The now-former Houston Press music editor John Nova Lomax asked me this question via Facebook the other day. He also posed the question to “tons of [other] local and national music figures” including people like Jesse Dayton, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, David Sadoff, Arthur Yoria, and (my favorite) former Houston Press music scribe Claudia Perry.

Here are all the answers he got, including mine:

Marshall Preddy, performer (Bright Men of Learning):

"Cold, Cold Ground" slays me; the skeletal live version in particular. On Frank’s Wild Years the production is too goofy and sly. But on a few live versions I’ve heard, Waits is deadly sad and serious. And lonesome. The structure of this song always reminds me of Leonard Cohen, and maybe that’s why it sends me into sad-bastard heaven.

Sadly, the YouTube link he used for my entry didn’t work.