Tom Waits live in Columbus, Ohio

Back on May 5, when Tom Waits issued a prerecorded press conference—with himself and a record player appearing to be the only ones in the room—he announced his upcoming Glitter and Doom tour and insisted the small clutch of American dates were charted by the stars, based on a constellation pattern. While Waits has evolved, boundlessly reinventing his music, the coat-pulling huckster, carnival barker part of his character gleefully has not.

It speaks volumes of Waits’ genius and convention-shrugging spirit, bordering on temerity,that on Saturday, June 28, he chose to play Columbus, Ohio’s gorgeous Ohio Theater.

Here’s an artist who rarely tours but is regularly offered obscene performance guarantees to appear at most of the major summer music festivals. When he does tour he only plays old theaters, generally ornate, early-20th-century constructs. Further impudence is that Waits’ could probably sell out 20 nights at New York City’s fabled Radio City Music Hall, but this time around didn’t bother to get any closer to the Northeast than Columbus. As Waits tours are so rare, the date sold out in minutes, with every fan from Cleveland to Baltimore to Philadelphia to Boston looking to fill less than 3,000 seats.

Built in 1927, the Spanish baroque Ohio Theater is probably one of the most perfect venues I’ve ever seen: excellent sightlines, immaculately detailed, and every bit as splendid as it was 80 years ago.

The lobby crowded 10 deep as another Waits rarity was on display: merchandise. The old huckster was at it again. Though Waits has traditionally eschewed selling tour tchotchkes and t-shirts, he put an interesting spin on the practice this time. In addition to “True Confessions” programs—an interview with Tom Waits by Tom Waits—he offered three different t-shirt designs: screens of oil stains on pavement that he had collected over the last 20 years. The oil-splotched t-shirts hint at the genius of the man who found the beauty in these abstract accidents. His music is not unlike that fluid left on the road: It picks up the track of everything that has driven over it through time, as well as the dust that blows through and settles into it.

Of course, Waits the huckster might say, “I can make a sucker buy a shirt with a stain on it.”

Centered onstage perched on a circular riser surrounded by his son Casey Waits on drums, Seth Ford-Young on bass, Omar Torrez on guitar, Patrick Warren on keyboard, and Vincent Henry on woodwinds, Waits nimbly helmed a set that focused on the last 30 years of nightmares, love songs, lullabies, and fractured stories of one-eyed charmers, Jesus, the devil, rifles, and black crows.

Opening with “Lucinda”—the lamentable story of William the Pleaser and his failed quest for love from 2006’s three-disc Orphans collection—Waits stomped on his wooden riser and a smokey dust rose up to fill the stage. What followed was a stream of music mixing folk, blues, dark Americana, Latin, jazz, rock, and so far beyond.

The gospel testifying came for “Way Down in the Hole” when Waits’ gravelly voice threatened edges of a piercing falsetto. Torrez’ fluid guitar playing and tasteful restraint, along with the ESP-like communication between the band, made the entire night sound like a Waits record come to life. A creepingly elegant “Cemetery Polka” was spine-tingling and the rough hewn funk of “Hoist That Rag” was unmatched. Waits insisted on having the crowd sing along when he sat at the piano for “Innocent When You Dream”—from 1987’s Frank’s Wild Years—whose bittersweet beauty brought a mix of smiles and tears throughout the crowd. In his final encore of the night, Waits took the acoustic guitar in his hand for the epochal ballad “Time,” the ultimate capper. As Waits pined, “Pay the fiddler off ’til I come back again,” it was apparent that Waits may not be back again soon or ever. It is this time that you have to love.