1. |
Caroline's Got A Secret
04:57
|
|||
|
Caroline’s Got a Secret
Caroline’s got a secret
you better not repeat
She asked me last night to keep it
under lock and key
She said there’s never enough moonlight
for the things I’d really like to see
And it’s even darker here inside
Take it from me
But if I drive through the prairies and mountains
and park near the Golden Gate alone
I could flip my coin into that fountain
and think of home
Where all the books I haven’t read
are dusted every week or two
And see that jar of chickpeas on the dinette?
Well, I meant to soak them too
but now I guess I’ll leave that up to you
You’ll find my azaleas love the shadows
They’ll bring hummingbirds and butterflies
but there’s a barred owl by my window
who asks the same question every night
Who really wants to feel any older?
And, who’s so tired of wasted time?
Well, I won’t throw any salt over my shoulder
said Caroline
|
||||
2. |
Gone Too Soon
04:29
|
|||
|
Gone Too Soon
All those switchbacks cut the time in half
You were on the furthest branch, your forehead dipped in candle wax
There’s no peace in rest on that other side
but we’ll sleep better here believing that you might
And we spill wine and share the stories
which strain to capture you just right
and there was not a dry eye in the house
You didn’t leave a single dry eye
Gone too soon
Your ex-roommate sends his love
with an old snapshot of you at a barbecue
sticking out your tongue
I passed Brian Byrd crouched down on an empty patio
one hand still holding onto the broom
The other sweeping your laughter from his eyes
because now you’re gone too soon
Well, Jeff’s been sketching a family of pigeons
on the ledge of his apartment nesting
He might convalesce until those eggs hatch
with butcher paper and ink wash at the ready
And Noah takes the horse trails through milkweed and bur oaks
A broken sunset spills before him
And you’ve got the surliest waiters in Omaha
in the kitchen crying into their aprons
Gone too soon
Shake off that dusty epithet
Nobody laugh and nobody move
Can’t you see I’m trying to take your portrait?
Wearing your cowboy hat in that linen suit
and whistling an old Waylon Jennings tune
We just turned away for a second, it seemed
and now you’re gone too soon
|
||||
3. |
||||
|
Don’t Tell Bobby I’m Through Singing These Blues
What was his mother’s favorite saying?
‘Don’t get caught out in the rain’
So we stayed inside, he tended his books
I cleaned a clean house and traded dirty looks
with the mirror he hung in every room
and he was unable to touch me and always too soon
But don’t tell Bobby I’m through singing these blues
That’s just between me and you
And don’t tell Bobby I had to be free
That’s just between you and me
‘I’ll see you in hell’ was his father’s favorite line
‘Nothing could be farther from the truth’ was mine
So, I pulled the tooth and it was rotten inside
I placed it under his pillow, there’s your valentine
Then I took everything I needed and I ran
A photo of my baby sister and a bottle of aspirin
But don’t tell Bobby I’m through singing these blues
That’s just between me and you
And don’t tell Bobby I had to be free
That’s just between you and me
I felt like a faded postcard, undelivered
Trapped like a dog, tail between her legs
I guess he called it love, I call it surrender
and nobody knows you when you’re waving that white flag
If the walls really had ears like the proverb goes
I wouldn’t be changing this tire on the side of the road
south of Parkston and north of Tripp
on my way to a flickering Motel 6
But nobody heard nothing, my prayers never mattered
I’ve been screaming since the wedding but that crystal never shattered
But don’t tell Bobby I’m through singing these blues
That’s just between me and you
And don’t tell Bobby I had to break free
That’s just between you and me
|
||||
4. |
The Stolen Guitar
05:31
|
|||
|
The Stolen Guitar
I wrote a song on a stolen guitar
I gave it all I could
A thief dressed like a revolutionary
Wielding nylon, steel, and wood
It was short, it was long
It was weak, it was strong
It was everything I wanted to say
I wrote a song on a stolen guitar
when I was just learning how to play
The words came fast as I recall
My tongue savored the melody
I wore down the frets with all my regrets
and all of my ecstasies
It was sad, it was sweet
Unvarnished, complete
A trick memory sometimes plays
when you cling to something you don’t really own
and you give the rest away
But a song is hardly ever enough
Could there be even more that I owed?
It was show-and-tell with a rope and a bell
and I was the only one who showed
Because somewhere I got lost somehow
and the song drifted out my door
I wrote a song on a stolen guitar
but I can’t hear it anymore
I swore I’d always give it to you straight, my friends
If indeed that’s still what you’re after
Whether I’m singing in the shower
or hanging from the rafter
It was right, it was wrong
It was old, it was young
It was everything I could not say
I wrote a song on this stolen guitar
when I was just learning how to play
|
||||
5. |
Live in the Moment
04:06
|
|||
|
Live In the Moment
Do you recall where you were when the world finally stopped?
I swear I never heard the last needle drop
Alone in the basement, the apostate’s last stand
He’s still shooting at the lightbulb with an old rubberband
Setting mousetraps near every crack in the foundation
and trying to live in the moment
Just trying to live in the moment
Here in my hand, a photo of Cat and Jim
under a New Orleans gallery waiting out the rain
That baby in her belly is gonna spoil all the fun
or maybe that letter in his hand from a friend in Vietnam
We’ll name her Sunshine but in a pinch, Simon
We’ve got to live in the moment, babe
Let’s try to live in the moment
It could snow all night
I’ve been watching the streetlight where confetti falls
But if I sleep I might dream
and if I dream I’ll wake again and erase it all
and I can’t face that now
I asked myself aren’t you bigger than all of this
but I was hiding like a pulse on a newborn’s wrist
And I reminded myself there’s only one thing worse
than ignoring a blessing and that’s nursing a curse
Once the tornado unspools we’ll survey the destruction
For now, we live in the moment
We’ve got to live in the moment
|
||||
6. |
Tekamah
04:46
|
|||
|
Tekamah
The allure of the gutter must have led me to his bed
He was drunk and vulgar and as brief as a dandelion head
I bet whoever said the meek will eventually be blessed
never had to turn the other cheek while their lover undressed
So, I’m going back to Tekamah
Straight as the crow flies
I’m heading home to Tekamah
North on Highway 75
‘Life is too short’ and other cruel cliches
Like ‘all is forgiven’ haunt the walls of this suitcase
I guess it was naive to think a girl like me could win
but did this city have to spit me out and chew me up again?
So, I’m going back to Tekamah
to see my cottonwoods in the sunrise
I’m headed home to Tekamah
North on Highway 75
Do you have a dream you’re ready to forfeit?
Do you have a shred of dignity you haven’t tossed?
Sometimes they take you for everything and you can afford it
Sometimes they leave you with nothing and you’re lost
Some friends of mine still wish on eyelashes and falling stars
but right now I’d settle for my old shift back at Ronnie’s Bar
Some are crying all the time and some have got it even worse
I just want a man to look me in the eye who doesn’t rifle through my purse
So, I’m going back to Tekamah
I’ve already said my last goodbyes
I’m headed home to Tekamah
North on Highway 75
|
||||
7. |
The Actor
04:42
|
|||
|
The Actor
I finally made it to the top
It wasn’t as lonely as I thought
Like a screen door the wind passes through
people blow through me now like I always hoped they would do
Hollywood gambles in dreams and flesh
I was craved and carved up like the rest
A scarecrow dressed in second-hand clothes
with memorized lines and a messianic pose
No, you couldn’t stop me, Mama
Nobody could have saved me
My heart was broken anyhow
It was the only kind they gave me
You’d be surprised what a little make-up can do
I disappear, that’s my gift to you
But in a blue motel room where somebody died
next to a stain so plain they dared not hide it
I stashed a love letter in a drawer with no key
beside a bible and a map of the stars who burned out before me
And there’s a gold box of matches
with the number for the front desk
and the motto ‘Don’t you deserve the perfect rest?’
And there's a black-and-white photo
that I’ve taped to the mirror
and when I’m ready to go, I’ll leave him here
Now they’re casting the role of the great magician
who escaped handcuffs and chains with only flimsy illusions
I could read for the part or just send them this journal
I’ve been coughing up blood since sometime in April
But you couldn’t stop me, Mama
Nobody could have saved me
My heart was broken anyhow
It was the only kind they gave me
You’d be surprised what a little lighting can do
I disappear, that’s my gift to you
|
||||
8. |
Yellow Bird #2
05:16
|
|||
|
Yellow Bird #2
I’d like to come in from the rain
but will these blues ever let me be?
Every tear takes a turn on my window pane
and still you follow me
The dust crackles inside my radio
Now it won’t play nothing but the blues
Even the pop star lost her shadow
I had to sew mine to my shoes
She sang, “All my love, all my love is leaving me
Won’t somebody tell me where it goes?”
In my mother’s book fathers kill their sons
and somehow it fills the collection plate
While these fresco fig leaves hide our love
an angry heart can sing the blues all day
Last night I dreamed a strange haiku
‘Wind tossed kite, be free.
I held my breath for you. Now
give the knife to me.’
All my love is vanishing
Won’t somebody tell me where it goes?
|
||||
9. |
Morning Light
08:16
|
|||
|
Morning Light
Blood-stained sumac and goldenrod
bend in the wind as sundown slips behind me
If every thief leaves scattered fingerprints
perhaps there’s a chance you might come and find me
Our wreck was pulled from the old ravine
but the sirens never stopped
The echoes sweeten the memory
like Patsy Cline on some jukebox feeling crazy
I should have known when I first saw you dance
there weren’t enough hands on the clock to hold you
Huddled in our haunted apartment
burning sage like smoke could somehow raze a statue
The dreams you float while in your bed
and forget when morning hits your eyes
are collecting dust on a Greyhound bus
while you walk around surprised as a newborn baby
In the morning light
I saw a ghost reflected in the mirror
and drank a toast to things which disappear
In the morning light
I heard a faint knocking at my door
and turned away from those coming back for more
She said deja-vu is worth repeating
Cigarettes, sunsets, and the smell of gasoline
I want to hear ‘That Old Time Feeling’
and hang from the words into the spaces in between
We were laughing around the campfire
but isn’t ash all we really left?
It’s thoughts like this which make me wish
all my cards weren’t tattooed to my chest
They’re talking Civil War blues on my radio
as mother earth broadcasts the fall of man
The Devil won’t be there to see us go
and I guess God has no use for idle hands
The poor and injured lean on matchsticks
but at least the flags burn at half-staff
and soon the papers will be backdated
to protect the future from the past
In the morning light
I saw the spider’s web tucked in the chandelier
and confronted what’s never quite as it appears
In the morning light
I watched a hornet trapped inside the window screen
and walked away from those exactly as they seem
What happens to a Rembrandt
torn to pieces and left drinking at the bar?
How can this candlelight be counterfeit
when it captures wounds as open as you are?
Camouflaged in the thickets
you slipped away from me again
but in dreams you’ll come to visit
another cardinal sitting on a barbed wire fence
Across my hallway hear the old man
His lungs rattle with a cough that’ll make you shudder
Like the earthquake on the last line
of that novel I’m trying hard now to remember
When I flip back through our old pages
time seems to vanish with your eyes
green as the veins in the kale leaves
and open like the curtains for sunrise
In the morning light
I saw a train hauling timber through the mist
and let go of things too restless to resist
In the morning light
I watched a flock of geese return from the northern sky
and I welcomed those too faithful to deny
|
||||
Simon Joyner Omaha, Nebraska
Simon Joyner is a singer-songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska. He's been flying under the radar since 1991, releasing music on various independent labels including: Team Love, Jagjaguwar, Sing Eunuchs!, Catsup Plate, One-Hour, Shrimper, Brinkman, Secretly Canadian, and Unread. He is also the co-founder of Grapefruit Records (grapefruitrecordclub.com) and an occasional producer of other people's albums. ... more
If you like Simon Joyner, you may also like:
Superwolves
by Matt Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy
supported by 24 fans who also own “Songs from a Stolen Guitar”
the equivalent of a warm hug when you're sad
go to album
Live at Tubby's
by 75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band
supported by 24 fans who also own “Songs from a Stolen Guitar”
Long-form trance-y rhythmic jams, with a fun shambling edge, sounding like a cross between music from Africa's Sahel region crossed with a Tom Waits instrumental...
go to album
supported by 23 fans who also own “Songs from a Stolen Guitar”
Better than Church. Field recording meets Tony Conrad. De-luscious.
go to album
The Sky Is An Empty Eye
by Tom Armstrong
Gorgeous and delicate acoustic guitar songs that feel like day breaking over a quiet wood.
go to album
Westward, to Nowhere
by Ian McCuen
This sweet, mournful “loose concept” album from folk artist Ian McCuen tracks a journey across the bleak landscape of American life.
go to album
Their Invisible Hands
by Avi C. Engel
A dreamy improv-folk collage from Toronto multi-instrumentalist Clara Engel, who plays cigar box guitar, talharpa, melodica, and many more.
go to album
supported by 23 fans who also own “Songs from a Stolen Guitar”
If Bill Callahan sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in his silky baritone, it would probably sound profound. That's why we, as listeners, are spoiled. Not only does Bill have one of the most beautiful voices in the music, he is also one of America's greatest poets.
go to album
