I Want it So Bad
Drop the Charges
Two Sparrows
Drop What I’m Doing
Haunted
Melchert
Ink and Grief
Peppermint City
Marginalized
You Must Not Know
Eyes Of A Child
Your Benefit

Label: Vanguard

Release Date: September 13, 2011
Duration: 50:34
Recording Date: March 21, 2011 – April 1, 2011
Recording Location: Levon Helm Studios, Woodstock, NY

Credits

I Want It So Bad

Kevin Russell

The first time I gazed upon that glorious thing It made we wanna dance and delightfully sing

I Whirled and twirled and laughed til I cried, I was so ecstatic until I realized

It was not mine nor would it ever be.

Then a storm of emotion swept over me

My heart was broken, my hands were tied, my one desire had been denied

Maybe it’s a dream, maybe it’s a thing, maybe it’s something that you’ve never seen

Maybe it’s happiness, maybe it’s love or maybe yer waiting for something to come from above

Maybe it makes you feel like you never succeed, maybe it makes you feel like you never get what you need.

It’s a feeling that comes from within, it’s universal between women and men

We just wanna be loved, we just wanna be whole, we just wanna get back what we feel like was stole from us as a child when we got schooled.

Man that wasn’t fair, that wasn’t cool

There ain’t no rule, there at no law that says we ever get what we want at all

We all know life ain’t fair but we forget it when desire becomes despair

Drop the Charges

Jimmy Smith
i’m on the pay phone honey will you collect

only murder i know a pack of crows press one for english

detonate them drums that u-boat needs a pounding

well that’s good shag daddy but the best you’ll get is Bugler

trumped up non adhesive fall down jeeze louisin’

Suzi Quatro flankin’ tres well that’s who’s down in my palais

well i call a misdeal my hand was circumstantial

let’s just throw it out man call it inadmissible

i might have played a mark but maybe that’s just what he needed

prorated all the earnings so naturally we repeated it

small claims your court put the finger on my cohort

no, you know what to do

drop the charges

time for me to dangle gonna move it by the rail

locomotive halitosis all that eyelid I been smokin’

lady tiger on my lap in houndstooth pantalones

con cerveza on the brain got baloney in my jacket

drop the charges ooh drop the charges

Two Sparrows

Kevin Russell

rest i denied to the savior on his way into the sun
but i didn’t taunt or ignore his condition as he came undone
I only saw the tips of spears and the spit from the mouths of crows
his path is was filled with complicaters and suffering all alone

his innocence held such clarity Gethsemane still on his breath
barefoot and burdened unjustly but love never leaving his breast

from this began my wandering, my punishment for the crime
of standing still among an angry mob, all of them friends of mine
now our houses sag with sorrow of tomorrow’s fate bestowed
gnashing of teeth and weeping over what’s been lost and what’s still is owed

Many come from the west to many here from the east
like birds alone with their songs
on the wires, the trees and the eves
I will give you the gold I stashed away
I will give you the fat of my land
My sister has two lovely sparrows
one in each of her hands

Drop What I’m Doing

Jimmy Smith
let me drop what i’m doing because i need you so

oh i love you so

let me sleep on it baby because I got to know

whatever it is I can get I will provide for you yet

just gotta tell me come clean synthesize a form of crude protein

well we all had high pants and I was sitting on stolen code

38 pointed at my heart grenade pin in my teeth

why do i have to be so opaque?

what me busy?

hell no for Chrissakes

sound reinforcement is what you need ain’t my policy to impede

so now try to remember I can make rearrangements

derail all my trains of thought and not get too pissed off about it

Haunted

Max Johnston

In a heart of reverence
Not really deciding anything
Goin out greek mythology
Now the two of us are one

Iron outta Baltimore
SC 234
Eleven out the weather’s fine
U 99

I haunted you
Haunted too

(Oh okay, again)

Cant see the floor
Oh no a dinosaur
House, home, hit it
Curtains, pretty curtains

The surfing maneuver
For an hour maybe more
And,
Bring ‘er on home to victory

Melchert

Jimmy Smith

melchert ain’t got no time for me
i say tooth he say deck hand scurvy
jump in my basket we’ll hit the sky
in my hot air balloon travel time
be there by sunrise watch the Byzantine topple
hey Melchy let’s go the cinema
no way man just dropped a coffee enema
pan epidemic in the popcorn bucket
chase the dragon you say ante well up it
keep your swizzle stick i‘ll stir it with my fingers
vamanos with your smell it lingers
hey Melchert why don’t i go
if you don’t want to chat with me anymore
marketing sir well don’t be mad
farm to the table best you ever had
pig snout stuffed with edible flowers
jellied bone marrow molded trousers
Adriatic delicacies flown in right off the boat
if it ain’t here on time i will slit my throat
hey Melchy that’s really great
gonna jump o’er your garden gate
skin my knee bill the tenant
smack the thicky run for senate
i turn around well who do i see
Melchert ain’t got no time for me

Ink and Grief

Kevin Russell
I want to sing you a song I wrote with ink and grief
that runs at you like a dog but falls just like a leaf
Dare to dance if you can gamble on guitar
How the strings catch the strum stretched between the scars

Don’t leave me alone with the laughter in the car
without the keys to the reprise of a steel guitar
When love is gone we carry on this way

Preacher drunk on morning light, ink upon the page
poverty of birdsong cleaning the cage
When he sings the feeling moves all around the room
it’s then we learn maybe what it’s like to grieve as we croon

Peppermint City

Kevin Russell

You wonder outloud how it came to this threadbare and broke at The Hotel Abyss

Lash out in ignorance wishing death and doom on whoever is responsible for bring you to

Peppermint City

My heart is black but in my sack
I got a sammich and half a pack of
vitriol and self-abuse

who can I call to accuse and abuse for bringing me to

I wanna go on record as opposing this from the start
if that falls on deaf ears my bitchin becomes a bark
Promises broken, no reason why
I done sunk so low I may never again be high

Marginalized

Jimmy Smith
saw this magnanimous bottom feeder look up at me
thought pond scum sucked ‘til i had a bowl of rat soup inside of me
well, it’s pretty good said this cat named Sneezeguard
couldn’t ever crowd his pan always got a proper sear on
just to find out that easily led could actually steer one
a little more punch to wash this down
a little more frequency in our round
in the heat on an island garbage all around me
had the entire off ramp ‘til the Diaz brothers found me
i drained me a few made me my day’s worth
topped off my cart i’m rolling for the can bank
yeah to make a better haul left my cardboard sign blank
little more coin for my cans today
little less load on my case today
now i’m taking it home out on my tectonic plates
crashed in a pyramid and claimed squatters rights
shared a tomb with a fella wouldn’t shut up ‘bout a girl named Isis
had to blend with tourists when they came in the a.m.
relocated to the new wing absconding with my hot plate
little more time marginalized
a little less stink in everybody’s eye

You Must Not Know

Jimmy Smith
what’s the matter Alice? ain’t you in love?
do the backstroke in your clawfoot tub
remember all those little creeps down in the hole
no way well alright then what’s got you down?
neurotransmitters all sputtered with gold
wild javelinas rankin’ best in show
you’re gonna hit me but it sounds like to me
she has a little bit of that self help aisle fatigue
i won’t buy from Sanchez i will purloin
sneak up on anyone in my congress boots
nicked from a booth on old Portabello
gonna throw it all in the van with the hot solar panels
hey Alice ain’t you down the road
month worth of bed-head and the shakes in your robe
it’s but a funk and that’s all i gotta say to
oh yeah, this fella Sanchez he’s lookin’ for you
you must not know…

Eyes Of A Child

Kevin Russell
It’s true I am wicked, it’s true I am mean
I must a lost my way chasing a dream
It’s true I done things that i’m ashamed of
But I still need tenderness and the warmth of love

I’ve come clean and I’m redeemed
since I have see through the eyes of a child

It’s true I am guilty, reputation is stained
I stood up and admitted to my grief and my shame
But I believe that a soul can right its wrongs
and in the sweet ascension of a redemption song

Sin it seems to win 10 times out of 9
Forgiveness is not so deliberate
and it takes and awful long time

maybe the punishment dont fit the crime
but judgement will come with the passing of time
But I believe that a soul can right its wrongs
and in the sweet ascension of a redemption song

Your Benefit

Jimmy Smith

dance around the hi-fi mama there be no derision
your reticence is gonna let me down
ya gotta pull on out of your coma
Moss the jackal with a soldering iron
you know he’s quite the wizard
the fumes inhaled brings on the madness
bounce around his turntable
hey you know it won’t be too long
have to run it’s a pity
hey you know it won’t be too long
it’ll all be for your benefit
hot liver in the ice chest now
bring a good price on the black market
pulmonary pounding on the asphalt
we’ll be shuttin’ down the ventricles
well it was purchased in a lavatory if it made its way to me
sittin’ next to it in the cockpit
hand to hand on the bamboo airstrip
all my bootleggers in our panty hose
bunched around the ankles
just some kinky astigmatism or an exquisite gel
put away your heater mama before you hurt somebody
and keep the taps clean babushka so i can keep runnin’ the juice