What's He Building In There

Waits wrote this about nosy American neighbors who can't mind their own business. We are meant to be on the side of the guy inside the house, whatever he may "build."

In a 1999 Austin Chronicle interview, Waits said of this song: "It's kind of tipping my hat to [voiceover and recording artist] Ken Nordine, who was a big influence on me. And I've listened to him since I started recording. Ken lives in Chicago. He has a peculiar imagination and tells remarkable stories. This one started out as a song, and I wasn't able to get it to fly as a song, so I just took the words and started saying them. And it all just kind of came together."

In the book Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits, Waits said of this song: "We seem compelled to perceive our neighbors through the keyhole. There's always someone in the neighborhood, the Boo Radley, the village idiot. You see that drives this yellow station wagon without a windshield, and he has chickens in the backyard, and doesn't get home 'til 3:00 A.M., and he says he's from Florida but the license says Indiana... so, you know, 'I don't trust him.' It's really a disturbed creative process."