1. |
Memphis, NY
04:39
|
|||
|
Dream seem lean
Now old friend?
Everything rises to converge
To an end
After all this time
Has chimed and spent
Will there be faith enough
For a balcony's reverence?
I don't know where I begin
Been blown beyond your wind
Now all I've gleaned
From my dream's machines
Is everything leaves
Fade out film burn memory screens
As time winds on
So wanes the free
Did you know you'd drape the dream
From the eaves of our belief?
I don't know where I can be
I wasted years in the reeds
And all I done is bleed
I guess I'm still on my feet
If the dream seems lean
One thing I'll tell you true
Classic cars and corner bars
Can't cut beyond the blue
Like when we were young
And only passing through
It ain't no mark of Cain
Just sit there in your pain
And know them feelings ain't just on you
And that I'll see you soon
|
||||
2. |
Just Like the Rain
04:52
|
|||
|
Gave up the ghost down on fourth street
My body buried in prophetic cold
Seems like they shook up this town
Just to let us all down
Just as long as something got sold
Babe, I got old
Everybody got their reasons leaving
And I know nothing gonna stay the same
Cause the easiest part about running, darlin'
You ain't never gotta change
Ain't that just like the rain?
Just like the rain
Some kind of pain
Just like the rain
Johnny always thought it was funny, man
How he wished life would just leave him be
Now he just haunts his own house
Renewing old vows and
Talking to Jesus in the trees
There's this pretty, painted, little lady
Who sings holy in my golden frame
She says, "Listen, little dove
All you ever learn from love
Is the sound of reshackled chains."
And now ain't that a shame?
She ain't never gonna change
Just like the rain
Just like the rain
I don't know how all this started
I know moonlight don't hide no bones
But remember what you said
That night we were laying in bed how
death's only leaving alone?
I'll keep a-pounding this hammer, honey
Till there ain't nothing left to my name
The mystery hangs, the world flashes her fangs
As I pump this poison through my veins
Ain't that just like the rain?
Just like the rain
Some kind of pain
Like the rain
|
||||
3. |
Goodbye Anarene
05:07
|
|||
|
Busted windows and burned-out cars
In a town of a hundred and one
And I'm sitting in the dark down at Big Al's bar
He said, "Ain't no war to be won."
See Papa got saved by a billboard sign
About thirty-three years ago
Said, "Listen here, Jack, the Lord heals in time.
This town won't become what you've known."
And he said,
"Goodbye, Anarene.
Goodbye to our home.
Goodbye, Anarene.
No more sorrows will you know."
So I dropped out of school, hit them oil fields
Rigging work in the sun's scorching swell
Guess I kept my sins at an even keel
Doing time in the mouth of hell
Then some Stetsons and some bolo ties
Come flashing around late last fall
Said, "The well's shutting down, boys. All that lives must die,
But we know this ain't living at all."
And they sighed,
"Goodbye, Anarene.
Goodbye to our home.
Goodbye, Anarene.
Man, we'd have told you if we'd have known."
Now Papa don't sleep, he don't get off his knees
And Mama don't sing her sweet songs
Guess you reap what you can, Lord still lays vengeful hand
No healing for New Babylon
When those devils return picking poor folks to burn
I'm gonna be long gone
Goodbye, Anarene
Goodbye to my home
Goodbye, Anarene
Ghosts are all I've ever known
Still sitting in the dark down at Big Al's bar
Packed bags and a hunger for home
And Al shakes my hand, trickles tears in my car
Says, "Son, may the Lord bless your road."
I don't know, I don't know
I don't know, I don't know
|
||||
4. |
Edge Man, Mercy Train
05:56
|
|||
|
Raining ash on the steel roof
Blowing down the southwest line
Charlie turns and smiles
I stare at his stolen youth
Buried back behind the fear in his eyes
From Eugene clear on down Fresno
We take all the work we can find
At nights I dream of fields back in Ohio
The waving wheat and life I left behind
Mercy, mercy me
Ain't no other place I'd rather be
Mercy, mercy train
In the land of plenty, ain't no use for no idle hands
Sometimes I wish fate would pick me
Like the fruit I pluck off them vines
I'd catch the 6:10 back to my baby
Teach her dancing on the front porch in evening light
But I've grown weary of all this leaving
Memory fades like taillights gone by
But, Charlie, I hear this frail freedom ringing
A quiet kindness, even if just for a time
Mercy, oh mercy train
I just can't fit nowhere and I can't keep starting again
Mercy, mercy me
If I come home, man, remember me as I used to be
|
||||
5. |
||||
|
In the whitewashed walls
Of my five by eight
I nearly left my mind
When my mind was all there was left to take
So I kissed the floor
Cause my friend told me
"At least you got the choice.
Some places in this world won't let you leave.
Take it from me."
And her majesty
She met me downtown
I was her in-between
She let me hang my heart on the noose of her crown
On that pale autumn day
In that dim lamplit bar
With eyes so far away
She said, "I'll see you soon." with the grace of a passing car
Last night I dreamed
I heard her calling
My name from her bedroom door
But when I opened up
All I found was
Dead leaves and grooves in the floor
Guess I was some grooves in your floor
Ain't we all just grooves in the floor
Now I've been used up before
And I've been taken for some rides
Thought I'd learned how to laugh
But all it takes, man, is a woman to cry
And don't worry about me
Mama, I'll be fine
At least you taught me how to leave
And still somehow
To get left behind
|
||||
6. |
To Iowa (For Huck)
04:26
|
|||
7. |
Down the Line
05:23
|
|||
|
Listen on the wind
All the corner boys are restless, scattered
Cinders still smoking
Ah, to begin again
Just another stranded soldier, a bleeding hammer
A broken hymn
All these years I been working
To make them mine
A path unpaved, a promise made,
Just something down the line
I am haunted still
By a scarecrow ghost at every street lamppost
Old ruin I cannot rebuild
I guess it ain't yet willed
But as my country burns, and those to take still earn
It seems a people's dream is killed
And by morning I may surely hang
For thinking of this kind
I will always ache for every fearful face
Unfurling down the line
Watch me shiver across your room
As the ruffles of your skirt tails flutter
Skipping past the tombs
How did it get so blue?
Between the blinding rain and my wicked chains
She smiles, "Your trouble is your truth.
With all your dancing through the dark,
It's hard to keep in time.
All we can hope is for to stay afloat,
Some goodness down the line."
Listen on the wind
I'm a-burning back to them crooked tracks
To where all of this begins
If time would only bend
Then we could frame a path, and make the flashes last,
Write this romantic dream an end
But tonight I think I call their bluff
With just a pair of nines
And we can find our faded form to fight it
Somewhere down the line
|
||||
8. |
Cadillac Motel
07:56
|
|||
|
A crowded mind at the county line
As the highway howled me to sleep
Force-fed fever dreams of old kitchen scenes
Through broken teeth
And the calloused moon
She just hangs and blooms
Leaving nothing left lit out on Broadway
To keep
Hey, but listen man, I got plan
Get us out of here real clean
Oh my dearest friends I've returned again
To the lonely in-between
And with thicker hide
The terrible tide splits the seams
I could never prove
I did it all for you
But I once believed that a shouldered sea
Was worth fighting to be free
Keep that front porch light a-shining bright
Lord that's all I'll ever need
You said in another life
You'd have made things right
But now body begs reprieve
And all the folks you'd known and homes you're shown
Lovingly leave
Man, but I was there
And goddamn your prayers
I'll get it back down at Cadillac
Just give me time to grieve
With all the souls to know, a heart might grow
Still ain't room for memory
I still see you there
In your wingback chair
As I thumb through reverie
They say the days'll pass just like shattered glass
Or scattered leaves
But it will not stand
In this promised land
So put down that rock, unchain your flock
Let's show them what bleeding means
If to tolling time we must resign
Then from time we'll take as thieves
So from the waving wheat
To the signing street
Go on, ring that ragged bell
And to all the lost, who still pay their cost for holding hell
I know rest will come
We'll all stand in the sun
Oh but all I ask, help me rig this mast
I've seen a storm upon the swell
Just a thimble full of mercy
At the Cadillac Motel
|
||||
If you like Dogs on Main Street, you may also like:
The latest album by Phill Reynolds, a project of Italian singer Silva Martino Cantele, takes listeners on an Americana-fueled musical ride.
go to album
A Sudden Nowhere
by Phill Reynolds
More smoky, melancholy folk from Italian singer-songwriter Phill Reynolds, laced with elements of Americana, country, and the blues.
go to album
This album speaks to the continuum of African diasporic culture that is central to the vibrant canon of Americana folk music.
go to album
Prologue: The Farmer's Daughter EP
by We Are Baker
Baker is a new project from childhood pals Mishal Moore & Richard Cortez with a lo-fi, bluesy n' soulful southern vibe.
go to album
Forever Only Idaho
by Harrison Lemke
Big, strummy songs that recall the heart-on-sleeve earnestness and lo-fi glory of early Mountain Goats.
go to album
Pittsburgh artist Merce Lemon makes tender and open-hearted indie pop with echoes of Frankie Cosmos.
go to album
So Romantic
by Allie Crow Buckley
L.A.’s Allie Crow Buckley comes to Bandcamp, with moody songs that combine R&B with Laurel Canyon in the ’70s.
go to album
