"Bone Machine" Features Some Real Breakthroughs for Tom Waits

Wait's two lyrical concept albums, Blood Money and Alice, are being reissued on vinyl for their 20th Anniversary. We listen back to archival interviews with the musician, broadcast in 2002 and 2011.

The renowned bluesman, who died in 2015, spoke to Fresh Air in 1996 about growing up as the son of a sharecropper — and leaving the plantation as a young man to pursue a career in music.

British singer and songwriter Billie Brag brings his guitar to the studio to play and sing some songs and talks about the Skiffle movement, the British adaptation of American blues and folk music that became popular in the 1950s and influenced the Beatles, Pete Townsend, Van Morrison and other British rockers.