It's been a long and influential road for the songwriter/guitarist and original Wall Of Voodoo vocalist. His darkly humorous, and richly cinematic musical tales of the ironies inside the American Dream have been compared to other classic songwriting iconoclasts like Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash and even hard boiled mystery writers like Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson, as well as twisted film makers like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. The San Francisco Chronicle said, "He conjures "Burroughs, Bukowski and Brecht," while LA Weekly has called him "the Nathaniel West of rock."

Ridgway's post-Wall of Voodoo output has, if anything, cemented his neo-noir rep as one of American music's greatest storytellers, the wild and wily Steinbeck of sad whiskey railroads and rusted, ramshackle American dreams." -AUSTIN CHRONICLE

"Stan Ridgway is equal parts Raymond Chandler and John Huston, Johnny Cash and Rod Serling." -NME

"Probably the most compelling portrait of American social life to appear on a rock 'n' roll record since Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska." -ART FORUM