Mule Variations

Brennan and Waits produced it at Prairie Sun in 1998. It reached number 30 in the US, which was his highest placing until Bad as Me, number 9 in the UK and number 1 in Norway. It won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Hold On was nominated for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. Zach Hooker gave it 9.5 out of 10 at Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone placed it 416th on its 2012 list of 500 albums.

Waits recorded it at Prairie Sun from June 1998, apart from Lowside of the Road, which was done at Sputnik Sound. Jacquire King and Oz Fritz recorded and mixed it, and Chris Bellman mastered it. The songs often deal with rural American life and were influenced by early blues recordings made by Alan Lomax. Waits coined the word surrural for the mix of surreal and rural, and Mojo named the album its Album of the Year. He gave his first show in three years at the Paramount Theater in Austin during South by Southwest in March 1999.