The Black Rider - the twelfth studio album by Tom Waits - was released in September 1993 on Island Records. The record featured studio recorded versions of songs Waits wrote for the play ‘The Black Rider’, directed by Robert Wilson and co-written with William S. Burroughs. The play is based on the German folktale Der Freischütz, which had previously been made into an opera by Carl Maria von Weber. The play premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thali Theatre in Hamburg, Germany, while Its world English-language premiere occurred in 1998 at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival. • All songs were written exclusively by Tom Waits, except on three cuts for which Bill Burroughs wrote the lyrics, and a cover version of ‘Tain’t No Sin’, a 1930s humorous dance tune composed by Walter Donaldson and Edgar Leslie. The album was recorded in 1989 by Gard Bessler at his Music Factory in Hamburg, Germany and at the Prairie Sun Recording Studios in Cotati, California. • Alongside the released album’s recordings, were studio versions with completely different arrangements of many of the final tracks, and indeed a couple of tunes that featured in the play but were not included on the finished album. And somewhat bizarrely this obscure tape was broadcast by a west coast student radio network soon after the album’s release, when the mixing engineer was interviewed about the record on the station. • While this tape has only rarely been heard by a few fans in the past, it is now available for the first time on this new CD release for all to hear.
1. Black Rider 3:15
2. November 2:41
3. The Right Bullets 3:01
4. The Briar And The Rose 3:08
5. George Schmid (Crossroads) 3:42
6. Chase The Clouds Away 4:50
7. Flash Pan Hunter 1:44
8. Instrumental 2:59
9. T’Aint No Sin 2:50
10. In The Morning 2:06
11. Gospel Train 5:22
12. I’ll Shoot The Moon 3:00
13. Instrumental 4:04
14. The Last Rose Of Summer 2:07
