“Hoist That Rag” by Tom Waits

"Hoist That Rag" comes off Real Gone, the 16th studio album Tom Waits put out on ANTI- in October 2004, and he wrote and produced it with Kathleen Brennan. The band is a gang of heavy hitters: Marc Ribot on guitar, Les Claypool on bass, and Bryan "Brain" Mantia and Casey Waits on percussion, with Waits at the microphone and Mark Howard recording and mixing the lot.

The album around it marked a rare turn toward politics for Waits, most openly on "Day After Tomorrow", his sidelong protest against the Iraq War. Harp Magazine's editors picked Real Gone as the best album of 2004, the Real Gone Tour sold out across North America and Europe that fall, and in 2017 Waits and Brennan oversaw a remixed, remastered edition.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.