didn't make the jump onto a studio recording. Our guests discuss with Martin and Sam ideas of cliche and originality, the process of developing as a songwriter as well as some of the...
Feb 5, 2020
Helen Zaltzman returns, along with new guest host Amy Smith, to join Sam & Martin for season 16 of Song by Song. We take a trip back to Waits's earliest writing from 1971 in this album of demos and unreleased tracks, discussing the temporal and osteopathic implications of a slow night with Tom, the tone he's aiming for...