He likes a day in the studio to end, he says, "when my knees are all skinned up and my pants are wet and my hair's off to one side and I feel like I've been in the foxhole all day. I don't think comfort is good for music. It's good to come out with skinned knuckles after wrestling with something you can't see. I like it when you come home at the end of the day from recording and someone says, "What happened to your hand?" And you don't even know. When you're in that place, you can dance on a broken ankle.

Waits received increasing critical acclaim and gathered a loyal cult following with his subsequent albums. On May 7 2008 Waits announced the Glitter and Doom Tour starting in June 2008 touring cities in the southern United States and subsequently announced a series of dates in the UK Ireland and mainland Europe. Waits made an appearance on the album The Spirit of Apollo by alternative hip hop project N.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart. Waits lives in Sonoma County California with his wife Kathleen Brennan and three children.