God, Texas and Tom Waits

Another entry on his Observer list was the Alan Lomax Collection CD Prison Songs, Volume 1: Murderous Home. "Without spirituals and the Baptist church and the whole African-American experience in this country, I don't know what we would consider music, I don't know what we'd all be drinking from," he said. "It's in the water. The impact the whole black experience continues to have on all musicians is immeasurable. Lomax recorded everything. From the sounds of the junkyard, or he would go into a market and just record the cash register — disappearing machinery that we would no longer be hearing."

Speaking about the song "Pony" from Mule Variations, Waits told the Austin Chronicle that he wanted the song to be "bare and by itself, like those Lomax recordings, those Library of Congress recordings that I love so much."

Bill Hicks In Waits's view, Hicks, a grad of Stratford High School in west Houston, was the spiritual descendant of Waits's childhood hero Lenny Bruce. Rant in E Minor was the third Texan entry on Waits's Observer list of faves. Here is what he had to say about it: "Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. Pay attention to Rant in E Minor, it is a major work, as important as Lenny Bruce's. He will correct your vision. His life was cut short by cancer, though he did leave his tools here. Others will drive on the road he built. Long may his records rant even though he can't."

On another list of favorites, Waits cited Hicks's Flying Saucer Tour. "Bill was trying to get free of the nagging hunger for mainstream acceptance. These gems were recorded in towns barely on the map, and he sometimes had to make a mad dash for the car, outrunning an angry mob. Hicks was our Lenny Bruce. R.I.P."

Daniel Johnston Waits recorded the Waller resident's "King Kong" on the 2004 tribute album The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered.

Praha, Texas All right, maybe Waits doesn't love this little Fayette County hamlet literally, but he does deeply enjoy the music from thereabouts.

The fourth Texan entry on his Observer list was the Arhoolie/Folklyric compilation Texas-Czech: Bohemian Moravian Bands, which featured selections of music recorded between 1928 and 1953 by Bacova's Ceska Kapela, Frank Hermanek's Band, Adolph Pavlas and his Bohemians, Julius Dietert's Band, crossover country star Adolph Hofner, and the orchestras of Joe Patek, Ray Krenek, Benny Brosh, John R. Baca, and Houston's own Bill Mraz.

Here's what Waits had to say about the album: "I love these Czech-Bavarian bands that landed in Texas of all places. The seminal river for mariachi came from that migration to that part of the United States, bringing the accordion over, just like the drum and fife music of post-slavery, they picked up the revolutionary war instruments and played blues on them. This music is both sour and bitter, and picante, and floating above itself like steam over the kettle. There's a piece [By Baca] called the 'Circling Pigeons Waltz', it's the most beautiful thing — kind of sour, like a wheel about to go off the road all the time. It's the most lilting little waltz. It's accordion, soprano sax, clarinet, bass, banjo and ­percussion."