Kathleen Brennan
Alice, Audio Compact Disk. Los Angeles, California: Anti-, 2002.
McHenry Public Library, McHenry, Illinois.
A Johnsburg, Illinois, native, Kathleen Brennan co-wrote the album Alice with her husband Tom Waits in 2002. The album was written for playwright Robert Wilson for a musical of the same name, based off of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Though the stage production did not receive much success—critics noted that it lost its magic after intermission—the album received considerable praise.
Waits has credited Brennan with much of the inspiration in his music, specifically the stylized shift he took in Swordfishtrombones. The album also included a song memorializing her, appropriately titled, “Johnsburg, Illinois.”
Alice Bio (2002); Houben (1992)
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Stories, Structures, and Songs 