Meschiya Lake and Tom McDermott featured!

If you have heard Meschiya Lake sing, you've heard one of the most talented and unique vocalists in the U.S. today. With a range that swings from jazz, to blues, to old timey and alternately performing songs from Hanks Williams, Tom Waits and the Great American Songbook, Lake's presence is unmistakable, being recognized as Female Performer of the Year three years running by New Orleans' Big Easy Awards. 

Tom McDermott is one of New Orleans' premiere piano players and composers, whose work has been embraced beyond NOLA, writing for the Obie Award winning off-Broadway show Nita & Zita, appearing on several shows on NPR, and traveled the world, playing with the Dukes of Dixieland and the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, 

For years, Meshiya and Tom have been featured on Wednesdays at the New Orleans' club Chickie Wah Wah. Their album Meschiya Lake and Tom McDermott was recorded at Chickie Wah Wah and produced by the recording legend John Porter in 2012. 

We are thrilled to feature Tom & Meschiya at the Tom Waits For No One 35th Anniversary Celebration - won't you support the campaign and join us in Los Angeles with Tom and Meschiya, live the at old La Brea Stage? 

Dig this folks, here's Tom and Meschiya doing Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin'". 

...and one of my personal favorites shows Meschiya's incredible vocal range "I'm Going to Live the Life I Sing About".

The iotaCenter recognizes Tom Waits For No One

Founded in 1994, the iotaCenter is a public benefit, non-profit arts organization dedicated to "foregrounding and contextualizing historically underrepresented experimental works".

So it's with a huge amount of gratitude and humility that we announce the iotaCenter has recognized Tom Waits For No One as an important work in animation history, and invited the film to join their remarkable collection of experimental film, video and animation.

Have a look at some of the wonderful pieces at iotaCenter.org and be sure to show your support of their work. Thank you Larry Cuba and iotaCenter!


Meeting Gunnar Strøm

After talking with Michael Patterson, and his story of meeting Gunnar Strøm in Seattle in 2008, it became clear that Gunnar Strom was the person we needed to connect with. His expertise on animated music video and his particular interest in rotoscoping was unique and was potentially important to "Tom Waits For No One". This film had been under the radar for so long, in some ways, I had just come to accept it as destiny. 

But the more my brother Jack and I talked about the film, the artists and the success they went on to achieve, the more we began to feel that if anyone could provide an authoritative analysis - Gunnar Strøm would be the person to validate the film, or put it to bed once and for all. So what do you do when you only have someone’s name and the country they live in? You search the Internet. 

We scheduled a video conference with Gunnar to get introduced and ask him about “Tom Waits For No One” - had he seen it before, and if so, how did fit within the context of his paper “The Two Golden Ages of Animated Music Video”?

By the time of our meeting, Gunnar had found “Tom Waits For No One” on YouTube, visited TomWaitsForNoOne.com and had many questions. Gunnar said he was a big Waits fan - had been since the 1970s. He was surprised he had never seen the film, and he loved it. Personally, I was thrilled, or in my native tongue, I was “stoked”! 

Jack and I told him about the research we’d done, what we thought we’d found, and we asked for his perspective. Gunnar wanted to take another look at the film, so we scheduled time to talk in a couple weeks. When the next video conference began, all I wanted to ask was “what do you think?!” For 35 years this video sat in obscurity - and I felt like this call could change all of that. Or maybe it wouldn’t, but at least I would know and would have a direction -- to celebrate, or to go on as I did after it fell from visibility in 1981. 

In short time, Gunnar Strøm said the words I had only hoped to hear - that “Tom Waits For No One” was unique - the era in which it was created, the rotoscoping method used, the animators involved and the subject of the film all meant this film was not only one the first American music videos, but was quite possibly the first rotoscoped music video ever made. 

I normally don’t talk like this, but there is no other way to say it... to me his words were breathtaking. I could hardly believe it - this film was indeed the real McCoy, and ahead of its time.

Rotoscoping and music video

With Michael Patterson rotoscoping at CalArts in 1981, Jack and I began to wonder if Patterson used the Lyon Lamb Video Rotoscope for "Commuter". 

CalArts was one of Lyon Lamb's first customers, purchasing the LL Video Animation System (VAS) for their animation program. Jack was set on finding out how Patterson had made "Commuter", and the hunt for Michael Patterson began. The age of the Internet is amazing, really – in minutes, Jack found that Patterson was teaching animation at USC, so we had a starting point.

It turns out that Patterson had never heard of Lyon Lamb's video rotoscope, but he had used the VAS at CalArts. So how did Patterson make "Commuter"? Son of a gun, he built his own rotoscope! Less than two years after the Video Rotoscope was invented, Patterson had built his own film-based rotoscope. 

Patterson approached Commuter knowing what he wanted to accomplish, so he built a drawing table that had a front surface mirror. With a single frame projector under the table, he used a controller to advance the film one frame at a time. To compensate for the reflection from the mirror, which inverted the image, he ran the film into the projector backwards. 

It was an ingenious configuration, and he, along with Candace Reckinger, would use the same rotoscope in making a-ha’s “Take On Me”. It seems remarkable that the rotoscope created for a student film would become foundation for the most famous rotoscoped music video ever made. That's ingenuity for you! 

After the interview, Patterson was kind enough to forward photos of his rotoscope in action – this during the making of “Take On Me” (notice the test drawings on the wall!). So enjoy these behind the scenes photos of making of "Take On Me"!

Tom Waits For No One Scrapbook

Like this film, the Scrapbook was completed 35 years ago. It was John Lamb's collection of just about everything related to the film, all the way back to the very beginning - the ticket stub for first time Lamb saw Tom Waits perform in person, at The Roxy in 1977.

The book was never intended to be published, it was simply one artist's method of understanding, documenting and honoring a work he loved. But the Tom Waits For No One Scrapbook is much more than just Lamb's work - the hundreds of drawings, doodles, riffs, character studies, turnarounds and pop culture goofs is a look through the mind's eye of talented young artists in the process of making an experimental film on a brand new technology: the video rotoscope.

This one of a kind documentation about the making of a film, originally intended as a personal record of the director,  is a compelling work in its own right. The drawings, the art, are alternately raw and elegant. The humor is crass and riotously funny. Personal drawings by Keith Newton on the "joy" of working on the Lyon Lamb video rotoscope; a birthday card for Lamb of the animators, all naked, drawn by the animators - prankster kitsch among beautiful renderings of the film itself. 

But how do you explain a book like this - off beat, irreverent, unconventional, and probably barely readable to anyone beyond a microcosm of a niche audience that has seen Tom Waits For No One? 

Well, John Lamb has written the introduction to talk about the book and include insight on the individual contents. Keep in mind, Lamb collected every piece - hand pasted each onto every page. He can tell you who drew each piece and why... hundreds of drawings and he knows the story of each one. Like the small drawing of John Lennon playing a guitar, looking down, not happy, but not troubled - "that was drawn by Keith the day after Lennon was killed," Lamb said. 

In the introduction, Lamb speaks to the contents, the why, and what it's like to open that book 35 years later - and imagine everyone, the artists, when they were basically kids - working their first job in animation on Tom Waits For No One.

To frame the film from the perspective of rotoscope, animation and music video history, the Foreword has been written by Gunnar Strom, professor at Volda University College in Norway and author of "The Two Golden Ages of Animated Music Video". Strom brings his superb knowledge on the crossroads of animation and music video, framing the film at a nexus of technology, music and animation history, identifying its unique place among the history of rotoscoping and music videos.

To complete the book, it will conclude with a photograph and a brief biography of each animator and artist who worked on Tom Waits For No One, with photography by Zach Cordner,

If you like Tom Waits For No One, we think you'll love the scrapbook. It's still in the making, but early release images can be seen at: https://tomwaitsfornoone.squarespace.com/scrapbook

Kickstarter Campaign

Our Kickstarter campaign has been announced, and it's successful funding will rescue the original "Tom Waits For No One" live action footage (and pencil tests!) from a decaying medium and recover them into a viewable format. The campaign will also fund showcasing the newly recovered film, along with the original artwork and animation cels at a 35th Anniversary Celebration!

The location? None other than the original filming location - the old La Brea Stage in Hollywood. We're rebuilding the original stage and set - we'll project the never-before-seen live action Tom Waits and pencil test footage throughout the gallery, and the restored, framed animation cels will be on display for the first time!

The Kickstarter will begin on Friday, Sept. 19 - and the 35th Anniversary Celebration will kick-off on March 20 & 21, 2015.

And there's a book... a Tom Waits For No One Scrapbook will feature the work of the artists and animators of this nearly forgotten film, also funded by the Kickstarter... Isn't that enough for two remarkable nights?

Well, there's one more thing... the evenings wouldn't be complete without an unmatched and fantastic music experience. To fit the bill, all the way from New Orleans, the amazingly talented Meschiya Lake and Tom McDermott will play both nights. Dig that!

With all this goodness, you'll never want to leave, so catering will be provided by the legendary TOI on Sunset restaurant, and the after party will be hosted at their rockin' thai restaurant, up the street.

More to come in the next few days... in the mean time, dig this from the amazing Tom McDermott and Meschiya: http://youtu.be/MFIi1_ybqHA

Articles all the way to Ankara, Turkey

Day 2 after the "Tom Waits For No One" Kickstarter press release, an article was published on NME.com - and it was like pouring fuel on flame. At least a dozen radio stations ran a story, many reblogs from NME, FactMag, Eyeball Kid, and many variations on the theme - even one article published in Turkish. Yow-za!

Here's a non-comprehensive list:

NME: http://www.nme.com/news/tom-waits/79673

Consequences of Sound: http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/09/tom-waits-groundbreaking-rotoscope-film-tom-waits-for-no-one-to-be-restored-for-its-35th-anniversary/

Fact TV: http://www.factmag.com/2014/09/08/tom-waits-1979-animated-short-tom-waits-for-no-one-to-be-restored-and-re-released/

Exclaim: http://exclaim.ca/News/tom_waits_animated_short_tom_waits_for_no_one_being_restored_for_35th_anniversary

Ultimate Classic Rock: http://ultimateclassicrock.com/tom-waits-for-no-one/

Music Times: http://www.musictimes.com/articles/9888/20140909/animated-tom-waits-video-35th-anniversary-john-lamb.htm

Vanyaland: http://www.vanyaland.com/2014/09/08/tom-waits-1979-animated-short-tom-waits-for-no-one-to-be-restored-and-re-released/

Paste: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/09/innovative-1979-tom-waits-music-video-to-receive-r.html

Classic Rock: http://classicrock.teamrock.com/news/2014-09-09/tom-waits-animation-to-be-restored

The 405: http://www.thefourohfive.com/news/article/tom-waits-1979-animated-video-to-be-restored-re-released-141

Mike McBeasty: http://mcbeasty.com/groundbreaking-tom-waits-for-no-one-film-seeks-funding-for-35th-anniversary-restoration/

Grolsh Film Works: http://grolschfilmworks.com/ca/agegate/?url=ca%2Fnews%2Ftom-waits-ground-breaking-short-film-is-finally-being-restored

Veooz: http://www.veooz.com/news/3HTqgIo.html

92.3 Bob FM: http://923bobfm.com/tags/tom-waits/

The Planet of Sound: http://theplanetofsound.tumblr.com/

Bantmag: http://bantmag.com/news/tom-waits-for-no-one-filmi-35-yil-donumu-serefine-restore-ediliyor/

 

Kickstarter Campaign announced

Today, Jeremy Farrance sent out the press releases for the Tom Waits For No One Kickstarter campaign - and man did the fun begin.  By day's end, at least seven different stories were  posted! Our thanks to the following blogs:

The Eyeball Kid
FactMag
Consequence of Sound
Exclaim.ca
The 405
Paste Magazine
Planet of Sound

Here's the Eyeball Kid's post - featuring drawings from the Scrapbook:
http://eyeballkid.blogspot.com/2014/09/tom-waits-for-no-one-kickstarter.html