Songfacts®:

• The imagery in this song is so surreal and strange that it's almost cartoonish. It's sung from the perspective of a character who captures a crow in a Washburn guitar and then bangs on the strings "Just to drive him crazy." The song's narrator also makes a ladder from a marimba (a mallet percussion instrument); beats a French horn into a small travel kettle, and blows "a hole in the sky 'bout the size of a kickdrum."
• According to 1983 interviews, Waits wanted a sort of chain gang, work song feel to this track - which explains the metallic clangs and crashes.
• At least six years before Swordfishtrombones was released, this song started as a lyric about a farmer who shoots sixteen shells into the belly of a scarecrow out of frustration during a drought. A "Thirty-Ought-Six" is a .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge. (Source: "The Beat Goes On", a 1983 interview with Rock Bill magazine.)
• Waits wanted this track to sound like a train; the low trombone and steady rhythm support this feel.