Tom Waits, Kronos Quartet Digital Single Out Soon

“So his holiness goes to bed at 7:30? That’s not the holiness I used to know, you know what I’m sayin’? He had a whole ‘nother look goin.’”

So quips Tom Waits before launching into “Diamond in Your Mind,” recorded live at New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall with Kronos Quartet and Greg Cohen. The Waits original, initially recorded by Solomon Burke, will be released on June 26 as a digital single from Healing the Divide: A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation, a benefit show for the Tibetan Health Initiative. Hence, Waits’ gentle mocking of his Holiness the Dalai Lama. Oh, that guy!

“Working with the Kronos Quartet was like firing a .38 Special with a clam shell holster: beauty meets brains,” Waits stated. The track’s worth it if only for the moment he encourages a couple thousand people to “sing it with me, here,” creating a proper choir-like background for his haunting hymn.

Get thee to an iTunery.

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