As SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY AND THE ASBURY JUKES were just about to return to their November US tour schedule after spending more than a month on the road in Europe, two pieces came in via PHILLY.COM a week ago:

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER’s Nick Cristiano offers a brief interview and write-up about GRAPEFRUIT MOON and Tom Waits in advance of the show at the Keswick Theatre:

“There’s this conception of him as just some whack ball who writes songs about people in the street – and that’s true to an extent,” Southside says. “But he’s also just a brilliant writer, and he’s got these wonderful melodies. . . . Because of his vocal style, people don’t hear that stuff. I hear it and I go, wow. I’m jealous.” Johnny told Nick Cristiano on the phone talking about Tom and the project with La Bamba’s Big Band…

The whole article is posted at: THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Jonathan Takiff of the PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS elaborated the topic a bit more in his talk to Southside Johnny. I’ll save you the bit about my favorite actress, John himself finds the appropriate words about her Tom Waits project.

But on another – seasonal – topic, not Big-Band Tom Waits, but Christmas songs, John told Jonathan Takiff:
I’m not going to start listening to all those songs now and have a whole month of hearing them. You can be sure if I got arrested and thrown in jail, they’d be playing that music as another form of torture. It used to be you didn’t hear or play Christmas music until two weeks before the holiday. I want it to be really Christmasy Christmas time first.

When I’m emperor, you won’t be able to listen to this stuff until Dec. 1. And if your Christmas lights are still up on the house at the end of January, you’ll be socked with a thousand-dollar-a-day fine. Those lights keep suggesting to me that we still have a miserable winter ahead, even though Christmas and the start of winter might be long past.

Thanks for the words John… yeah!

You can read the whole interview with Jonathan Takiff at the: PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS website.