''The Black Rider'' is an album by Tom Waits, released in 1993 on Island Records. The album contains studio versions of songs Waits wrote for the play ''The Black Rider'', directed by Robert Wilson and co-written by William S. Burroughs. The play is based on the German folktale ''Der Freischütz'', which had previously been made into an opera by Carl Maria von Weber.

''The Black Rider'' premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany. Its world English-language premiere occurred in 1998 at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival.

Waits's collaboration with Wilson would later continue with the plays ''Alice'' (1992) and ''Woyzeck'' (2000), the music to which was released on the albums ''Alice'' and ''Blood Money'', respectively.

There is a German vinyl release of this album featuring quite different tracks. It was released by Alka-Seltzer Medien GmbH in 1999 containing some liner notes concerning the Black Rider stage play. The vinyl is transparent red printed only with the letters "A" and "B" on either side's label. - Wikipedia