Eddie Skuller pays tribute to Tom Waits on 'You Can Never Hold Back Spring', teasing new EP

July 29, 2026

Jersey City singer-songwriter Eddie Skuller presents ‘You Can Never Hold Back Spring’, a fine rendition of one of Tom Waits’ most quietly affecting songs, revealing a gentler side of Waits’ catalog, where grit gives way to tenderness and reflection. Following ‘Downtown Train’, this is the second offering from his ‘Blind Love’ EP, bringing a raw, analog intimacy to these compositions, exploring the space between homage and reinvention.

This four-track personal tribute to Waits’ songwriting revisits a storyteller with a rare ability to capture human character, emotion and melody, as well as his ability to find beauty and humanity in unexpected places. With his own unique vocal style, Skuller performs ‘You Can Never Hold Back Spring’ with reverence, restraint and emotional intelligence, allowing the song’s emotional complexity to emerge through a delivery that favors intimacy over imitation.

In addition to his solo work, Skuller is a perennial guest vocalist with The Losers Lounge, the acclaimed tribute series curated by The Psychedelic Furs’ Joe McGintyand regularly held at Joe’s Pub and City Winery in NYC. His live performances have drawn praise for their authenticity, emotional clarity, and musical integrity.

For this EP, Skuller worked with producer Nick Kinsey, known for his work with Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee and Scott McMickey, who helped shape a recording that embraces the spontaneity and imperfections of analog production.

Skuller re-centers the songs around narrative and feeling, revealing layers of tenderness, nostalgia, and quiet hope. Captured without edits or vocal overdubs, the track preserves the spontaneity of the recording, with Skuller’s vocal captured live with the band. The arrangement also features Ryder Cooley of the Dust Bowl Faeries on accordion, Kinsey on drums and keyboards, Jack Skuller on guitars, and Jeremy Chatzky (Springsteen, Steve Earle, Ronnie Spector) on bass.

“What makes this recording experience unique for me is that it was recorded live in studio to tape. I wanted Nick Kinsey to produce because I was familiar with his aesthetic sensibilities and the warmth that analog recording can provide. The songs became meditative dirges and the lyrics read as pure poetry," says Eddie Skuller.

“There’s a key line in this song that hooks me every time I hear it: ‘even though you’ve lost your way, the world is dreaming, dreaming of spring. Using spring for a sense of renewal, hope, and a chance to reset—it’s as memorable and moving as any classic jazz-pop standard such as Sinatra’s ‘Young at Heart.’”

The music video grew out of a creative connection sparked through social media. Skuller discovered SPX ETC, founded by artist Sandrine Pagnoux and photographer/editor Sophie Etchart, after encountering Sandrine’s Tom Waits editorial work for 46pgs magazine. Skuller shares, “I followed them on Instagram with the thought that I’d someday have the opportunity to work with them”.

Ceating a dreamlike world blending collage, illustration, photography, typography, and animation, Sandrine developed the artwork using Sophie’s photography, while Sophie assembled and refined the final piece. Throughout the video, manipulated self-portraits of Skuller also appear through Sandrine’s distinctive approach. Pagnoux explains, “The lyrics are pure poetry. Joy, renewal and hope will always return after periods of darkness. Eddie’s emotional cover is magical and full of deep feelings.”

As of July 29th, 'You Can Never Hold Back Spring' is available everywhere digitally, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, where 'Downtown Train' can also be found. The 'Blind Love' EP will be released on August 26th.

CREDITS
Written by Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan
Produced & Mixed by Nick Kinsey at the Chicken Shack Studio, New York
Mastered by Christopher Colbert at National Freedom Studio, Oregon
Eddie Skuller - vocals
Jeremy Chatzky - bass
Jack Skuller - guitar
Nick Kinsey - drums, percussion, keyboards
Ryder Cooley - accordion
Single cover photo & design by SPX ETC
EP cover photo and design by Eddie Skuller
Video produced by Sophie Etchart & Sandrine Pagnoux for SPX ETC
Photos by Eddie Skuller
Publicity by Shameless Promotion PR

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LAPTOP re-envisions TOM WAITS' holiday anthem "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis"

December 17, 2025

NYC artist Laptop presents their first holiday release: a winter transmission that sits oddly and perfectly within the band’s catalog. Tom Waits’ 1978 classic “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” is recreated as a deadpan jazz-robotic confession, equal parts heartbreak and smirk, performed as if a soul adrift at 2 AM in search of a payphone that still works. This feels like a postcard from every December that ever went wrong—and the small, stubborn hope that things might just go right anyway.

In the early 2000s, Laptop released three cult classic albums on Island Records, with frontman Jesse Hartman having got his start as a teenage Voidoid with Richard Hellbefore co-founding the indie rock band Sammy and releasing albums via Fire Records and Geffen Records. Hartman recently revived the band, driven by a dual-frontman dynamic with his son Charlie, this track reveals the intimate, lonely, late-night side of this project, sitting with you after the party ends and winter blows in under the door.

For Jesse Hartman, this song is personal. He has been playing this song since he was 13 years old at the family piano, long before Laptop existed, long before forming Sammy and long before joining Island Records. Hartman shares, “This was the first song that showed me you could mix sadness and humor in the same line. It basically formed me. This song is the blueprint for Laptop whether I knew it or not.”

While Laptop and Waits are both artists obsessed with doomed characters, disappointing heroes, and the poetry of failure, Hartman’s version is a departure from Waits’s gravel-and-whiskey delivery. This take leans into Laptop’s signature swing between warmth and machinery: jazz chords, cold synths, more groove, and Hartman’s dry, controlled, emotionally sideways vocal. It’s not whispered or fragile, it’s performed with the same unsentimental elegance that defined Laptop’s early-2000s covers (Billy Joel) and deep cuts (“We Never Made It to Venice”).

The basic tracks were recorded in Valencia in 2023, engineered by Iñaki Ariste Aznar, with Hartman on bass and drums by Mike Desmerais (Brian Eno, The Winkies). Upon their subtle, modern rhythmic bed beneath the retro-jazz harmony, Hartman finished the song in New York this Thanksgiving, pulling the performance into the present moment. Family members fill the edges of the arrangement with warmth: Odetta Hartman(backing vocals), Camellia Hartman (violin), Ben Jones (keyboards), and friend Billy Aukstik (trumpet). Just like a frozen street corner dressed in unexpected color.

“Waits wrote one of the great American monologues. This character isn’t just down on her luck, she’s inventing better versions of her life while she’s telling it. She’s lying, but she’s lying to survive. I didn’t want parody. I wanted to show the hope inside the hopelessness,” says Jesse Hartman.

This is standalone offering, outside the song cycle leading to their 2026 album “On This Planet”, which produced the singles “Indie Hero”, "Additional Animals", "I Don't Know" and “Weirder”. But it fits the themes Hartman has been exploring lately: aging, reinvention, myth-making, and the personal fictions we tell ourselves to get through the night. The holiday backdrop adds a chill: this is a Christmas song for people who can’t quite afford to believe in Christmas.

Musically, the track is Laptop stripped and rebuilt: a chiming electric piano, an icy synth pad, and a rhythm section that feels like a jazz band learning to operate inside a drum machine. Hartman delivers the lies, the hope, the heartbreak, and the punchline with the kind of detached affection that made Laptop an indie cult favorite. The final confession (“I need the money to pay my lawyer”) lands with dry humor and real ache.

As of December 12, this single can be found on major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, where the band's latest singles are also available. Laptop's forthcoming album "On This Planet" is slated for release in Spring 2026 via Hurricane Cove Records.

CREDITS 
Jesse Hartman - vocals, guitars, bass
Edward Douglas- keyboards, synths
Charlie Hartman - vocals
Odetta Hartman - vocals
Camellia Hartman - violin
Billy Aukstik - trumpet
Ben Jones - keyboards
Mike Desmarais - drums
Lluisen Capafons – congas, additional percussion
Recorded by Iñaki Ariste Aznar (Valencia), Edward Douglas (NYC), Jesse Hartman (NYC/Nevis)
Mixed by Jesse Hartman, Edward Douglas
Produced by Jesse Hartman
Engineered by Edward Douglas
Recorded in Valencia, Spain (Summer 2023), Final overdubs and edits in New York City (2025)
Written by Tom Waits (ASCAP)
Published by Jersey Girl Music (Admin by Wixen Music Publishing, Inc.)
Released by Hurricane Cove Records
Video concept, direction, cinematography & editing by Jesse Hartman
Cover artwork by Jesse Hartman & Scott Ratner
Publicity by Shameless Promotion PR

Trashcan Sinatras' John Douglas shares 'Johnsburgh, Illinois' from new 'Still or Sparkling?' EP

December 12, 2024

Revered Scottish songsmith John Douglas of Trashcan Sinatras fame presents 'Johnsburgh, Illinois', the latest offering from his new 'Still Or Sparkling EP', released via Reveal Records.

This has been a very busy year for Douglas, with highlights including headlining tours of the UK and North America (with select shows involving Trashcan Sinatras' Frank Reader and Paul Livingston), the UK Top-40 charting of Trashcan Sinatras' 'Cake'reissue (33 years since its initial release), and a Trashcan Sinatras documentary, produced by award-winning journalist Ken Sweeney, which featured Douglas' acoustic performance of beloved Trashcans' songs.

"I first heard this Tom Waits song in the early 80s and I read that the recently-married Tom had written it about his wife. I was a lonesome, single young fella at the time and I yearned to find a love that inspirational. Eventually I found my girl and I sing this song for her… ‘She’s my true love and I’m her only boy’", says John Douglas.

About the video, he shares, "I was visiting a sculptor friend, who worked in what used to be an old school. The reverb from the old brick stairwell was spookily magical. I had my guitar outside in my car, so I grabbed it and sang this on the stairs when my sculptor friend downed his tools for lunch."

With his own love story involving none other than Eddi Reader of Fairground Attraction, now his wife and also a solo artist in her own right), everything has come full circle, with Reader also contributing back vocals and accordion on this EP.

Earlier, Douglas shared the lead single 'Still Or Sparkling?', evoking the early days of any relationship…. the getting to know each other phase, flirtatious and light, in which he also name-checks the unlikely trio of Shirley Collins, Annie Briggs and Michelangelo, noting "This is a new song of new love… the fresh, early days. Inspired by a late night date with my future wife, spent listening to folk records, eating figs and getting to know each other."

Following up his eponymous debut album, released in 2023 and produced by Mark Freegard (New Model Army, Lush, The Breeders, Del Amitri, Marillion), this new EP maintains a natural 'no overdubs' approach and also involves Boo Hewerdine (The Bible), Kevin Mcguire and Alan Kelly, all members of Eddi Reader's Band. This EP also features Douglas' rendition of the Van Morrison classic 'Across The Bridge Where Angels Dwell'.

Douglas also recently shared his version of 'Weightlifting' for the 20th anniversary of Trashcan Sinatras' album by that name, preceded by endearing videos for 'Oranges & Apples', 'I Just Want To Go Home', 'Lost', 'I'm Not The Fella', 'Always' and 'Leave Me Alone'.

The 'Still or Sparkling?' EP is out now, available from fine online platforms, including Bandcamp. Douglas will next perform on January 17 at Glasgow's Cottiers Theatrefor the prestigious Celtic Connections Festival.