Curfew
Deuteronomy Blues
Double Negative
Evangeline
Everglades
Eyestelllies
Ghettos on Fire
Stagger
This Ugliness
Vanishing Trains
All songs copyright ©2003-2005 the Irreverends
Everglades - mp3 (rough mix)
At the Days Inn in Homestead, Florida
Half a mile from the Everglades
Half a bottle of bourbon behind us
95 in the shade
We were headed head first towards trouble
I was a long way from graduate school
Passed out in a lawn chair
While you were crying in the kiddie pool
(Chorus)
And I dreamed I was Jerry Lee Lewis
And you were thirteen years old
The sun was sinking down, down over the lights
Of Music City burning bright and cold
The air around us was buzzing
Like something about to explode
We were just kissing cousins
Driving down a Tennessee Road
The maids all gossipped in Spanish
The Baptists were speaking in tongues
I felt like Hurricane Andrew
Was forming in my lungs
We both needed something stronger
And we needed it in large amounts
I drove the rental car slow through the neighborhoods
Where the votes don't count
(Chorus)
And I dreamed I was Lee Harvey Oswald
And you were Jackie-O
Thrashing in your bloody arms
Rolling 'cross the Grassy Knoll
Onlookers looked on in horror
Agents screamed into their phones
I whispered in your upturned ear
"Babe, I acted alone.
Babe, I acted alone.
Babe, I acted alone."
(top)
Curfew - mp3 (rough mix)
Across the river I can hear the band
Playing "Golden Jubliee" beneath a covered stand
You were rolling after curfew with your shirt off
In the ruined grass by the Cinema 10
Meet me outside- I'll be lying in wait
Beneath the cold moon crawling
Its way up the interstate
(Chorus)
Maybe tonight we can drive for awhile
Pretend that we're more than alive for awhile
Maybe tonight, Maybe tonight
We can drive for awhile
There's a hole in my gut like a new great lake
I feel tomorrow coming on like a bad mistake
I can feel it gather in the wasted air
I think that I can feel it almost everywhere
Meet me outside by that graveyard gate
There's a cold dawn crawling
like a snake up the "8"
(Chorus)
Maybe tonight we can drive for awhile
Pretend that we're more than alive for awhile
Maybe tonight we can drive for awhile
Pretend we'll do more than survive for awhile
Maybe tonight, maybe tonight
We can drive for awhile
(top)
Vanishing Trains - mp3 (rough mix)
Hey, pay me no mind, meet me outside
We'll load up the van
I'll see you in line with the never-weres and the also-rans
I remember a field in the rain,
the National Anthem, a cold marching band
Wheezing their way through hits of the day
Wind ripping sheet music off of the stands
(Chorus)
You can wait all night
I won't explain
We swallowed the smoke of those vanishing trains
But it's alright
I can't complain
We swallowed the smoke of those vanishing trains
I walked out that night, buried it deep
It's buried there still
Ten miles away as the crow flies
Out where the snow piles on the landfill
I remember the ache in my chest,
The will to confess,
The kick and the snare,
Clutching the stand,
The World's Last Garage Band
Tracks that ran straight out to nowhere.
Remember the night it went flat?
It happened like that.
We were spitting out nails
Strumming my way
Through some half-recalled chord change
"We failed, babe. We failed, babe.
We failed. Babe, We failed."
(Chorus)
And you can wait all night
I won't explain
We swallowed the smoke of those vanishing trains
But it's alright
I can't complain
We swallowed the smoke of those vanishing trains
(top)
Eyestelllies
They will take you out and they will do their worst
Until there's nothing left of you but rage and thirst
(Chorus)
Until your eyes tell lies like they always did
Your eyes tell lies like they always did
They took your grace, they took your charm, your style
And they did it all with their half-hearted smiles
(Repeat Chorus)
You took a bow, a call, you took a knee
There's nothing left to take except your leave
Waiting, stunned in cathedrals
At long last finding ourselves common
One last time tonight I'll take it, slip it gently from it's sleeve
Sit alone in summer's dark with lies we learned from lyric sheets
Snarled and tangled, leashed and tangled, coiled deep inside of me
"Tumbling like a satellite into a blue and nameless sea"
(top)
Deuteronomy Blues
Sweet little angel, climb out your window
Been out here all night in the orchards and gutters
I've got my Charter Arms, I've got my scroll in hand
There's a blackout rolling through the Promised Land
I've got the piece of information
I'll have to let you know
I'm walking through the square at sundown
And all the colored girls go
"Jihad, Jihad, Jihad, Jihad"
(Chorus)
If you want to come see me
I'll be downtown making the news
If you want to come see me
Wrapped in my Deuteronomy Blues
These are the words! They have been spoken-
Out in the desert, sung from the cockpit,
Spit in the mother tongue, recorded and ordered.
I'm just another body crossing the border
I've got this piece of information
It's on a need-to-know
I'm walking throught the square at sundown
And all the colored girls go
"Jihad, Jihad, Jihad, Jihad"
(Chorus)
If you want to come see me
I'll be underground lighting the fuse
If you want to come see me
Setting fire to my dancing shoes
If you want to come see me
I'll be up all night waiting
If you want to come see me
Wrapped in my Deuteronomy Blues
(top)
Stagger
Born low off the highway of wreckage and loss
Where every magnolia reeks of diesel exhaust
Where They'll treat you like Jesus
Yeah, They'll varnish your cross
And you'll stagger for the rest of your days
I'll admit it to the jury, swear unto the Lord
With my broken down voice and these cowboy chords
You can put it in my record
You can press "Record"
I will stagger for the rest of my days
My measure, my worth won't fill one coffeespoon
But if I have my way I'll be wasted by noon
Speaking in tongues in some Godless saloon
I will stagger for the rest of my days
I will stagger forever, I will fall down in wonder
I will stagger forever, fall down wide-eyed in wonder
I will stagger for the rest of my days
(top)
Evangeline - mp3
Gathered in the July dark
On a plastic bench in a trailer park
Ringed with smoke from the barbecues
And the patriotic residue
You held a finger up to the sky
Took a haul of drugstore wine
Evangeline
It's vanished now, It was misspent
And more or less irrelevent
The burned-out shops
That shot-up school
The motorcourt with it's dirty pool
I knew you there in the tangle and vine
So unimpressed, so undefined
Evangeline
Ten-thousand strong, all deaf, all dumb
In the ruins of that stadium
A fist was raised
A lighter flared
Some metal ballad on the air
I felt you there
Rolling and blind
Threw you one last devil sign
Evangeline
(top)
Double Negative - mp3
You don't mean nothin' to me
Isn't that plain to see
You don't mean nothin' to me
Well, that's a double negative, see?
You don't mean nothin' to me
Flat on my back in a white room
Reading the letter you sent
I can't believe that you've vanished
In spite of all the evidence
Staring out at the highway
Your graffitti on the overpass
I can't believe your bad grammar
I confess it made me laugh
It read-
"You Don't mean Nothin' to Me!"
That's obvious now, painfully
You Don't mean nothin' to me
Well, that's a double negative, see
You don't mean nothin' to me
Out on the road now like a dog in the rain
Every day that drags by just feels worse
Lately I feel less like myself
More like a photograph in reverse
You don't mean nothin' to me...
(top)
This Ugliness - mp3 (rough mix)
O.K., Genius. Why don't you tell me where it didn't go wrong?
I didn't mean to insult your intelligence
I just didn't know that you brought it along
By now I should've known
You'd be on your knees in no time
Squawking out the party line
Into any available microphone
(Chorus)
Wash it down, Choke it up
Get it out of your mouth
This Ugliness
I never understood what you had to stand there
so proud about
This Ugliness
They erase history just like it never took place
But I don't think they're gonna get that look
Off of the little they left of your face
If it is were up to me
They'd treat you like kindling
I'd play back your screams along in the dark
Howl along with the smoke and the spark
"The Greatest Hits of Joan of Arc"
(Chorus)
Wash it down, Turn it 'round
Get it out of your mouth
This Ugliness
I never fathomed what you could be so proud about
This Ugliness
Oh? Was there something you were just dying to say?
Let it echo down the halls as they haul you away
Haul you away
(Chorus)
Wash it down, Turn it 'round
Get it out of your mouth
This Ugliness
I never understood what you could be so proud about
This Ugliness
(top)
Ghettos on Fire - mp3
When I look in your eyes
I see ghettos on fire
I see ghettos on fire
When I look in your eyes
On the avenues it's all broken glass and gasoline
Blue lights and a ravenous news crew
Riot Squad and a 10 PM curfew
On the streets tonight all I see is you staring back at me
From the kicked in windows of overturned limousines
Cold as a bullet sleeping in a magazine
When I look in your eyes
I see ghettos on fire
I see ghettos on fire
When I look in your eyes
On the avenues it's all broken glass and gasoline
Gospel chorus in a call and response
With the ghosts in the diners and haunts now
On the street tonight- We carry nothing but the promise of harm
Come to a halt in your faltering arms
Your voice sings out like a car alarm
When I look in your eyes
I see ghettos on fire
I see ghettos on fire
When I look in your eyes
We'll loot what's left tonight
Shadows high on the wall beneath the searchlights
I know my heart-
It is a crackpipe in a junkyard
When I look in your eyes
I see ghettos on fire
(top)