Deadstock (2020)
PURCHASE
Gathering fifteen years of unreleased studio work, Deadstock: Uncollected Recordings 2005-2020 (December 18, 2020 Blueblade Records) unites for the first time sixteen songs culled from six studio releases and scattered sessions, to offer a vital document and an alternate history, illuminating the process of an exacting writer and artist. Introducing seven new original songs – and two released only in Europe – along with full band reimaginings of back catalog favorites like ‘Mesa, Arizona’ and ‘Ghost Repeater,’ Deadstock displays the arc and swagger of an album, making a coherent listening experience from the harvest of years and seasons.
From the Salt As Wolves session’s haunting minor-key reworking of Reverend Gary Davis’s gospel lament, ‘There’s a Destruction on This Land,’ through the desert trilogy of ‘Mesa, Arizona,’ ‘Any Town Will Do,’ and ‘Real Love’ – three songs written in three consecutive days of driving between shows on tour in the desert southwest in 2005 – to ‘Crown of Smoke,’ the real time companion to the narrative flashback of ‘Little Warble,’ to a rollicking tribute to the late great Tucson songwriter and slide guitar holy man Rainer Ptacek, Deadstock showcases every aspect of a body of work honed by two decades on the road and in the studio: from electric blues to country ballads, rock’n’roll punch to fingerstyle lilt, with delicately observed portraits and precisely weighted poetics.
Featuring the longtime all-star band of Billy Conway, Bo Ramsey, Jeremy Moses Curtis, and Eric Heywood, with vocal contributions from Kris Delmhorst, Pieta Brown, and Caitlin Canty, and two unreleased tracks from Ghost Repeater (2006) showcasing Iowa legends Steve ‘Chief’ Hayes, Rick ‘Rico’ Cicalo, and Dave Moore, Deadstock rounds out and elucidates a catalog notable for its range and depth, with a series of songs indelible in their own right.
Tracks
1 There's a Destruction on This Land
2 Mesa, Arizona
3 Any Town Will Do
4 Real Love
5 Cold Late Spring Bark River
6 Real Hard Thinking
7 Geese Fly By
8 Money Blues
9 Crown of Smoke
10 Jacaranda
11 Here Comes Rainer
12 Careless Flame
13 Shadows Tumble
14 Adios Mexico
15 Ghost Repeater
16 Pretty Hands
Any Town Will Do
If you’re rolling out west
And the nights are long
Rolling out cigarettes
Crying on the phone
It won’t take much
To make you feel gone
Just a night or two
Any town will do
Phoenix to Santa Fe
With the radio on
Feels like living
In a Neil Young song
But you won’t feel right
Until you get yourself wrong
For a night or two
Any town will do
High Desert passes
Gas station sun glasses
Your heart like a sunset
Wild and free
There was always something
You meant to be
For a night or two
Any town will do
If your life is just a movie
in the bar back mirror
Everyone’s a stranger
Nothing is clear
You could make it alright
Anywhere but here
For a night or two
Any town will do
Real Love
It’s too late to go home early anymore
I can’t stand to read the number
On my hotel room door
One wants two wants another
I called my wife I missed my brother
I’ll have one more
And then I’ve got to get some rest
I been rolling since the sun came up today
Up from Phoenix
All the way to Santa Fe
Ashes arcing down the road
It’s a high and a heavy load
On my shoulders but I know
I’ll be okay
I’ve got love
I’ve got real love
I’ve got love on my side
I spent all night and a pocket full of bills
Leaning up against this jukebox
Hoping it might kill
The loneliness that whines
Through my chest all the time
Like a bullet fired
On the radio
But it’s too late to go home early anymore
The rain is hung up in the streetlights
The moon is on the floor
And it’s always Saturday night
When you’re living in the lights
But this living’s gonna kill me
On the way
I’ve got love
I’ve got real love
I’ve got love on my side
I’ve got love
I’ve got real love
And I can’t hide
Cold Late Spring Bark River
Cold late spring Bark River
High water in the tall grass
And I’m listening
To the cars roll by
Out on the overpass
Red-Winged Blackbird singing
I’ve got three cans of Pabst
And I’m going to watch
The light go down
And try to make it last
I built a little fire
From the driftwood
Old letters and notebooks and such
Now all that’s left is my memories
Glowing in the whine and the hush
And I lay down on my side
I watched that cold moon rise
And I slept for a while and my dreams
Were strangers
Strangers
Cold late spring Bark River
I remember that night so well
Some things you only know by leaving
There’s some things
You never can tell
Real Hard Thinking
Baby you look so good
So far away
I want to let you know
But there’s not a Goddamn
Thing I can say
You ain’t my woman
I know it’s true
I’m gonna do some
Real hard thinking about you
Now I don’t love you
Let’s get that straight
I hardly know
And I can hardly wait
Not to know you better
Before the night is through
I’m gonna do some
Real hard thinking about you
I’m gonna let you down
I’m gonna let you down
Easy
You want to be a good woman
I want to be a good man
I used to sometimes wonder
Now I understand
There’s nothing for it
Nothing I can do
Except some real hard
Thinking about you
Money Blues
If I didn’t worry about money
I wouldn’t worry about nothin’ at all
If I didn’t worry about money
I wouldn’t worry about nothin’ at all
If I didn’t worry about money
I’d get a queen size bed
For me and my honey and me and my honey
Wouldn’t worry about nothin’ at all
If I didn’t have this guitar
I’d never leave the house at all
If I didn’t have this guitar
I’d never leave the house at all
If I didn’t have this guitar
I wouldn’t get on an airplane or rent a car
I might sing a little but
I wouldn’t leave the house at all
‘Cause I got a blue typewriter
Made in Portugal
I got a blue typewriter
Made in Portugal
I got a blue typewriter
And an old hi-fi
A little bit of money
And a whole lot of time
And I don’t worry about money
We’ve got a window to hang
The moon in when it’s full
We’ve got a window to hang
The moon in when it’s full
We’ve got a window to hang
The moon inside
A whole lot of books
And cheap red wine
And baby let’s don’t worry
About money
If I didn’t worry about money
I wouldn’t worry about nothin’ at all
If I didn’t worry about money
I wouldn’t worry about nothin’ at all
If I didn’t worry about money
I’d get a queen size bed
For me and my honey and me and my honey
Wouldn’t worry about nothin’ at all
Crown of Smoke
She’s married to the ladies at the bar
She’s married to the bar
And to the ladies who say
‘Are you alright here, hon?
Is everything alright here, hon?
As if it’s her drink
They’re asking after
Not the man who’s talking at her
As she warms the whiskey
In her mouth and writes a letter
And wants a cigarette
She gave up on love somewhere along the way
Along the way somewhere
She gave up on love
She gave up on other things
Babies and wedding rings
And now she crosses the room
Like the dancer she was
Drifts through the cocktail crowd
Playing at grown-ups
With a dollar in her hand
For the internet jukebox she hates
And plays every time
She plays: ‘Desperado’
Sometime around closing she steps outside
She steps outside sometime around closing
Looks up at the city sky
The strange light as the clouds push by
And in the stillness
She wears a pale crown of smoke
Alone on the street in a thrift store coat
The words to the song still running
Through her mind
Her feet aren’t cold
And it’s wintertime
She’s married to the ladies at the bar
She’s married to the bar
And to the ladies who say
‘Are you alright here, hon?
Is everything alright here, hon?
Jacaranda
dreaming into gold
Little samba
On the radio
Ocean silver
Rolling slow
Cup of Coffee
Clementine
Cigarette
Tastes so fine
101
Friend of Mine
If you were here
You'd be gone
If I was singing
You'd sing along
Jacaranda
dreaming into gold
Pull your dress on
The morning's cold
California
Don't let me go
Here Comes Rainer
(For Rainer Ptacek)
Here comes rainer
Swinging on a dark one
Going to the place
Out beyond the horizon
He’s going somewhere
That you don’t come back from
Here comes Rainer
Here comes Rainer
Looking right at dying
Lightning on the hillside
No time for crying
He’s going somewhere
Out beyond the horizon
Here comes Rainer
There’s another world
There’s another world
Baby girl on his knee
Tender hearted man
He knows what he’ll never see
Here comes Rainer
Death is on trail
He’s got one foot on the other side
I hear him moan
I hear him wail
There’s another world
There’s another world
It’s right here
Here comes Rainer
Singing major over minor
Singing love
Only love
Love and nothing finer
Here comes Rainer
Shadows Tumble
The shadows tumble bluely
I love you only love you truly
With your face all full of stars
And your heart held out like a tin cup
To catch the rain
We come flashing into blindness
Where the midnight twins and twines us
With our silverpaper mouths
Printing light against the ashes
Of the light
How does love come down?
Soft as sunset lights the wings of birds
How does love come down?
Blurring all the edges of the world
Hush the clockwork of the cradle
Hush the loom and still the treadle
In the silence press your ear
Against my chest and hear
That tiny hammer fall
The quiet fury of our dreaming
The starry horsemen gone careening
In the blue teeth of the gas stove
In the soft unnumbered falling
Of the moon
Where the shadows tumble bluely
I love you only love you truly
With your face all full of stars
And your heart held out like a tin cup
To catch the rain
Adios Mexico
(Words by Airon Kluberton, Music by Jeffrey Foucault)
I leave behind my troubled mind
Somewhere skies are gray
There’s a bad time waiting
But it won’t get me today
So fall a little
Fall a little
Further for me
Tell me baby
Do you love me
Or is it adios Mexico?
Stand beside me while I pray
Tell me the right words to say
There’s a bad time waiting
But it will be alright some day
So fall a little
Fall a little
Further from me
Tell me baby
Do you love me
Or is it adios Mexico?
It’s so hard to keep straight
It’s so hard to fit in
Tempt me baby tempt me
With a little more sin
I leave behind my troubled mind
Somewhere skies are gray
There’s a bad time waiting
But it won’t get me today
So fall a little
Fall a little
Further for me
Tell me baby
Do you love me
Or is it adios Mexico?