This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bean Cooley, professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey, Infra Terry Gross.

Tom Wates is one of the true eccentric of pop music. The New York Times wants to describe him as the poet of outcasts.

There's always been an element of mystery surrounding his life. The people he usually sings about are loners, losers, hobos, outlaws, and drunks.

The darkness of his lyrics is accentuated by the rumble and rasp of his voice, a voice that sounded old even when he was young.

Wates has been recording since 1973. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. His songs have been used on the soundtracks of several films, and he's acted in the movies down by law, short cuts, Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, the Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and the Old Man and the Gun.

We're going to listen back to two of our interviews with Tom Wates. When Terry spoke with him in 2002, he just released two lyrical concept albums, Blood Money and Alice, which are now considered some of his finest work.

This month, on the 20th anniversary of their release, those albums are being reissued on vinyl, with new, formerly unreleased live versions of some songs.

Wates wrote those songs with his wife, Kathleen Brennan. Let's start with a song from Blood Money. This is Misery is the River of the World.

The River of the World is a song that was composed of the songs that were built to chapel like the pistols that are growing on the tongue of a tree of the good in the world you can put inside a thing.

Still have room for you and me. If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about mankind.

You can tie a belt next to where the pigs fold, but it always comes roaring like a game. Misery is the River of the World.

Misery is the River of the World. Misery is the River of the World.

Tom Wates, welcome to Fresh Air.

This music started as a music theater piece.

Originally, this was a project with Robert Wilson, the avant-garde theater director.

It's the third thing that we've done with him. The production is called Wozek. These are the songs from that.

Some of your music writing seems influenced by the German songs of Kurt Vial. Have you listened to the law to him? Do you feel like he's influenced your writing?

I hadn't really listened to him until I had people tell me that I sounded somewhat like him or had some influence in there.

So I said, well, I've started listening to this stuff. What do you think? I like that. I was really angry.

I guess I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

It works for me.

The arrangements for your songs are really good. Do you do the arrangements yourself?

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