One of my favorite clubs to play in Austin, is the Hole in the Wall on Guatelupe near the UT campus. It’s a dirty, raucous kind of bar and they book bands to suit, so it is always a really fun, really loud, sorta drunken gig.
Can You Remember
When I feel invincible I just smile
Breath the warm night air and close my eyes
I dream of nights alone with you
Cheap wine, getting stoned with you
Asleep in my arms as the night sky dies
Can you remember, don't you recall
The way that it felt, the smell of the fall
The way that our love was like some kind of poem
The way that it rhymed, the way that it rolled off the tongue
It's a smoke filled bar, electric guitars
It's a Hole in the Wall, three shots and you're on
This curtain of smoke, just tickles my throat
It's a gentle reminder that everything dies
(repeat chorus x2)
The love of my life is an archaeologist who digs and works in Guatemala for sometimes many months at a time. This simple little tune came out of a pang of longing somewhere in the middle of one of the longer stints without her.
I Miss You
Can't you see it coming now, working it's way through
Silently closing down, this distance between me and you
I like to be there when you come, but I'll still be here when you go
I write these songs for you and sing them late at night
So hopefully by now you know
I miss you
I miss you
Girl I miss you
I miss you
The days are never near as long, as the night draws out to be
I think I never get a wink of sleep, but when you're right here next to me
Another hour just rolled by, I'm still lost inside my head
Reminiscing all those Sunday mornings, we spent laying in my bed
(Repeat chorus)
It wasn't that long ago that I held you
It won't be that long till I see you again
But I still get this felling I could die for no reason
Like I'm actually missing some little part of my heart
(Repeat chorus)
I was in NYC in October of 2001 to play the CMJ music festival. The city was still reeling from the terrorist attacks and it was just a really weird time to be there. I was on the way to the show, sitting on the downtown B to 34th subway when I was struck with a bright blink of truth, or a moment of clarity. The chaos of everything and my place in it suddenly became so clear.
B to 34th
You see all kinds from all different places,
The look in the eye, the look on the faces
They’ll rise from this time and resound this refrain
How we all died just a little that day
It seemed like you, I remember, too
It’s a sweet October sky when I finally feel all right to cry
Daisy doesn’t do what those have done before
She says it’s all about the posturing that really makes your point
The lessons left unlearned, I’ll learn some other day
The things I’ve left unsaid, I’ll say some other way
(Repeat chorus x2)
Jane Jacobs was an activist, writer, and all around badass lady, in NYC in the 50’s. With no formal higher education, she took on Robert Moses and the architectural and planning establishment who were proposing a freeway through lower Manhattan, destroying among other things Washington square park. They lost.
Jane Jacobs
There’s Jane Jacobs on her bike, rolling ‘round the lower east side
Causing problems, impeding progress, the city changes, this change is constant
But Hudson street will still exist, in the hearts and on the lips
And as we’re merging some sunless day, we won’t remember the price you paid
But we needed a thruway for the city to thrive
And if we had a superhighway there’d be no more waiting in line
You’ve gotta see the big picture and not get to attached
You see it’s all about money, and money’s all about tax
Taxes power this big machine, that eats up fools like you and me
But hey that’s progress or evolution, consumerism the revolution
You can purchase yours today, the stores are close now ‘cause the freeway
We have the wisdom of 10,000 years, in the backseat like souvenirs
(Repeat chorus)
There’s Jane Jacobs on her bike, rolling ‘round the lower east side
Causing problems, impeding progress
I spent 10 months on the road, playing solo shows and living in the back of my van. I was constantly on my cell phone, booking the next months shows while driving to the next gig. This song came out of the strange loneliness of that experience.
Night From Day
It’s just a series of the same days, I start them all about the same way
It’s starts to vary very little as the hours bleed on
It gets a little bit easier, I get a little bit harder
You know I keep on moving but I’m just sliding by
Night from day, I feel the same way
And I wonder where you are
This empty feeling reminds me I’m alive
I’m dying in the corner of this bar
I wonder if it ever seemed so strange, to anybody else that came this way
This funny feeling, that I’m about to be forgotten
But broken hearts and broken dreams, are really nothing new to me
I’m stuck in the strangest cycle, where you sorta succeed
(Repeat chorus)
It’s pushing 95, and I’m doing 70
Down 35, but I’m just 29
(Repeat chorus)
I lived and played one winter in a little ski town, Red River, New Mexico. It’s a great little town and was a nice break from the solo touring I was doing, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that my heart was somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala.
Longing
Wishin I was in an airport waiting on a plane
Something to wisk me away somewhere I could breath again
The sun would just be setting as the wheels are touching down
The streetlight start to flicker as I roll into your town
It’s like a trip around the world, or like flying on your own
It’s this sudden rush of insight without the pain of having grown
Well I guess I figured out yesterday that you are really mine
And I love the thought of growing old kissing you goodnight
It’s a feeling like falling with the wind in your ears
It’s the things that you and I will see in the next 50 years
It’s like a trip around the world, or like flying on your own
It’s this sudden rush of insight without the pain of having grown
It’s like a picture of you with some sunlight in your eyes
It’s the things you like to do when you’re alone with me at night
Life has a way of dragging along, as it takes you away for just a little to long
It’s weird that corner you turn in a relationship where all the stuff you used to love about someone suddenly gets under your skin. I think this song is about working through that point.
When We’re Free
Sometimes I’m in my little room late at night, rollin life over and thinking by candlelight
Singing myself songs that nobody hears
I listen to voices that whisper of choices, and tell of a time that we were all free
Whisper that things are worse than we fear
But it’s all right, we’ll be fine tonight
Everything will be different when we’re free
And it’s all right, there’s no need to fight
Everything will be different when we’re free
I’m a slob, but you’re a drunk and I get high a little to much
We never really get around to what’s really wrong
I hide from you and you hide from me, either of us only show the things we want seen
I know I’ll be lost before to long
(Repeat chorus)
I love Jackson Pollock. I love the idea of the painter out there on the collective edge, tugging the rest of us along.
Pollock
I know just how Jackson felt, they analyze it all to death
We can only show you the visions that we’ve seen
Maybe words can’t contain, the things that we were born to say
The thing that really matters is truer than it seems
The family probably never knew that one so close could see right through
I guess it’s just our nature to kill what you can’t comprehend
Paint is just one brilliant way that God herself communicates
Comments on the culture and changes how we see
Like catabatic winds that blow touching everything we know
Affecting everything on earth with varied subtlety
The family probably never knew that one so close could see right through
I guess it’s just our nature to kill what you can’t comprehend
Welcome to the promised land where artists get a thorny crown
They’ll smile if they like your work and buy it when you’re dead
Someday I guess we’ll understand this force that guides a painter’s hands
Come to recognize that the truth sometimes lies
We’ll finally feel what it’s like to be free
We originally had a lot of other instruments on this track but after Paul Etheridge laid down his organ parts we were so amazed that we ended up stripping out most of the other parts so they didn’t interfere.
Everything
When I'm around I see little changes in you
Without a sound you say that you're tired
I'm looking down this mile of muddy dialog
And wondering why, if neither of us tried
But everything changes in it's own time
Everything changes without a reason sometimes
And when I ask where you've been
I don't mean for you to reveal everything
On my way down, I remember seeing you
You'd finally found what you most desired
A thing so profound, we never found a way to say
What we'd been without for all of this time
(Repeat chorus)
When I'm around I see little changes in you Without a sound you say that you're tired
We had a big bruiser of a cat that escaped one day and was just gone. We later discovered that he had been living under the downstairs porch for months. He was living large, keeping the neighborhood bird and squirrel population in check. We found him after a losing battle with a car but I’m pretty sure he went out swinging.
All Your Own
You lived under my house for such a long time
That I fear you’d forgotten what it was really like to love
But I guess you liked it best that way or else you simple liked to stay
Everybody I knew prayed that someday you’d come back
They say that it’s not that hard to come back
I say it’s not that hard to go
Spinning so silently into infinity
Lost in a world all you own
I see everything begin, and I think of where I’ve been
Things that I seen along the way
The thing I think I’ve learned is that everything returns
Everything connects me to the road that always leads me back to you
(Repeat chorus x2)
On the day you finally died, I looked into your eyes
You reached through time and space, as if you were trying to say
Everybody goes their own road, everybody goes their own road,
Everybody goes their own road
I once saw a bumper sticker in Texas that read “ I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as quick as I could.”
Texas
I've never seen a moon quite like it
A Smokey Mountain sky at twilight
I was driving East up I-81
The radio seemed strangely smooth
Glowing in this orange moon
I could hear him singing, Carolina in my mind
But I'd rather be in Texas, breathing Hill Country air
And seeking relief from Hill Country heat
Taking life a little easier
There's a feeling you get that you never really lose
The further I get in some other direction, the clearer it is why I chose
To be in Texas
Every night is the same out here, and every bar has the same smokey air
Everybody's stories just start to sound the same
Technically I like the road, a strange new town has room to roam
And people think your interesting, when you're from another town
(Repeat chorus)
In West Texas tumbleweeds are born to roam and just like me they find it hard to find a home We'll ramble around, and roll through your town
Thirsty and thinking the same thing... I'd rather be in Texas
There's a feeling you get that you never really lose
The further I get in some other direction, the clearer it is why I chose
To live in Texas
When I wrote this I thought it would be funny to put these sorta twisted lyrics with a sweet love ballad type tune. I still do. But it is just a joke… please don’t have your therapist email me… or I’ll kill you.
Bare Hands
I’m trying to locate the right way to say that I can’t stand the sight of your face
To somehow explain that you are to blame that everything turned out this way
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope you die in a most painful way
Maybe you should go and not come back
Don’t take this personal ‘cause it’s a fact
We get along like gas and fire
Every time you come around, I get this strange desire
I want to kill you with my bare hands
I want to kill you with my bare hands
I’ve heard people say that a person can change but I thought that it might take some time
But you went from Gandhi to Hitler it seems, all right in front of my eyes
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope you die sometime later today
(Repeat chorus)