Find lyrics to the following albums below:
Circadian
Gut It to the Studs
Outtakes from Gut It to the Studs
Parts & Labor (LVS & the Bonafides)
Breakfast Truce
Circadian
1. YOu can’t put my fire out
I didn’t run
I didn’t scream
I didn’t want to make a scene
Too many years I’ve kept the peace
You can’t put my fire out
Too long you’ve lived inside my mind
You paid no rent, you stole my time
Now I’m taking back what’s mine
You can’t put my fire out
You never cease to poke and prod
Illuminate my every flaw
But you can take it up with God
You can’t put my fire out
I taste your words inside my mouth
Like broken glass I spit them out
I’m the one who’s speaking now
You can’t put my fire out
I’m taking back my apologies
For every time that you hurt me
Your red hands I can plainly see
You can’t put my fire out
Something set my heart ablaze
Now your shouting only fans the flames
I won’t listen til you say my name
You can’t put my fire out
2. Tin man
Boltcutters
sledgehammer or a battering ram
Or maybe just a few quick turns from a bent-up boby pin
Tell me darling
why don’t you just let me in
Am I banging on the hollow chest of a man made of tin
There’s an emptiness inside you
You don’t even know it’s there
It was left of the blueprints
Like the crawlspace under the stairs
Well everybody says that
you’re just the strong and silent type
But no one seems to understand that your pain becomes mine
Red blisters
a few splinters and a blackened eye
You learned how to bite your lip
Cause daddy’s says boys don’t cry
You tightened your grip
And calloused up your hands
Hoping once the work was done that he’d call you a man
You’d hang around the shop sometimesA
At the end of a long day
But he’d just lock away his tools
He never seemed to meet your gaze
The feeling he denied you
You still are pining for
But you don’t seem to understand that his pain became yours
Ooo
Even the tin man was searching for a heart
Whenever people ask you
you’ve always said you’re fine
But you’re the last one to know
That you’ve been telling a lie
Cause when you’re tossing in your sleep
I hear the loneliness inside
You don’t seem to understand that your pain becomes mine
Every morning
You leave without saying goodbye
Your coffee on the countertop
Growing cold by my side
3. Something Real
Watch the dying embers float to the sky
Hear the creatures calling out soft and wild
The silence doesn’t need my meaningless words
Like plugging up a well with cheap fill dirt
Holding this guitar makes me think of Tom
He would open up the circle make you feel you belong
A river flowing cleaves the stone apart
This pain has carved a canyon into my heart
Someone give me a song to sing that sounds like something real
I want the whole world to know exactly how I feel
All of the hinges so stiff with rust
I always thought that I just wasn’t strong enough
Throw open the windows of my shuttered soul
Let the thunder and the rain and the breezes blow
We suffer from a wound, a wound called love
From some other victim, or God above
It bleeds and it yearns, it festers and burns
And music is the closest thing I know to a cure
Chorus
This vibration inside your throat
It travels the air as a heavenly note
I get this feeling deep in my bones
When I sing with you I feel less alone
The grand ole opry or the hotel lobby I only want to sing the truth
I don’t care who’s listening out there I only want to sing with you
Someone give me a song to sing that sounds like something real
I want the whole world to know exactly how I feel
4. Most of our dreams don’t come true
Dig up the stubborn roots of the English Ivy vines
Sift through the yellowed papers and sort them into files
Keeping things tidy now can help fill the time
That stretched out before you the moment your dream died
The cupboards are bare it seems you’ve lost your appetite
Life lost its sweetness along with your stillborn child
The lines in the mirror growing deep and more defined
Your glory fading long before it had a chance to shine
Most of our dreams don’t come true
And after that what do you do
Seems the hardest part of letting go
Is having nothing left to hold
The seats all are empty now and the curtain is drawn
Backstage in the dark it’s between you and your God
Can’t you find a reason now that you should carry on
No one’s here to witness if you’re right or if you’re wrong
When you park the car and walk right past the sign that says dead end
This is when your real journey truly begins
This is when you leave behind all the petty things
This is when you stand up tall and finally shed your skin
5. Spilt milk
I let your love die in the sun
Dry, brittle leaves that once promised so much
You gave it to me like your first born child
How soon I forgot it, and brushed it aside
You were so generous with the virtues I lack
You gave me the world, I tossed you the scraps
I left you the parts that I didn’t like
My rides to the airport, my dull Monday nights
Some things, some things are worth fighting for
Some loves, some loves are worth dying for
Sometimes spilt milk is worth crying for
But I was too selfish to know
I am a criminal, my crime is neglect
There are no excuses for such disrespect
It’s not cruel or unusual what I did to you
What rakes at my conscience is what I didn’t do
I wish I had a symphony to play you this song
To promise to change, to say I was wrong
But here it’s just me, my faults and my scars
Just begging forgiveness on a beat-up guitar
Some things, some things are worth fighting for
Some loves, some loves are worth dying for
Sometimes spilt milk is worth crying for
But I was too careless to know
But I was too selfish to know
6. Circadian
The fireflies a-blinking cannot seem to find their mates
The birds a-flying south cannot seem to find their way
They’re blinded by the lights
The city’s halo night
And they’re lost and lonely as I am
Sitting by the seaside hear the crashing of the waves
The tidal flow keeps time with the passing of the days
The beating of a drum
It beckons you to come
To dance to these rhythms circadian
Just below the surface is a song
Waiting for us to sing along
The music the world made before we
Drowned it all out with these machines
Boxed wine and stories over candle-lit card cames
The power went out and I learned my neighbor’s names
The snow had fallen deep
It quieted the streets
And I felt a precious sense of peace
7. The Hustle
You put full-color flyers on every pole in town
Ran an ad in the paper and your best friend clipped it out
On opening day the bright balloons all reached up for the sky
Now they’re down on the ground getting kicked around by the people passing by
Hold your head up high
It’s fake it til you make it so try to crack a smile
There’s no shortcuts on this road you chose so hang on another mile
Put a spring in your step when your daddy co-signed the loan
And you toasted a beer at Jenny’s on your way home
Then he threw out his back trying to lift the fridge up the stairs
And it would break his poor old heart to see all these empty chairs
Well everybody told you
if you build it they will come
But no one said just who
And no one said where from
The hustle is a lonely place
8. Driftwood
I should be a grateful heart
For I’ve auditioned for the part
I’ve mouthed the words and pious kneeled
But I can’t change the way I feel
My throat is parched my knuckles sore
From endless pounding at the door
No one answers anymore
The fruit is rotten to the core
See them swimming wild and free
While I’m wading ankle deep
Pick me up and toss me in
See if I will sink or swim
Why should I get out of bed
When I must do it all again
How should I arrange my time
Can’t see the reason or the rhyme
Behold the most majestic tree
Branches yearning righteously
I’m not thriving as I should
Dry and hollow as old driftwood
9. Rising Tide
This disease and its gnashing teeth
It brings me to my knees
Makes me bow before God
I’m not proud that that’s what it took
To make me believe what’s in every good book
All these chemicals that made you sick
Wanna find the man who made them and show this to him
The long lonesome hallways and the ruined plans
The look in your eyes and the trembling hands
I tried to be patient like my mother but I can’t be
We ran aground now honey, sit tight and hope
we’ll float out on the rising tide
You said the breeze it feels oh so sweet
But you must be getting old cause it’s something old folks say
As a measure of time well, what good is age
It takes so many years to learn to hold on the days
They can pour all this money down the hole in your side
But all the money on wall street these tears can’t dry
They’ve got plans for our pockets, cigarettes for our lungs
Poison for our babies and bullets for our guns
I am a cog in this machine
That ruins lives of people unseen
I can’t stop it but Lord, let me try
It’s a sad, sad feeling comes to visit at night
Gut it to the studs
Where I’m Bound
As my mother lay dying she called me to her side
My time grows near my dear so listen close my child
Someday you will find yourself on some beaten path
Some well traveled highway with deep and narrow tracks
You’ll wake up and realize you don’t like where it goes
Land of broken promises and streets of fool’s gold
All of your companions will be afraid of the unknown
You will have to travel light for you will go alone
Though I cannot always see
I know the path’s in front of me
Though I cannot always see
I know where I’m bound
The woods will be so deep and thick you won’t know what’s ahead
So dark that you can’t see beyond your next step
But you’ll look up at the heavens, find your map in the stars
Yes my dear you’ll be guided by the compass in your heart
When you reach your new home on some sunny day
Slowly others will follow on the trail that you made
On their dark journeys they won’t be so afraid
For you traveled not by sight but by your certain faith
2. Gut it to the studs
Like sand caught in my bedsheets
it is rubbing raw my chest
Makes me pace in all these circles
Wakes me nightly in a sweat
These darker hours before the dawn
are where I keep my regrets
My mind says everything is fine
but my heart chomps at the bit
Is it wrong to want what I want
To find what’s right gotta gut it to the studs
What it is I’m not quite sure
But something’s all messed up
I am knocking down the walls tonight
Gotta gut it to the studs
I know that I must sacrifice all the sentimental stuff
Gotta get the wires a-running right
‘Fore the drywall goes back up
There are people risking all they have
In fragile little boats
But me I lay here in my bed
Reading Wendell Berry quotes
Well he has something figured out
Yes he knows how to hope
And that’s a skill that I might need in a fragile little boat
Have we got the gumption to believe
That we could start anew
It could be called naievety
Or the foolishness of youth
But only fools can sleep in homes
With the cracks a-running through
Yes we must build from the very studs
Something level, something true
3. Come sit by my fire
Oh my friend I can only stand at the edge of your sadness
And let the sorrow lap against my feet
And I can’t walk that lonesome valley for you
I can only sing you to sleep
Oh and I can’t speed the coming of the dawn
I can’t dredge the murky depths of your soul
I can’t change that we all die alone
I can only drive you home
Oh my friend I can only hold up this mirror
And hope it answers some of your desire
And I can’t help that winter’s dark and long
But come sit by my fire
How many times has my shoulder been cold
And passed a stranger struggling on the road
Or the pain of friends have I sometimes ignored
Well here’s my hand to hold
And at the beach they’d fly the kites so high
The fragile threads connect them to the sky
And down below are watching you and I
With tender hearts and longing in our eyes
Oh my friend I can only stand at the edge of your sadness
But come sit by my fire
Taking back the Reins
I feel beneath my feet this stairway of stone
My mission calls me down these ancient catocombs
Won’t be long before the torch dies
Nothing but darkness for my eyes
This task I must complete alone
Too many years I’ve been walking in my sleep
My actions guided by these forces unseen
I’ll wait forty days and forty nights
My demon hiding out in his disguise
I came to look him in the eye
There is a hole down in the heart of every man
Its hunger swallows everything in its path
I will learn its face and
I will learn its name and
I am taking back the reigns
My fear of famine transformed to a selfish greed
Of these shameful sins well I do guilty plead
Stole more than I begged or borrowed
Caused others a world of sorrow
I came to tame this reckless beast
If every man has this fear down in his soul
Then left unchecked it will rule the whole world
I will learn its face and
I will learn its name and
I am taking back the reigns
Sweetbay Magnolia
Oh the beauty of autumn leaves is always lost on me
I’m too busy mourning the summer
Silver linings I can find
But there’s so much cloudy sky
Whenever I’m remembering you
There’s a sweet bay magnolia
At the little spot we picked out for you
A sweet bay magnolia
May I find some comfort in its bloom
Your footsteps in the hall
Your coat hung on the wall
Your memory follows me everywhere
I think of your loving eyes
I wish I could be so kind
To all those who knock at my door
Bluebird
A bluebird came to stay with me, it taught me how to see
All the meaning in the ether and the city’s poetry
My life’s pieces fit together like the notes in a melody
The future shone just like the dawn across an uncomplaining sea
Bluebird, come back to me
oh please
One day I woke and it was gone, did it die, was it never there at all
Did I frighten it with my awfulness, did I ne’er deserve its song
Disenchantment spread its dull gray haze over all my restless days
Storms they scattered what was left of my pathetic trophy case
Made a model in its likeness out of paper tape and string
But then the downpour left it all a mess of soggy memory
And so I watch the cloudy skies for a sign of its return
Breadcrumbs scattered at my window, I am sad and taciturn
The Field
My soul is a field where love may grow
Though it hasn’t in a long while
But I’ll pick up my plough and I’ll pick up my hoe
For the soil is rocky and dry
Oh, let me feel the sunshine
Oh, let me feel the rain
Let me remember in the leaner times
That I’ll reap what I’ve sown once again
Let me find all the hard lumps of clay in my heart
Let me soften them with my own hands
Let me dig down a well to the water’s source
Let it flow and nourish the land
Let me take down the fences that leave others out
Let them come and take what they need
Let us sit at a table and eat our fill
And be grateful for tomorrow’s seed
Wild Heart Roam
You can’t drink from a glass that’s been broken
You can’t turn the shifting sand back into stone
You can’t shut a door once it’s open
You can’t stop her from traveling alone
Let her wild heart roam
Cause there’s fever in her bones
Well yours is not the beauty you’ve beholden
Though you wish you had a little to call your own
Oh whatever you thought you had was stolen
You can’t stop her from traveling alone
Dandelion
They paved over this paradise before you were born
Left an asphalt desert of strip mall stores
It’s like your only purpose is to buy what they sell
Toss your every precious penny down a bone dry well
Searched for your story but you have no memories of the roots you need to grow
How can you dig deep enough when parking lots are covering up all the sacred ground
How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re from
In a moment of despair you looked at your feet
Saw a rebel dandelion pushing through the street
Closed your eyes and blew the petals with a breathless ease
Watched your wishes carried off by a restless breeze
It was thus that you discovered you’re a sower of seeds that will someday bust up the concrete
You feel a single rain drop, the heavens are opening up, you’re part of a greater plan
The roots buck the pavement the leaves are escaping
They’ll liberate this land
I know you have sown a thousand seeds
I know they can set this hard earth free
I hope that someday we will be free
Sundown Town
Some people say this city is block by block
Some places you should go and some you should not
Let your nightmares guide your footsteps
Let your fear draw the map
Oh better safe than sorry with a pistol at your back
Roll up your windows and lock your doors
Perhaps it is a fiction but it’s one you can’t ignore
Go back home and sleep soundly on the right side of the tracks
They don’t want your dreams to linger with the cold hard facts
It’s a sundown town
people like you they shouldn’t hang around
Won’t take long to figure out
Oh people like you they shouldn’t hang around
Well if you try to find me I’ll be safe here at home
I want maximum security, I detest the unknown
There are thousands out there like me, all nestled in our shells
We’ll watch others fight for freedom from the safety of our cells
Outtakes from Gut it to the studs
White Lies
It’s 7:30, my clock says 8
A trick to keep me from running late
A lie I tell myself to stay on track
To keep the boss man off my back
It’s a white lie, it’s all that’s keeping me alive
I asked my friends and they all agreed
Green strips of paper are all we need
Our troubles over, around the bend
When we have gathered enough of them
It’s a white lie, it’s what we need just to survive
White lies, they keep me sleeping through the night
White lies, keep me from putting up a fight
White lies, tell me everything’s alright
I see the worker, her tears and sweat
I see him sinking deeper in debt
I see the banker, sitting around
Saying the paper’s gonna trickle on down
It’s a white lie, it’s more than I can I can quite abide
Reverend Jones
It’s come apart at the seam
It needs a machine
The stitching’s too hard on my eyes
I know I’d succeed
if I had what I need
instead of forever just scraping by
On the hill away o’er yonder
You can see ‘cross the county line
And I can’t help but wonder
There must be something more to life
But Reverend Jones said
It’s all in my pretty little head
Grass is always greener to a foolish daydreamer
Should say thank you more often than please
When I’m down on my knees
Though I lock it shut
The door opens up
Silly thoughts blow in like the leaves
My mind fills with doubts
And I sweep them out
I just can’t keep up with the breeze
When I try to pray I can’t think what to say
I’m blank as an overcast sky
There’s fuzz on the screen, the signal’s too weak
The picture I don’t recognize
My heart is a colicky child
Don’t know what it wants
Can’t say what it needsI can’t quiet its selfish desires
And it robs me of my sleep
In the middle of the night
Stay with me
I walk alone by the ocean
into the endless gray
I look back at my footsteps
as they’re swallowed by the waves
Sometimes I wonder why I’m here anyway
But then i think of you and my doubts start to fade
Like a wildfire in the summer’s heat
Like a waterfall running clear and deep
I know my purpose when you’re here with me
Stay with me
The narrow path seemed to me a masquerade
In this crooked world there is no straighter way
So I turned aside and wandered astray
But when I’m with you I feel I know the way
Teach me a song
Late at night under the covers
Lit up by an old flashlight
The dragons and the cowboys
would all come alive
The bravest ones who saved the day
Were the ones I most admired
But the faces of the heroes
So seldom looked like mine
So I turned on the TV
Keeping vigil for a sign
Of a heroine to root for
But she was absent by design
And I turned on the radio
And listened oh so close
Just waiting for a chorus
That sounded like my own
Teach me a song
With a part that I can learn
So I can sing along
Teach me a song
One that I can hear myself in
So I know I belong
Oh teach me a song
And in my history textbook
So many were left out
The heroes who looked different
From the ones who wrote it out
Everyone needs a story
In which they play a role
Everyone needs an anthem
That liberates their soul
Parts & Labor
1. STEP IN LINE
Oh my dear you look so tired in the pale morning light
Chin hung around your chest and all those bags hanging from your eyes
Oh step in line, step in line
Oh step in time, step in time
The lines on the calendar are the bars on my cage
This train thunders through my weeks and all the years bulldoze through my dreams
We’ll find a way out of this prison baby with only the shirts upon our backs
Green pastures of plenty are waiting outside
My path is laid out there before me, and my back a sheet of steel
All my breaths now whistle warnings, blow me by, and stand you clear
2. RISING TIDE
This disease and its gnashing teeth
It brings me to my knees makes me bow before God
I'm not proud that that's what it took
To make me believe what's in every good book
All these chemicals that made you sick
Wanna find the man who made them and show this to him
The long lonesome hallways and the ruined plans
The look in your eyes and the trembling hands
I tried to be patient like my mother but I can't be
We ran aground now honey sit tight and hope we'll float out on the rising tide
You said the breeze it feels oh so sweet
But you must be getting old 'cause it's something old folks say
As a measure of time, well, what good is age
It takes so many years to learn to hold on the days
They can pour all this money down the hole in your side
All the money on Wall Street, these tears can't dry
they've got plans for our pockets, cigarettes for our lungs
Poison for our babies and bullets for our guns
I am a cog in this machine that ruins lives of people unseen
I can't stop it but Lord let me try
It's a sad sad feeling comes to visit at night
I tried to be patient like my mother but I can't be
We ran aground now honey sit tight and hope we'll float out on the rising tide
3. TEA STILL SWEET
The long rows of cotton turn to soybeans and corn
And what was once gravel is asphalt
Well I think our vices our bound to transform
with each starry-eyed generation
The tea is still sweet and the crickets still sing
But termites they threaten foundations
The river takes a piece of the bank each year
The thicket advances each spring
The chess set misses its queen
We city folk long for our roots in the fields
But it’s such a long drive to the country
I barely find time just to eat with my family
Seems that it’s just too soon monday
The bible’s now the self-help section
With prices we’re willing to pay
The meaning of my resurrection
Is the fact that I get up every day
4. MASTER PLAN
Wind is high where I”m going
i can’t say where I’ve been but
We are made out of clay
Shatter and start again
I’m not a threat to your freedom
I”m defending my own master plan
From the nightmares that used to bite at my heels
Before I learned how to dance
I don’t know and neither do you
You can’t see and neither can I
The landscape repeats, an old-fashioned cartoon
Still we continue to ride
Knee high by july
Something borrowed and something blue
All these rules fool the fools
I don’t need a frame to picture you
If you think that you’re at the helm of your destiny
That I hold the world in the palm of my hand
Just watch the mountain bow to the valley
See the ocean defined by the sand
5. CAUGHT BETWEEN THE TIMES - written by Will McKindley-Ward
Listen to the underfunded high-speed rail, oh my my
Half speed thunder, really should run pell-mell to show you what your money buys
just another soldier left on second street
no commuter type will make our four eyes meet
Only thing left to take is a seat
and twenty dollar shines
I’m caught between the times
My angel fell off the nine when the doors blew back on the new high track
She came fluttering down into my boot black lord she looked a nervous wreck
Now good glory, I have a shelter friend
Everyone should have at least one buddy to defend
Somebody you shows up at the end
when you make it out alive
I’m caught between the times
twenty dollar shines
This is the new train / swing low / good or evil / I guess we’ll know
by the direction of your swing / and by what drives the thing
Will you pull up at our side / Dollar fifty and you open wide
Or will you promise leather seats / for thirty bucks a piece
This is a new train / swing low / good or evil / I guess we’ll know
by the direction of your swing / and by what drives the thing
Will you catch me in my back / have you jumped your fancy track
Were you offered a nod and a wink / a nod and a wink
6. PARTS & LABOR
In clothing sewn in crowded rooms
Eating food picked by weary bones
At table cleaned by tired feet
A meal served from fatigue
I act like it’s my birth right
To stumble round like a drunken fool
But some know this is hallowed ground
Don’t deserve our dirty boots
Well I wonder where those feet would go
Wonder what those hands would do
If they ever had a row to hoe and a moment to choose
Well move along, don’t care where you go
But we need this sidewalk clear
Loose parts in the back of some forgotten drawer
Is there anywhere on God’s green earth that I can pull my weight
A place for everyone and everyone in his place
I buit a house of mud and straw
It cracked in the freeze and thaw
So I retreat on my knees
To the city I withdraw
Someday the Lord will open all the doors
All the bells a-ringing true
A place at every table waiting there just for you
Well all we are is parts and labor
To this engine’s indifferent hum
Scrape the bottom of the barrell
7. PUSH MY ROCK UP FOREVER BLUES - written by Will McKindley-Ward
Where I’m from the water table’s high
When April comes can’t find one basement dry
We call it an inconvenience
Then Tim Rose came to run this town
Stuck fifteen oil tanks deep in the ground
The paved over creeks started streaming
Storms keep coming rain or shine, no matter what i say or do
I can’t stop my hurried mind, cold on the shoulder and my eyes on you
I shacked up with the sunny kind, impending sense of doom
one must think of me satisfied with the push my rock back up forever blues
Sixty miles from the Chesapeake
Off the shore and somehow we still sprung a leak
Forgive my disbelief
Drop your buckets, boys we can’t be saved
My house sinks down into its early grave
No army corps engineering this time
Put a bridge on it, never say why
Put a bridge on it, big media fly by
Go tell TIm Rose he’s still saving the day
8. GO DARLING
There’s wrinkles in my shirt sleeves and dishes in the sink
And nothing but ham on bread for nigh on a week
You left your worn-out apron and took your brand new boots
In the suitcase I bought you for our first honeymoon
Go darling go, it’s a long lonesome road
But the fire in your heart, and the trouble it would start
Would burn this old house down
Round the time I lost your temper you stopped curling up your hair
You’d go out by the fence post just stand right there and stare
Well you ungrateful woman, you made me play the fool
Well I could teach you more than you will ever learn in school
Left the door wide open, cold air blowing in
I don’t bother to shut it, cause you’ll come back again
Well you ungrateful woman, by now you ought to know
You should swallow your pride my dear and come back home
9. WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE
When I was your age
We would play by the side of the bay
Made forts from the driftwood and pies from the clay
My mother would smile from a beach chair all day
When I was your age
But child you can't get there anymore
The bridge washed away long ago
The house blew to splinters in a terrible storm
Now it is driftwood on faraway shores
Oh child you can't get there anymore
When I was your age
There was snow on the mountains as pure as the rain
There were creatures by the millions, many more than I can say
No ark to save them they all died away
When I was your age
A fairy tale to you it must seem
I suppose that it might as well be
But I want you to know all these things you'll never see
I want you to know that I'm sorry
I'm sorry
They told us it was coming, it was coming very soon
They told us it was coming, I did not know what to do
Didn't know what to do so I wrote this little tune
I wrote this little tune, a prayer for you
Oh God bless you
10. PROMISED LAND
Once I was a fly, flew from room to room
Now I am a pen, write the story of a greater hand
I am a road and I'm headed for the promised land
We've all been told there's not enough for everyone
We guard what we hold dear with laws and with guns
Instead of all these walls, let's build the kingdom come
Used to knock on all the doors that shut us out
Now we build our own house
One with no walls that will shelter us all
Breakfast Truce
1. Macy’s Parking Lot
in the fountain in the courtyard
by the macy's parking lot
i emptied all my pockets for you
by the macy's parking lot
in the kitchen in our blue house
making tea in my nightgown
how i wish i'd tried to make the eggs how you like
in the kitchen in our blue house
oh when i go to the valley
ask the wild birds to call out your name
i'll take my comfort in their silence
in the sweet prefixes of spring
in the swing on our front porch
how i miss your creak on floor boards
how i wish i could see you sitting here next to me
in the swing on our front porch
2. Brother Left the Mine
Brother left the mine in November
strung out one foot in the grave
I thought I heard him crying on the bathroom floor
it's hard to recognize the brave
The smell of the blue vinyl bus seats
The hum of the engine below
The rhythm of the telephone poles going by
And the endless broken road
Brother you just can't be everywhere
And no you can't please everyone
And so let go of your aching heart
And learn to love your place
Some things up ahead are illusions
Could say the same of the things left behind
The dirty black soot in the grit of your teeth
And the sirens in your mind
3. As I Was Told
Well I left the east to embrace the west
I expected applause for my confessions
I can show you how to pirouette as you evolve
If you can show me how to peel this flower off the wall
I like to think that my soul would rise
Up through Minnesota’s open skies
Still I’d like to know, are they as open as I was told
Darling won’t you draw the blinds cause
Every morning is a second try
I can show you how to miss someone before they’re gone
If you can show me how to fake it all along
I like to think that I can recognize what’s communicated by your eyes
Still I’d like to know, was this as real as your eyes told me so
I’ll conform to what I’m told to until you rebel
but if revolutions are our solutions only time will tell
As time turns my curves to lines will my questions become my exclamations
I can show you how to know when you’ve figured it all out
If you can show me how to keep your foot out of your mouth
Every book I ever seem to start before I’m done they always fall apart
Still I’d like to know, is this as worth it as I was told
4. The Bits & the Pieces
black cross hatch on december sky
bare trees and tangled powerlines
a lonely sparrow with open mouth
mother brothers have all flown south
little birdie hope springs eternal in your stubborn breast
go on and gather the bits and the pieces for your empty nest
and i know there's something to be said for somedays
a wrinkled woman on icy steps
nightmares of catching her death
of winter colds and broken necks
bitter warnings escape pursed lips
fragile lady bones made of china won't you crack a smile
you've been wasting hopeless and worried the last years of your life
and i know there's something to be said for caution
oh rosy cheeks, breathless on the mat, wipe off your feet
from silence the doorbell rang, never thought i'd see you home again
5. Reunion
Fall into the river, feel the river, you got the time to dry off, ohh
Come for lunch, take a paper plate, come for lunch, come run
Step into the garden, feel the corn grown, you got the time to grow up
6. Pajarita
Hoots and hollers, shouts and whistles, crowded porches
Alley way eyes by the curbside put the steel her glare
Before 9, After 5, aint it a shame she’s afraid
She is high and mighty, clutching tightly her purse to her breast
She says hello, she won’t even turn her high held head
Out at three from the back inof the house, he’s alone, far from home
Pajarita, vuelta (little bird fly away)
He can’t clip your wings so you’ll die lonely but free
Pajarita venga (little bird come here)
I’m tired of you looking down at me
7. Crick in my neck
Oooh
Well I shouted out to see if you were there
And it echoed through the mountains
Well these mountains hug the horizon, point your attention up to the sky
So I have you to blame for this awful crick in my neck
Crick in my neck (repeat)
Well there’s something stuck on the bottom of my shoe
So I wander in crooked spirals
Are you aware of all the things you left inside these dirty cabinets
Have you ever seen fruit of your labor rot on the vine
Well I guess we all could keep better track of time
Keep track of time (repeat)
8. Neighbor’s House
the hole in your pocket gives your money to all the world
and the hole in the bedroom wall shares your beauty with other girls
no needle's eye no word on high could ever seem to patch that tear
no heart you can break no pill you can take can fill the empty air
chorus
did you see the neighbor's house burning, i can't bear to watch
those red lights flashing shook my soul from halfway down the block
and i admit a tiny part of me wishes we were them
for such a clear excuse to start again
the silence in your bedroom fills with questions when you're alone
and the darkness beating down your door demands that you stay at home
no job you can take no grin you can fake could ever seem to fill that void
well i found mine when you find yours oh don't blame it on me boy
i don't want to say why there's a hole in the prettiest life that i know
9. Brambles
like an earthworm stranded on the sidewalk
like a rat drowned in the pool
it's more a spectacle than a tragedy
less an exception than the rule
like a puzzle missing the final piece
like a leaky boat on the lake
i've tried so hard to make the best of this
the voyager's lost her way
and please, please say you like me
just let me know something is real
been chasing specters through the brambles
building castles for the waves
like the pause at the ends of your sentences
like the darkness before the dawn
this silence is not really empty
a breath before the plunge
10 - The Notion
my love is a river, it's wild and it's deep
i've searched for it's sources, they're hidden from me
i've got the notion that it flows to an ocean that will never ever end
my love is a fire, it's burning and it's true
i've got the notion that this steadfast devotion it will never ever end
when i'm lost in the dead of night, the cold wind blows its lonely cry
i will keep on looking i'll be searching for you
my love is a mountain it's strong as it is tall
there's no man can move it, he'll try but he'll fall
i'll keep on climbing til my hands touch the sky and it will never ever end
11 - Man Enough
He plows the snowfall from roads out in east Nevada
Eighty miles from town
All the complaints and squeaks from the rusty hinges
cover lonesome sounds
Are you man enough just to confront
All the crevices of your own thoughts
She sells her trinkets from behind and old card table
Beckons you to ask
‘bout the trip she took to niagara falls
Dear lord don’t ask
Aren’t you tempted to let go the handrail
Loosen up your grasp and fall down
Chorus
I feel so much pressure to be someone somewhere something somehow
Pushing from inside my head breath in breath out
Shout out x2
He sees the fractals in soap as he scrubs the dishes
Patterns in his hands
He hears the music in all of the passing traffic
Still they say he’s so bland
Are you brave enough to be no one
Loosen up your grasp and fall down
12. Bathwater Baby (Tomboy Blues)
she wore her grass stains with a wounded soldier's pride
holes in her stockings and mud all tracked inside
hid in the tool shed every time she cried
she smeared the queer
made fun of the kid from germany
sticks and stones they broke her bones and they added insult to injury
didn't want to be a pretty girl anyway
her books were boring and the tv picture sucked
asked her brother where the liquor cabinet was
took his guitar out to sulk in the garage
thought the sunrise was another cheap trick from jesus
made her think that maybe she could love god
goody two shoes could have those sour grapes
left in a huff to march to her own drum
only to find that she never even had one
Was it a tired gimmick with the holes all in it
or a flag to fly high and proud
no one to fill her afternoons
nowhere to sing those tomboy blues
didn’t want to be a sissy girl anyway
bathwater baby wasn't always such a mess
but she threw herself out with all the rest
it was a notion that was never second-guessed
13. Breakfast Truce
well they backed him in a corner
he was scared cause they were pissed
just him and all them fists slapping in the dark
and the doctors were redundant
cause he already knew that just like me or you
he had to hold on one more night
chorus
boy you've gotta walk like a fool through that line of fire
between the cold dark ground and the morning star
don't be the sorry soul who breaks the truce
better to be dead and gone and tried and true
at the pastor's play at christmas he spoke those lonely lines
just him and all those eyes watching from the dark
and the critics, lord forgive them, they know not what they done
they tied his mouth up shut
he ain't never gonna speak up
what is it we have but a song
Isn’t this what we pined for all along?
Make love your only weapon, speak truth with all your words
Might not get what you deserve
but it’s solid stone
well he hung his head and wept when he heard the back door slam
just him and both his hands
and everything they'd done
there's no angry silent night the morning cannot cure
at breakfast he was sure he would win her back again