1. |
Briar Vine
03:13
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Born from flowers to a world of steel,
I dream with memories of a time not real.
A pretty young bride, so sure, in a wedding dress.
And little baby girl in her Sunday best.
Mama's at peace and daddy never left.
I'm laying so soft in my lover's bed.
She's sleeping like honeydew stirring my chest.
She's softened her skin, she's planted her seeds.
But I know the briar vine it can be to love me.
I know the briar vine it can be to love.
Shout the moon, consult the stars,
And they'll tell you there's no real medicine to choke the dark.
There is only blood to bleed and a song to sing,
So, we can sharpen the blades or tighten the strings.
Whatever comes first, just keep me in your reach.
I keep on wanting to save myself from me,
but I don't know if that bastard's worth the reach.
I tried to clear and clean this head of mine.
And it only left space for the weeds to rise.
I'm tired of planting my fields with famine in mind.
Shout the moon, consult the stars,
And they'll tell you there's no real medicine to choke the dark.
There is only blood to bleed and a song to sing,
So, we can sharpen the blades or tighten the strings.
Whatever comes first, just keep me in your reach.
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2. |
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I lay my body down to rest in the evening
before the stars ever come awake.
And I rise in the morning time
Fore the light ever knows my name.
Down at the Gas-Up I have bought another habit
I swore I'd kicked a month ago.
And all the folks out front ain't even been to sleep yet.
When the sun comes up we'll turn to stone.
Cause it seems that the more I see,
The less I let myself believe
That anything good stays put.
Im hoping it will and thinking it won't.
Just hoping it will and thinking it won't.
There's a mountaintop I see from my porch seat.
I climb its back every god damn day.
Hoping for a tune to reach out of the tree tops.
Maybe clear my eyes of the lowland haze.
Down in the valley I can hear the sirens whine on,
Running down a cause they still can't prove.
Later on today I'll hear the same sad news:
The largest gun has the loudest truth.
Don't know how to talk but they know how to shoot.
It seems that the more I see,
The less I let myself believe
That anything good stays put.
Im hoping it will and thinking it won't.
Just hoping it will and thinking it won't.
It seems that the more I find,
The more I think we're the losing kind.
And I want something to change my mind.
I'm hoping it will and thinking it won't.
Just hoping it will, thinking it won't.
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3. |
Brighter Blue
03:21
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I cross the last bridge home too late in the night,
Too early in the morning for either to decide.
Black river down below, if I fell who would know?
Who would mind if I just let go?
Think about the song on my radio.
How I wish it'd shoot me to the moon.
Where no one seems to question the fact,
There's always been a darker side of you.
Chorus
I sang my last true words too soon last night,
Too infant in their nature to make it past sunrise.
Black room in a lonely bar, tired eyes, burned out stars.
Who am I to call you from afar?
Think about the sting in the raven's claw,
How I wish it'd cut me, mean and true.
Make me believe it's always been a dove and bellow out
A brighter shade of blue.
Chorus
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4. |
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Awake in shades of study Stars and Stripes.
The bloody blue and the palest white.
I leave the solitude of my home
For crude confinement on the road.
Music's loud, not loud enough
To drown the thought of river muck.
Another babe got washed ashore,
Upon a land that was never yours.
The lost and found still found a war.
I'm thinking twice who I call the good folks.
Getting mean, I'm getting cautious.
When the sheep just wreaks of progress,
The shepherd's mean, he's feeling lawless.
And it's never been my seed to sow,
But so many days I want my hands on your throats.
And it don't bother me.
I took my last drink at the bar,
Shouldn't drive home I know.
That next light just up ahead,
It could be green, it could be gold.
Such a careless way to cope
With all the truth time seems to tell.
So bite the bullet or sweat it out,
Cause truth be told it ain't sitting well.
Give it up or give it hell.
I'm thinking twice who I call the good folks.
Getting mean, I'm getting cautious.
When the sheep just wreaks of progress,
The shepherd's mean, he's feeling lawless.
And it's never been my seed to sow,
But so many days, I hope for hands around your throats.
And it don't bother me.
Fruit fell too far from the tree
With every noose, every wall of your belief
To keep a pale and wicked dream.
I hope it falls, hope it can't withstand a breeze.
And if it makes a sound, may it make your ears bleed.
It wouldn't bother me.
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5. |
Heavy Feathers
04:17
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I am the only son of my mother.
She's always saying "come hell or high water."
My grandma's soft voice, like tattered cotton,
Saying "one of these days I'll get us rich and spoiled rotten."
I come from high hopes, I come from tall truth.
A language spoke in hues of greener grass and wild blue.
Wouldn't always healthy, but, it never hurt.
Some things get took, some things get lost, some things never know their worth.
I wonder what it makes me now?
Blood and guts,
In a city that poor its insides in the streets.
I used to be, used to be such a breeze.
I've let regret make a mean wind out of me.
Where's my belief?
First time I came home, too much was missing.
We buried our family dog in the backyard that I played in.
Wrapped in a bath towel, like heavy feathers.
Death was just the final thread we tied together.
I had such high hopes but I let them tarry.
I thought I'd hug your neck on the day that I got married.
There's too much blood now, there's too much dead.
No grave I know that's deep and wide enough to hold it.
And I wonder why it eats my mind?
The last in line, no grand babe for my mother's knee.
Cause I don't believe, I don't believe.
I wouldn't do what got done to me.
Where's my belief?
One of these days I'll have to leave.
I don't want to go knowing all I've left behind's a fragile ghost of song.
I hope I'm light. Hope I'm easy to carry on.
Just a tune over the mountain you follow home.
I'm just a tune over the mountain you follow home.
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6. |
Mississippi
03:59
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You split your last bit of speed drugs.
Sometimes the dawn don't shake your sin off.
It's soon to call down lightning but that thunder's so inviting in its call.
Who's tending to the garden?
You know well the fox and his claws.
Cause the drugs wore off in Little Rock and I hear the scratching hollowing out my jaw.
And it's a few hundred miles to Mississippi.
Are we hellbent on the misery or mystery?
Called off the search for my regret
And they ain't found me yet.
I could stand to lose just a little more.
A little more of me.
Last night in Oklahoma
I saw death sit at our feet.
And the moments turned to melodies I'll be singing when he takes his final swing.
Now I'm sweating out the sickness.
Another song paints my eyes red.
There's a price to pay for living out every debt you've ever made in your own head.
And it's a few hundred miles to Mississippi.
Are we hellbent on the misery or mystery?
Called off the search for my regret
And they ain't found me yet.
I could stand to lose just a little more.
A little more of me.
Now we're so many miles from Mississippi.
I'm stuck with all the misery and mystery.
If I light this lamp in wild belief and all its wicked honesty,
Guess I could stand to see a little more of me.
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7. |
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Is there something wrong in the way that I think?
I think on it all the time.
Cause there's nothing right in the way that I see
What someone deems true in me.
I've sang for the funeral, I've sang for the wedding.
There's no amount of love, no more death, that keeps me steady.
Thirst in the spring, drowning by fall.
If I can't have all of my pain,
I won't have none at all.
Did I say something wrong when I spoke to your son?
When I begged down on bended knee
With an ache in my gut and a plea on my tongue,
Another mouth you couldn't afford to feed.
I prayed on hilltop, then I prayed in the valley.
There's no amount of trust, no good plea, that makes it holy.
Thirst in the spring, drowning by fall.
What good is acting in faith when you don't have none at all?
I've spent my life trying to fit in someone else's skin.
Left holding the hopes of what I wished I'd been.
So I'm dreaming in fire but I'm smoking in shame.
What if I burned it all?
Would I know my own face?
What if became only flame?
What if I became only flame?
What would be left of me to blame?
How bright would I burn without all of this shame?
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8. |
Ruby Dear
03:47
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I was sending my love and hope into a lonesome valley so low.
It kept coming back with fangs.
Wrapping its claws around my waist.
You learn to dance with your disgrace.
Buried low in the cold ground, dead weight on the vines.
My Ruby was in the mountain, she was begging for me to climb.
I spit in the dirt she came from and wiped away my blind.
Ruby dear of the mountain, how you shine.
How you shine.
I weighed out my sins for warmth.
Became some ghost beneath the floor
With one too many bones
To walk on through what I used to know.
You learn to lay with the filth in your bones.
Buried low in the cold ground, dead weight on the vines.
My Ruby was in the mountain, she was begging for me to climb.
I spit in the dirt she came from and wiped away my blind.
Ruby dear of the mountain, how you shine.
How you shine.
Ruby is the color,
Ruby is the color,
Ruby is the color of my heart once gray.
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9. |
Lightweight
04:02
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We sat in a basement crying,
Cold concrete and spray paint walls.
Smoked cigarettes, you didn't need to have one.
No gods to break our fall.
Please don't leave me all alone.
Outside the snow stuck like diamonds.
Like some fortune we'd never name.
How much can you lose till you're nothing?
Buried bouquets and prayed for rain.
Buried bouquets and prayed for rain.
We sat with your mother to break bread.
Last few months she wasn't doing too well.
She told me she loved my singing.
In the hospital she sang along.
In the hospital you sang along.
Some days that thought never leaves me.
What have I done to deserve?
Truest love like a spark in a matchbox.
Some days all I do is burn.
Some days all I do is burn.
Hey man, I been meaning to ask you.
God knows I've been meaning to say:
How's the spring? I see that it found you.
Did you see that it found me too?
Hey man, I been meaning to tell you.
God knows I've been meaning to say:
There's no page I'd rip from my memory,
There's nothing I didn't mean to say.
Hey man, I've been meaning to tell you.
God knows I've been meaning to say:
So much of myself feels so heavy
and you are the lightest weight.
You are the lightest weight
You are the lightest weight
You've been the lightest weight
You are the lightest weight to me
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Jon Charles Dwyer Asheville, North Carolina
Jon Charles Dwyer's songs embody the spirit of the Appalachian mountains he is married to: all poverty stricken loss and desire set against the backdrop of the most beautiful springtime of love and fresh hope tumbling over those hills and down to the valleys below. ... more
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