Folk Music

Folk Music

Liberates the Consciousness of the People

It used to take two Chords

and a pretty good Story

But the People these Days

aren't really into that sort of Thing

Arizona

I wrote 4 songs tonight

Now, that's not exactly true

I wrote 1/2 of one

finished 2

and took a cold, hard, look at an old 1

But finishing something

is a hell of an accomplishment

anyway

and that aint but half of what I did

I'm fibbing,

I didn't mean to

I just realized something just now

that makes me from a second ago

an outright fabricator

I might've wrote 1 and a 1/2 songs today

because two of the songs I finished

are mashed together

and I don't know what that counts for

Lately, I've been thinking alot about Art

I got this professor

always talking about "designation"

(which I don't give a shit about)

as a necessary requirement

for something to be Art

Like we all need more Authorities in our lives

So I dedicated a song to R.G. Collingwood

its an expressionist lyric

he oughta like that

"Collingwood"

When you were a writer

You were in love with your words

You wrote all those letters

Until you lost your nerve

What did you see?

Only the Mountains and the deep blue Sea

& What did you hear?

Only the Birds, Only the Birds, Only the Birds

Were There

Now that you are a painter

You're in love with all you see

You paint all your pictures

& then you ask it of me

What did you see?

Only the Mountains and the deep blue Sea

& What did you hear?

Only the Birds, Only the Birds, Only the Birds

Were There

~

There's an outro to it too

but there's no words

I like to think of it as a Dillemma

which is the same thing to me

as saying the Blues

It brings the melody into a more major

but way stranger space

in 6/4

(With the #s indicating number of measures)

Em G Em G F Fm B7 C7 Cm7 G B7 Em

2 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 2 2 2

It's sad and triumphant

the way I like 'em

Really wants a horn

but they're hard to find around here

and I find my mind

drifting off to Arizona

and my lonesome heart

trailing behind

I already done fucked that up

because all that above

comes at the end

and now its all out of order

but it don't matter really

there are always ways

of stranding things together

I wrote the next section first

and its been a minute too

but the words got me thinking

and seeing them in their own light

reminded me of a friend from the Service

That aint true really either

I knew the guy

but I wouldn't call 'em a friend

We were in the same company

and had a couple chances

to shoot the shit together

anyway

he was killed in Afghanistan

guess a week or so now

but it breaks my heart

anyway

"Snow Song"

That idiot drummer

He marched through the summer

Beating his drum

Till it snowed, playing,

"I'm Coming Home"

"I'm Coming Home"

Your soft-hearted sister

She's down by the river

Singing the only song

That she knows

"I'm Coming Home"

"I'm Coming Home"

Because

The Bells in the Alley, they clang

So Slow

And the Horns in the Army, they sing

So Slow

So don't Go

Back to the Snow

Without Me

~

That last bit I wrote

thinking about that kid

AJ Creighton

Who knows if he'd appreciate it

Anyway,

Dedications from Strangers

are more necessary to Art

Than Designations from Anybody

I know they don't make much sense together

at first glance

and they're not really supposed to

in any logical way

but its never been about logic

Anyway

Long Slow Blues, in D

Must've got a bad seed
aint felt right for days
Everyday my head sings
but I can't tell what it says
and I can't stay estranged
No, I can't stay estranged from you

Had me a bad dream
it's been sticking with me for days
Don't know what I picked up
on that train ride to LA
and I can't stay estranged
No, I can't stay estranged from you

What about a clear stream
makes me wanna stay
when I only get my feet wet
before my heart it runs away
and I can't stay estranged
No, I can't stay estranged from you

Lick of Good, in E

I was lost, Dear Lord, without a Rifle
I was lost, Dear Lord, deep in your Wood
and I aint never seen this so called Devil
and Lord, you aint done me one Lick of Good

I was lost, Dear Lord, deep in your Cities
I was lost, without a Friend, Nickel or Dime
and the only time I heard you calling
was from an old payphone I’d just left behind

So Lord, if you won’t do even one Lick of Good
Well then, nobody should, nobody should
Now Lord, if you won’t do me one Lick of Good
Well then, nobody should, nobody should

Off the path, Dear Lord, I saw your babies
they were running bare into the eve
and I prayed, Oh Lord, that I could run with them
but a Christian Man, I could not be

So Lord, if you won’t do even one Lick of Good
Well then, nobody should, nobody should
Now Lord, if you won’t do me one Lick of Good
Well then, nobody should, nobody should

I was down, Dear Lord, in that Whale’s belly
I placed my Bets, knowing He was Yours
because nothing, I’ve seen, in all your Creation
has ever ushered Me safely Indoors

So Lord, if you won’t do even one Lick of Good
Well then, nobody should, nobody should
Now Lord, if you won’t do me one Lick of Good
Well then, nobody should, nobody should

You are my Sunshine, in C

You are my Sunshine, my only Sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know, Dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my Sunshine away

The other night, Dear, as I lay dreaming
I dreamed I held you in my arms
But when I awoke, Dear, I’d been mistaken
So, I hung down my head and I cried

I will always love you and make you happy
If you’d only do the same
But if you leave me to find another
You’ll regret it all some day


You are my Sunshine, my only Sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know, Dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my Sunshine away

(Instrumental Verse)

You are my Sunshine, my only Sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know, Dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my Sunshine away

(Instrumental Verse)

I will always love you and make you happy
If you’d only do the same
But if you leave me to find another
You’ll regret it all some day


You are my Sunshine, my only Sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know, Dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my Sunshine away

Guitars

Guitars, Guitars
strings ring, buzz & sing
arthritic rhythm Guitars
tinny tin strings
on the side of the microphone
electricity swims
tap tapping on the bridge
loose shoed
breathing volume
running up on the fretboard
with jabby hot chords
and the palm of the hand
on the hi-hat’s beating
bleeding into the organ
humming with the melody line
rising always rising
crashing fuzz in reverb
playing the poured concrete
amped up in the corner
alone

Together Through Life

When this comes out

I will buy it

You hear me?

BUY IT

It will be the feel good hit of the summer

HEED MY WORDS

That is all.

P.S. Read the link!

Free Chorus!

4/4

F
I wouldn't have you
Gm
Any other way
Bb
Any other way
F
won't do

F
The stars wont be here
Gm
Every other day, (every other day)
Bb
Every other day, (every other day)
F
It's true


Outro ad infinitum

The snobbish way I talk about bands that I like when I've been drinking

I like bands that make E.P.s
I don’t care how long they are
they can make a mockery of the format
for all I care
but keep us up to date on your progress.
Your artists first right?
We want every step to be documented
they don’t have to be extraordinary
we know you have deep dark projects
bubbling around in there
give us a taste.
I think singles need to be taken back
from the unartful radio cock jockeys
and given back to the artists
Single statements with a reverse side
Tiny testaments onto themselves.
Go back and listen to those old singles
they were like snapshot manifestos.
And you see it too, good artists are doing
the right thing.
Get the music out to the people,
fuck the holiday shopping seasons
fuck them
fuck corporate hatched conventional wisdom
man
All I’m saying is
bands are back to the big questions.
They’re putting everything under the microscope again
and they’re singing to you
all about what they’ve seen in there
and they choose to make it beautiful.

Better dead than well read

Wherever the horns are calling you home to
trust me
the melody is better from afar

trust the instruments

wherever they may lead you

Go trot the whole wide world
these truths will still be there to meet you

You can't bring anything home

every bags a burden

you carry everything

for those whose arms you run to

whose truth is a mystery to you

the tinkling horns will clang at the closest

sign that you're alive

Go be undiscoverable on any street in the world

on any country road

it's better odds to plant in somewhere

where you're indistinguishable

than to be the prized carrot

in a clay pot

You'll hear it said

time & time again

The truth of all of everything is complete

in every thing you can find

Don't listen to the drums

Don't listen to the horns

Run the other way

Pursue the absence of any semblence of their sound

Seek a holy ignorance

Find a little peace there

and remember everything I've said

It's been a choice all along

to just let love go

everywhere

It's been a choice all along

to hang on to remorse

& lie to yourself & everybody else

that every time you've died

was a fake.

I've met women on the internet

Some of them, I talked to for hours
Some of them, I aint never even heard their voice.
I might've wanted to fuck their brains out everynight that I knew them
and some nights when I didn't,
but I never wanted to meet a goddamned one of them,
not really.

And they still always go too damn far,
even when there are no lines drawn,
just an unclassifiable communication between

far distant bodies speculating over the point
of whether there is any reason to do it in the first place.

Even then

it still slips into the strangest places.

I used to fight one of them all the time,
always attempting to persuade her into
living in the right now
because the heads & tails of it is & always has been
the fact that
nobody can actually live anywhere else.

Second Glances at Greatest Hits

It’s easy to get bored these days.
New things are always popping up,
advertising just to us with alarms and delivered messages.
There’s paranoia without the fear,
the heightened, agitated state fully intact but unfocused,
grabs at everything for scrutiny.
We’re the most distracted people who’ve ever walked the Earth
and even the things we love can’t hold us forever.
It’s the vibrating, life with it’s hand on the buzzer,
we can’t be moved, locked as we are in seizure-born paralysis.
There’s tones in it too, a humming reverberation with each of us,
blurring public spaces into white noise
where our ears, perked indiscriminately, pour out of our mouths
those glimpses of everything
which speak to us directly in rhyme, lyric and song
as testaments to a time & place
when we alone we’re completely in tune with the world around us.
Our insights right, thumb on the pulse,
we march in search of the next blanket, shelter,
warm fire and battlefield,
whatever it always is that keeps us right with the world.
We get real weak and tired too.
Preconceptions, sensationalized histories, the advice of friends,
the attention paid to pictures wear down those unspeakable truths
we find in reflection.
It gets harder to remember where we were when we realized
we were little more than our weaknesses
wrought by the light of the unexplainable will we have to refine ourselves
and we slip up, misfire,
file things in our history simply because we believe that some time has passed
and some part of ourselves has been shaved away with it
depleting whatever core resonated to some
certain day, certain listening, certain lesson, certain rumor
but its not true, none of it.