Seven True Stories
The old farmhouse where we recorded this album was known by many as an old boarding house, while others swear it was a brothel. Most recently, it was home to good friends who were kind enough to let us make a record in their living room as they prepared it for sale.
We chose to engineer and produce the album ourselves. While we all enjoy working in professional studios, DIY recording afforded a freedom of experimentation that we never could have achieved while working by the hour. Some of our favorite material on this project was neither performed nor rehearsed by the full band before our recording sessions, but came together through trial and error, both in front of live mics and while taking breaks outside to enjoy the stillness of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
In keeping with this DIY aesthetic, we fashioned the album covers from raw paper and printed them on Vandercook and C&P presses at the Rose O'Neill Literary House, a collaboration with artist Shannon Smulow, printer/designer Aaron Capp, and Mike Hoatson, owner of The Listening Room, who made the printing possible.
We are drawn to stories imbued with a sense of place, and those stories are what inspire our music. Over generations, genuine and apocryphal stories merge into a single, collective memory about a place's homes and institutions. Many of the stories on this album are mostly true, even the fictional ones, and all are rooted in memories of places we love.
Lyrics (listed in order of appearance)
Reverie
Head like an empty hall
Where dead echoes hang and fall
The voices speak but don’t give on to you
Say they knew you at all
Wedded and passed away
Where my head rests, I lay
But don’t the seasons rise in front of you
Open up and give their secrets away
Don’t stop my reverie
It speaks but doesn’t sound
If you can read the words
Why don’t you write them down?
Far away from me
This path opens up to the sea
Where everything that’s said and done
Becomes one reluctant stream
These waters drag us on
And make the night run long
But if they move, I’ll break my waking dream
Just to hear the murmur of an old song
Don’t stop my reverie
It speaks but doesn’t sound
If you can read the words
Why don’t you write them down?
Cloud Over Idaho
A brutal sun, an august breeze
Shook the ribbons in the dogwood trees
Branches bowed in the wake of the thunder
We shrank from the sky of an angry summer
Tell me you love me, I'd probably miss it
Show me again and I still wouldn't get it
Years after, I can wait on a punch line
Haven't changed so much, except I'm trying
Laid low
Beyond
Below
Just a memory now
Distant as a cloud over Idaho
In the eye of a hurricane
Staring there you’ll feel safe again
While the whole damn world
Splinters with rain
You'll spend all your days
Getting whole again
Who mends your wounds, bends your will
Holds your hair when the poison makes you ill
Who wrapped your world in a silver ring
Who makes the cage bird sing
Who blots the ink from her wings
Real America
Fire up the sirens
Every time the home team scores
Waving flags like we won the war
Cheer like a mob, wail like a whore
Rooting for the company store
Giving all we've got and more for Real America
The Faithful of the heartland
Waiting on the end of days
With how things go they'll get their way
Those wide rusty boulevards
Stretch till the West just fades
Make me want to pray for Real America
Real deal tried true
Red white black blue
You can ride a cadillac
The back of old King Kong
The long white line to Babylon
Whip our mules from east to west
Back where we belong
Wondering what went wrong with Real America
Real deal tried true
Fall season jackboot
Red white black blue
Place No Stone
A frost on the kitchen window
A hush upon the world
The homesteaders let their fences fold
And wandered long ago
But I'm no more a traveler than
The blackjack pine
That stands about my home
Place no stone on me
Place no stone on me
Might be time to rest
I ain't done just yet
Place no stone on me
Mother fell to fever
Father did too
Or grief for all we knew
And both my brothers
Were younger than me
So I raised them as we grew
When I had other plans for life
It was the right thing to do
Place no stone on me
Place no stone on me
Might be time to rest
I ain't done just yet
Place no stone on me
My daughter was just three years old
Startled from a dream
Saying Daddy you're gonna get older and older
And older, till you're free
Wish it didn't hurt me to say
She's a lot like me
Place no stone on me
Place no stone on me
When I move on
To the great beyond
Place no stone on me
Noah’s Ark
Sweep up the dust
Put it in a bin
Raise the beams, there’s a void that must be filled
Treading a path that’s clear
Yeah we’re gonna build Noah’s Ark right here
We’ll put up a sign
To tell the times
The end is near, but everybody’s doing fine
Treading a path that’s clear
Yeah we’re gonna build Noah’s Ark right here
There’s a steady rising tide
But please don’t pay no mind
So many years
We’ve sung this song
Temptation in the wilderness grows strong
The day is done
The time is nigh
This scaffold needs a sacrifice and I’m
Treading a path that’s clear
Yeah we’re gonna build Noah’s Ark right here
There’s a steady rising tide
But please don’t pay no mind
Yeah we’re gonna build Noah’s Ark right here
Head on a Shore
O Yulia, don’t be a fool, this tide will turn on you
A mother pretending, no way to mend my broke up childhood
But if the augury that haunts your dreams don’t turn you nothing would
There’s a head, washed up on a shore
White bone, rolling on the ocean floor
It’s late, but darkness becomes dawn in time
And now that hour’s mine
Money seeks what it can’t speak, but what else could I bring?
Oh Dmitry, don’t look through me, I fear you see one more thing
There’s a head, washed up on a shore
White bone, rolling on the ocean floor…
There’s a head, washed up on a shore
White bone, rolling on the ocean floor
It’s late, but darkness becomes dawn in time
And now that hour’s mine.
Self Made
Well I never really made my way
Oh Lord I tried
Worked hard and a got my pay
But first there’s things and then there’s others
The whole show starts to drag
Trying to fit all what you love
In a slowly shrinking bag
The deacon said he knew what I need
A little prayer and faith
And all the good things would come to me
But them that have are given more
Was the verse they read
I’m not someone to ignore
The sermons in my head
I’m gonna get straight
Before I’m in the ground
When it’s too late
I’ll turn round
To watch the last train
Heading out of town
Then set the match that burns that station down
Them that have are given more
The whole show starts to drag
Tried but I just can’t ignore
That slowly shrinking bag
First there’s things and then there’s others
Was the verse they read
Trying to fit all what you love
With the sermons in your head
Lullaby & Postlude
Raven sky
Did the moon close its eyes
Have the stars fallen to sleep
Has the wide mouth of heaven
Spoken its prayer
Promised our souls will keep
I know your nighttime
Must seem like a lifetime
Mine moves much too fast
A moment alone
A hope... a home
A dream the time would last
Though I would like
To lay here all night
I leave you to sleep alone
To have a child
Is a smile and a prayer
And years of letting go
A morning's tremble
Memory’s quake
Nightmare shaking
The world awake
Eyes swollen
Like a harvest tide
A moonlit shiver
On the great divide
Cradle of heaven
Arms of a schoolyard
Veins of a river
Through the heart of a graveyard
Child I have dreamed you
In color... in sound
What I mourn you have given
What I lost you have found