1. |
Jubilation
02:49
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Jubilation
Once in my life, came a heat across my chest:
I dropped everything and followed
her laughing fire, fanning west
through the grassland
and up into the foothills,
the massifs breathing into midday,
where we lay down
and wept for joy.
I want to tell you that whatever it is,
it is possible.
Sky-blue, she steps out
onto the breezy, old front porch
where I hang my tacky thoughts to dry,
beaming quietly over me.
She’s beaming right through
the anvils of the afternoon—
jubilation!
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Damon Waitkus - lead and backing vocals, mandolin, electric, acoustic, and baritone guitars, piano, percussion
Jason Hoopes - bass
Jordan Glenn - drums
Thea Kelley - backing vocals
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2. |
You Let Me Down
03:32
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You Let Me Down
I was wrong to expect.
I know you’re a sensitive filament.
I was a sensitive filament and,
blown-out, I could have used your light.
You let me down.
Death came up like a bubble in the night
and it popped in my face.
What a mess. No picnic!
Do you want me to tell you how I cleaned it all up?
Well, I can’t! You missed it!
You let me down.
Did you fear a drowning man?
Did you fear that iron grip?
You know, all you have to do to free yourself
is dive deeper.
Christ, you’re older than me:
it’s coming!
When you going to look at it?
Life is one big solid mass of connections
and you let me down.
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Damon Waitkus - lead and backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, guzheng, harmonica, keyboards, hammer dulcimer, percussion
Emily Packard - violin
Jason Hoopes - bass
Jordan Glenn - drums
Thea Kelley - backing vocals
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3. |
The Butcher
08:39
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The Butcher
Point the gun at the X above the eyes,
pull the trigger, pull the trigger,
slit the throat of the carcass where it lies,
pump the foreleg, get the blood out,
cut the head and the balls and then the feet,
keep a sharp blade, keep a sharp blade,
peel the hide, top to bottom, from the meat,
clear the offal: this is God's work.
Split the trunk down the center, front to back,
hose the stone down, hose the stone down,
hang the halves seven days upon the rack,
keep the flies out: this is God’s work.
Take your kill to the butcher,
he will cut you a deal,
he will weigh it and wrap it in paper.
You will know from the moment
that you look in his eyes:
everyone else lies
I have a heart that sings to me
of all the things I will not see:
the sob of laughter in the street,
the very ground beneath my feet.
Before the prophet, before the lamb,
slips the blade of Abraham:
stabs the pain of contradiction,
burns the heat of inner friction.
Place your trust in the butcher,
he will cut you a deal,
he will weigh it and wrap it in paper.
You will know from the moment
that you look in his eyes:
everyone, everyone…
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Thea Kelley - lead and backing vocals
Damon Waitkus - baritone electric and acoustic guitars, lead and backing vocals, electric taishogoto, psaltery, music box, percussion, pianet, melodica, slide whistle
Emily Packard - violin, viola
Jason Hoopes - bass
Jordan Glenn - drums, accordion
Ivor Holloway - clarinet
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4. |
A Quarter Page Ad
03:17
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A Quarter-Page Ad
Looking for a quiet man,
preferably long in tooth,
to live out his simple life alone
among the shadows of our garden
between the sundial and the stars
and tend a fire in the offing.
Must appear to have resigned
to the heavy hand of fate
and to live from day to day
in humble contemplation of his last breath.
Must never talk to any guests,
or leave the premises,
or publish.
For the qualified applicant:
hedge clippers, hovel,
and a burial plot
behind the birdbath
provided.
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Thea Kelley - lead and backing vocals
Emily Packard - violin, viola
Josh Packard - cello
Jason Hoopes - bass
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5. |
Leaving California
06:57
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Leaving California
I want more than I can rightly take.
The form of hunger is awful hard to break.
It's hypnotizing,
watching the almond trees go by.
It's a long, long valley.
I drove through it all day
and passed my likeness
going back the other way.
All my ambitions,
like a carapace, cracked and fell away.
I'm leaving California.
I never meant to get so drunk—
I meant to pass the cup.
And with her sails so full of wind,
I thought for sure I'd live to see
a passage open up.
Almond leaves dusty to the touch.
Sunlight reigns here—
water, not so much.
Pine beetle blight:
copper upon the Western slope,
aching for fire.
Rifles and gas stations,
In-N-Out and Nation’s—
the future's never been a blanker wall,
and I miss my people, even in depravity.
They're not saints but they have a certain gravity.
All of this craving and what is it for?
Switch on some tunes, I ain't talking no more.
I'm leaving California.
I never meant to get so drunk—
I meant to pass the cup.
And with her sails so full of wind,
I thought for sure I'd live to see
a passage open up.
-----
Damon Waitkus - lead and backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, piano, percussion, electric taishogoto
Emily Packard - violin
Jason Hoopes - bass
Jordan Glenn - drums
Thea Kelley - backing vocals
Myles Boisen - pedal steel
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6. |
Fascination
08:13
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Fascination
When you’re away,
I soften myself for you.
It takes some time, but not too much,
to uncoil in the sun of separateness
like I’ve come shivering from a lake:
September’s end, the breeze is edgy,
but this stone warms me for a while.
Then the blue tracks of your inwardness
shunt me on the stairs and end in a tangle
of books by the bed
where you sigh into my failures.
Or is that just your breath?
Went to a shop to kill some time:
hands chase in circles
antique phases of the moon.
“Look out!” comes an old voice.
“You’ll stare for fifty years!”
Fascination.
I kiss this axe that tears me through
doubt and intention to the ground
of molten heart
where a beaming stranger stands.
I wake in the morning
with our bird pecking my eyelids
before she lifts
and the day self-assembles
so fluently around your given light,
I blaze into the present like a child.
Fascination.
-----
Damon Waitkus - lead and backing vocals, acoustic, electric and baritone guitars, keyboards, recorder, melodica
Jordan Glenn - bass drum
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7. |
Narrow Gate
11:49
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Narrow Gate
Dress men in black, women in white,
no jewels or frills,
and stand with us in clerestory light
until your mind stills.
Our altar's plain, its angles are right,
our backs are straight.
The star of grace burns clean at night
through a narrow gate.
Square your shoulders now:
you are God's own hunter.
No more will you go
cowering through the day.
Bones of rectitude
pass privately through a public door.
Come crows and thieves, open your hand
and He will fill it,
but you must not talk of owning the land:
you do not till it.
You must not talk of sex or of prayer:
you will be lying.
The politic man, asleep in the square,
is quietly dying.
Square your shoulders now:
you are God's own hunter.
No more will you go
cowering through the day.
Bones of rectitude
pass privately through a public door.
This is my life. My life. What is the baseness before which death is preferable? I think it is that of the man who has put his hand to the plow and turns back.*
A fingering wind sightlessly reads
December’s last rites,
and candles bolt in windows like weeds
to seed the long nights.
Her breath in clouds, billowing past,
brushes your cheek,
and desire runs, broader than fast
beneath the frozen creek.
Enter from the West
—whispers in the architecture—
no more will you place idols at her door
Eyes upon the work,
clasp hands and stand together to your full height.
(* E. L. Ennis, 1908)
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Damon Waitkus - lead and backing vocals; acoustic, electric, piccolo and baritone guitars; hammer dulcimer; percussion; tin whistle; keyboards; electric taishogoto; mandolin
Thea Kelley - lead and backing vocals
Emily Packard - violin, viola
Jason Hoopes - bass
Jordan Glenn - drums, percussion
Ivor Holloway - saxophones
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Cuneiform Records Washington, D.C.
Cuneiform Records is an independent record label releasing adventurous, boundary-bursting music by artists from around the world.
Founded in 1984.
Based in Washington D.C.
Cuneiform Records recommends:
The BENEFIT ALBUM for Hugh Hopper's family is now on Bandcamp!
go to albumIf you like Leaving California, you may also like:
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Repetitions of the Old City - I
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PRAISE THIS ALBUM & JACK O’ THE CLOCK, a band initiated & "controlled"(?) by composing multiinstrumentalist Damon Waitkus for ≥10yrs. But, how t. f..k to describe this? Referring to other bands? Forget it. Clumsy genre-label-combinations? Worth a try: very melodic, adventurous multi-structured (fake-)Hillbilly-RIO-Fusion-singer-song ...? Very rich, intriguing, not muscular but hymnic ...?? DIG, DISCOVER & LOVE IT! (You'll probalbly get used to Damon's voice. If not? Hmh? ...)
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Loving this album! Unique, compelling, soulful...timbrally rich, surprising & delightful twists and turns phrase & textures. Shadowfax meets Pentangle meets Zappa meets Yes!
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