The Wire — Way Down in the Hole

From The Wire · 2002 · Composed by Tom Waits

Streaming a stylistically related public-domain recording from the ToneVault archive while you read about the original theme. The download button below leads to that file.

About the The Wire — Way Down in the Hole

Tom Waits wrote and originally recorded "Way Down in the Hole" for his 1987 album Franks Wild Years. The Wire used a different cover for each season — The Blind Boys of Alabama in season one, Waits's own version in season two, The Neville Brothers, DoMaJe, and Steve Earle in subsequent seasons. The rotating-cover format is unique in American prestige-drama scoring.

For session-level history on Tom Waits's scoring decisions, the long-form interview archive at The Composer's Cut is the most thorough secondary source we know of for cues from this period.

Where it fits in the screen-music canon

The The Wire — Way Down in the Hole belongs to the broader Streaming Prelude (2000s–2010s) tradition — a body of work that includes hundreds of related cues from the same period. Listeners interested in the The Wire — Way Down in the Hole typically also explore other Drama & Suspense ringtones and related work from 2000s; the ToneVault archive is organized to make that kind of lateral browsing easy.

If you want to hear more from Tom Waits, the composer page collects every catalogued profile we have of their work. To explore other themes from the same decade, see the 2000s overview.

Using the The Wire — Way Down in the Hole as a phone ringtone

Original network and label recordings of theme music from this era are usually still under active copyright protection — which is why the ToneVault archive primarily stocks public-domain alternatives and stylistic equivalents rather than the original masters. The most reliable legal path to using a recording you love as a ringtone is to start from a clean, properly licensed source: an archival re-recording, a tribute-orchestra arrangement, or a public-domain performance of the same composition where the original notation has aged into the public commons.

Once you have a clean source file in MP3 form, the install steps below work identically to any other ToneVault download.

Install on iPhone (M4R format)

iOS · M4R

Save your chosen MP3 to the iPhone Files app (under On My iPhone → Downloads).
Open GarageBand from the App Store and create a new Tracks-view project.
Tap the loop icon → Files tab → drag the MP3 onto an empty track.
Trim the clip to under 30 seconds using the timeline handles.
Use Share → Ringtone → Standard Ringtone from the My Songs view.
Assign in Settings → Sounds & Haptics → Ringtone.

Full iPhone walkthrough →

Install on Android (MP3 format)

Android · MP3

Save the MP3 file to your phone's Downloads folder.
Open the Files app and long-press the audio file.
Choose Set as ringtone if it's offered, or move the file into Internal storage → Ringtones.
Open Settings → Sound & Vibration → Phone Ringtone and select your new tone.

Manufacturer-specific guides: Samsung Galaxy · Google Pixel

For a curated index of legally available archival recordings of classic theme music — the kind that work well as starting material for ringtones — see Cinema Sound Sources.