1. |
Everytime
04:22
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Everytime
The weary sun she set like down-
Feathers spread across the ground
Dropped her evening dress right there
Stood there trembling the half lit air
Stood there trembling
Stars came out for company
They arrived too late to see
Found me strumming an old guitar
Wishing I was wherever you are
Wishing I was wherever
Sunset turns a lonely heart
Colors red and wine
Burns just like a shooting star
I don't think about you every time
I don't think about you every time
As long as sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance but pain's for sure
I'll face like the foolish do
Train for luck and fall for you
Train for luck and fall
The bottle's dry against my will
Your skin's as soft as a twilight still
Cooling off the edge of day
Against lips of cabernet
I ain't the first to find you fair
I've got awkward ways more than my share
Time is cheap and love is free
But you couldn't waste either one on me
You couldn't waste either one
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2. |
South Llano River
03:51
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South Llano River
In a curve of the South Llano River
Where the water runs seven feet deep
The catfish all sing to each other
Once the sun fish have fallen asleep
When the moon hangs high in Orion
And the stars on the water don't bend
You can hear their sad songs if you're lying
On the banks with a mind to pretend
Once I dreamed of being a cowboy
Once I dreamed of a life on the sea
My horse's name would have been Rambler
And my sailboat the Skinny Gypsy
But neither one would have taken me nowhere
I didn't think I'd want to go
I'd just sit on a ranch or the water
With no kind of songs of my own
Wondering thoughts they're a buzzing
And biting my arms and my feet
I wish you could be here to listen
I wish that you wanted to be
Mosquitos don't fly in the winter
And fish don't learn music in schools
A man doesn't cry cause he's hurting
But the Llano don't play by the rules
So in a curve of the South Llano River
Where the water-stars dance with a breeze
The catfish all sing with each other
In painfully high harmonies
The unbroken hearts never will join them
For fear they won't find the right key
But living's the risk'in' the going
So the sail-boats and horses agree
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3. |
Crooked Bootheel Dreams
04:09
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Crooked Bootheel Dreams
Stars strip the night of darkness
Pull the thread of a blanket sky
Turning circles in the windshield
Turning circles into time
Sister wrap my arm around you
Windows down and the heat on high
Ocean sound's a sleeping shudder
The highway hum is a lullaby
I am just a lonely rambler
Looking for a wandering rhyme
You're a kind of loose-change gambler
Betting on a pair of nines
Crooked bootheels and empty pockets
Feel just a little out of sorts
One from dreaming, one from walking
Both just a hair off course
It's you and me and constellations
Cruising through the midnight air
If the road was a wish waiting
Honey, I could take you there
Where you are and where you want to be
That's all you need to know
The hours between the two
They're the reasons that you go
Back-roads and the red woods
Got me so damned confused
You're a silent kind of forest
I'm the ocean filled with blues
Your head in my lap resting
Dreaming where there is no "why?"
I don't know too much for certain
But I know your sleeping sigh
Rises like rolling waters
Looking for a place to land
Falls like the pinks and oranges
When the day decides to end
Clouds cling to the coming morning
Sets a darkness darker down
Most times it would make me lonesome
Not tonight with you around
Rain she falls like a diamond shines
In trembling hands on a lover's knee
Wets the white beach sands of time
She connects the ocean to the trees
Ah, to taste the water falling
Ah, to turn with the world in time
It's an active Alleluia
Spinning with the traveling kind
If you get around to losing
Everything but your mischief schemes
I'll be waiting there
And we will chase your crooked bootheel dreams
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4. |
Canadia
03:14
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Canadia
My bonnie, lovely lady
You are headed to Canadia
It will be so many days without your smile
Don't you think that just because
I'm roaming the Americas
That you won't be with me for every mile
On the sands of Mexico
The islands of Abaco
The coast of California, or the Windy City shore
I hope to meet you in your dreams
Stay away from grizzlies
Come back with all the toes and knees you had before
You'll be learning skills for life
Become like a Swiss Army Knife
Making coffee filters out of underwear
Your hair will get much rougher
Your skin will get much tougher
'Cause you can't take Lubriderm or razors there
But if you come back hairy
From the Yukon Territory
That won't change one bit the way I feel for you
If you come back a crocodile
I'll become the River Nile
So that I can still hold you if you want me to
My bonnie, lovely lady
You are headed to Canadia
It might be too many days to hold my breath
But I don't mind trying
And if I end up dying
It won't be from lack of air but loneliness
Aurora Borealis shows
Eating pies with eskimos
There will be so many entertaining things to do
But if you get some time alone
Eat an Arctica snow-cone
And think about a boy back home who's missing you
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5. |
The Bottom of Blue
03:06
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The Bottom of Blue
Did you feel my heart slipping
To the bottom of blue
When you told me "I love you"
But not like I love you
Did you wish there was something
That you maybe could say
It didn't have to be pretty
I'd have taken anything
Did you look out your window
As I drove away
Did you wish you could change it
What did you wish?
You could change it
The face of the night wonders why
He keeps trying to stay in the sky
And it's dragging him down
In the dark on the hillside
With the highway below
Broken taillights look lonely
If the headlights could only know
Did you feel my heart slipping
To the bottom of blue
When you told me "I love you"
But not like I love you
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6. |
Sonnet at Sunrise
04:23
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Sonnet at Sunrise
The sun slants through my window
On a thousand angels' wings
Sets the morning in the dust
Like your gray hairs in my dreams
There's an echo gently fading
Of your laughter it might have been
Now receding with my waking
I cannot bring it back again
I'm the dust and dirt my darling
You're as soft as an eiderdown
Press your cool lips against my forehead
Till my rambling runs aground
Can you pick up my broken pieces
Set them gently on your shelf
Can you bring me the love of Jesus
Babe, to save me from myself
You got brown eyes watching the sunrise
Someplace far from this room
I got a two-count heart a-beating
Once for me and once for you
I can't believe the wind ain't roaring
I can't believe the rain don't care
Nah, the morning's just a lover
With the sunrise in her hair
The sun slants through my window
On a thousand angels' breath
Making warm light out of dust
Like your hair does on my chest
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7. |
Love & Poetry
03:39
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Love and Poetry
Pull the shades on the window tight
Try to block out the vacancy light
Dreams will be dressed in red tonight
If they even come at all
Outside is an empty street
A sacrament road poets eat
The window wound won’t allow no sleeping
Between the plaster walls
Wipe the steam from the motel mirror
Try and see the world more clearly
Gypsy dreams don’t disappear
Just because you are awake
There’s a broken bottle on the double-white line
Of a lonely stretch of east Texas pine
It reflects the way that my eyes are trying
Not to let my heart break
There’s holes in love and poetry
Some are deep enough to leave
Room enough for you to breathe
Yourself into their soul
The sun is high the sky it seems
Lies lazily while lover’s dreams
Stitch green and blue horizon seams
In worlds I cannot walk in
But from these roads that my feet can feel
I see their stars dance a light quadrille
'Round places where the darkness kneels
I hear the angels talking
I told you once by the river's light
That you hold my heart and I knew you might
Feel the way you do but that’s alright
You face it full or fold
So wipe them silver tears away
I love you still and that's OK
'Cause lions are like feelings babe
They cannot be controlled
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8. |
3/4 Blues
03:24
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3/4 Blues
It's been enough days
Since you broke my heart
If sunsets were flowers
I could be a graveyard
Silence will whisper
And lonesome'll touch
I'm trying to forget you
But I miss you too much
3/4 blues and a broke telephone
Both have a way to make you feel you're alone
I asked you for warmth
And you set me on fire
I asked you for love
And you gave me desire
When I asked you for nothing
Then you finally came through
But you did not take all my memories with you
3/4 blues, them 3/4 blues
Fall from my frets to the soles of my shoes
Time she keeps score with uneven hands
And leaves me alone for a slow sarabande
With my fingertips hurting
And a pick that's worn through
I'm trying to write something
That feels like I do
Songs that came rolling so easily before
Puddle in pools by my feet on the floor
3/4 blues and the end of the sidewalk
Both have a way to make you feel that you're lost
I got me a toolbox and it's filled up with screws
Some you unwound and some just shook loose
I'm coming undone, I can plainfully see
All of the ways that you screwdrivered me
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9. |
A Gentle Place to Land
04:55
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A Gentle Place to Land
I've been falling for so long now
My feet can't recall how to stand
But sitting beside you I feel like I've found
A gentle place I can land
I know I'm not the first one to be here
They've marked you just like a tattoo
I know you cannot control what you fear
But I can not fight it for you
Close your eyes
Babe, I ain't going nowhere
Close your eyes, babe
I ain't going nowhere
Unless you just want me to leave
Time she spins with uneven hands
Moving at different speeds
But they share the same minute my friend
Kind of like when you're with me
Deep in your eyes and soft in your hands
I see you don't like what you feel
I won't patronize you like I understand
But I trust your confusion is real
I give you everything that I own
And everything I believe
None of it's worth all the kindness you've shown
In wasting your good time with me
So open your window and let in the rain
It's something like breathing somehow
At least I believe it's your choice to remain
And I guess that's enough for right now
I've been falling so long and so far
My feet can't recall how to stand
I know you're not perfect but I believe that you are
A gentle place I can land
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10. |
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'73 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl Ring
Pendleton gets mighty lonely
Spit-polished boots echo in the halls
Thoughts of home come heavy flying
Like the rednecks racing from Angelo to Wall
We're both headed over yonder
So the prophets say and the angels sing
You've got a reminder
In a '73 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl ring
If you look far enough you'll find it's raining
If you look far enough you'll find the sun
Just depends which way you're facing
Either way, remember, you're a holy father's son
When life's an empty tin of chew, man
Or a foxhole filling up with rain
You can put on your galoshes
Or a '73 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl ring
Clouds cling like loved ones grieving
Don't let the dust turn your blues grey
You know the coming is worth the leaving
Returning wouldn't taste as sweet any other way
In the words of a ragged Bible
Is a hunger for a home you've never seen
Until your final arrival
You've got a '73 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl ring
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11. |
Why Emily
03:59
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Why Emily
Emily’s finger is on the trigger
she told herself tonight’s the night
her world ain’t getting any bigger
just the skin is getting tight
Ideas of who she should be
disappear when the room is dark
all that’s left is a broken body
all that’s left is an empty heart
Artificial inspiration
comes apart with every breath
she turns the shower on for steaming
steps into it fully dressed
Arbitrarily pointing
at the light bulb and a brush
aiming at yourself ain’t easy
but conversion never was
Oh the lies that she’s been breathing
rise as fast as they can fall
into a thousand sharp reflections
a bullet-hole in the bathroom wall
Armistice with salvation
settles on a quiet house
in the shower where the water
shows the skin beneath her blouse
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