Tom Waits tribute brings pawn shop approach

Tom Waits is one of the most distinctive troubadours of American rock. As a songwriter, he has penned both conventional ballads and songs about the seedier characters and sung every one of them with his signature growl.

While his musical persona isn’t to everyone’s taste, it certainly attracted L’Orchestre d’Hommes-Orchestres (LODHO) to create a tribute show around some of his more unconventional tunes. L’Orchestre d’Hommes-Orchestres Performs Tom Waits appears at the Arden Theatre on March 28 and 29.

But the concert is no ordinary homage. The Quebec-based sextet not only uses conventional instruments such as banjo, guitar, violin and bass. Their main attraction is in using more than 100 household objects – megaphones, rotary phones, hedge clippers, bottles, turkey basters and raw spaghetti – to create a cacophonous sound.

“Tom Waits is very evocative. When you listen to his CDs, he uses unusual instruments and anything that makes the right sound,” says L’Orchestre performer Danya Ortmann.

“He uses a rough sound and it makes the imagination work. And the stories he uses are anchored in American folklore. They fire the imagination and tell a story of their own people.”

Rounding out the ensemble is Bruno Bouchard, Jasmin Cloutier, Simon Drouin, Simon Elmaleh and Gabrielle Bouthillier.

Bouchard first launched this gig about 10 years ago as a one-man band before bringing on the two Simons. Originally they gravitated toward the bar circuit. As their success multiplied so did the ensemble until at one point up to 14 musicians were playing.

Audiences loved their raucous talents, but visually the stage looked like a “flea market,” Ortmann says.

About three years ago the ensemble switched from bars to theatres where they could better regulate the songs and visual images.

“We found a delicate balance between good music and an evocative visual balance. It gelled around specific images. But we keep open spaces to improvise. We don’t always know where we’re going and there’s still a lot of potential for new things.”

The two-hour multi-disciplinary show is stitched together with theatre, music and sound art. However, LODHO has deliberately kept the text “hazy” to allow audiences greater freedom in personal interpretation.

For Ortmann, the show’s success lies in “the personalized read people have from the images. It’s a show that will tickle people. It’s so improbable and it gets people’s imagination revved up. It tends to get people’s creativity turned on.”