Western Ballad

+ Memory of a Ghost

(Shannon McNally/Mark Bingham)

Time and time again

I listen to the wind

Waiting in vain to hear

To hear, your footsteps coming near

Time and time again

And as the wind blows

I'm still a lonely host

Dancing cheek to cheek

And as the wind blows

I'm still a lonely host

With the memory of a ghost

Oh how we move

Slowly in step

Round and round we go

Shuffling to the waltz

On the rug past the window

Round and round we go

Whippoorwill sings through

The gray orange haze

No cage no seed no wire

Spinning through remnants

On this living room stage

No feast no fear no fire

You saved many lives

but your’re afraid of mice

I thought you were someone else

walking on oysters and razor cockle shells

you were gonna do wonders

Lamplight lingers on your missing silhouette

The one that I've yet to forget

Leading unheard laughter through the maze

Of love's rafters

As I lean towards regret

Tracing the ether

Chasing your touch

Grappling to conspire

Wishing on impressions

Tiptoeing round the hush

Spying phantoms in the brush

you saved many lives but you’re afraid of mice

I thought you were someone else

walking on oysters and razor cockle shells

you were gonna do wonders

+ High

(Shannon McNally/Mark Bingham)

Pine trees and woodsmoke

Brushing my skin

I was just a little bit high

Under the milky way

Sweet as a birdsong

I was just a little bit high

And oh this way he came

He came to me

I could not believe my eyes

Arrived like a forest fire

It burned by design

I was just a little bit high

Into the looking glass

I gazed and saw

How much had never been there before

I recognized my childhood self

How very nice to be home again

Red as the dawn over the prairie

I was just a little bit high

The white of the moonlight came rushing in

I was just a little bit high

Blue as a robin's egg

Centered like a third eye

I was just a little bit high

And as I rose to my feet I knew

Just who I had become

Into the future I gazed and saw

The bones of my ancestry

+ When I Am Called

(Shannon McNally/Mark Bingham)

Wharf rats stroll by the water

The water that used to be blue

It's more than water now

It's almost water

It looks like water too

Seagulls fly by the river

The river that used to be blue

It's more than a river now

It's more than water

It looks like water too

I will see the leaves change

I will learn to take the fall

I will throw a snowball through the sky for you

I will go when I am called

Aaaahhhhh

Somebody's calling

Aaaahhhhh

Somebody's falling

Bluebirds fly over the mountain

That's what bluebirds do

Bluebirds will never be in the wrong century

They look like bluebirds too

I will go when I am called

I will go when I am called

I will see the leaves change

I will learn to take the fall

I will go when I am called

Every thought you've ever thought

Just might come true

Even if you've never shared a secret

That's why we open bottles and drink the afternoon

Feeling like I'm being watched every moment

Hedgehogs dig in the garden

A garden of science and void

It's more than science now it's almost Coltrane

The impressions of eternity

+ Western Ballad

(Allen Ginsburg)

When I died, love, when I died

My heart was broken in your care;

I never suffered love so fair

As now I suffer and abide

When I died

When I died, love, when I died

I wandered in an endless maze

That men have walked for centuries,

As endless as the gate was wide

When I died, love, when I died.

When I died, love, when I died

There was a war in the upper air:

All that happens, happens there;

There was an angel by my side

When I died, love, when I died.

When I died, love, when I died

My heart was broken in your care;

I never suffered love so fair

As now I suffer and abide

When I died

+ True Posession

(Shannon McNally/Mark Bingham)

I am my one and only true possession

My soul’s song, my only true confession

And I turn towards the truth of my obsession to roam

They draw you in and drag you down

No matter how you try not to drown

Sometimes it just can't be helped

Them that live without sympathy

Them that are without modesty

Bore me deaf dumb and blind

You find yourself under the water

Fists clenched knowing you oughta turn the cheek

What was it they said about the meek?

I won't apologize, let them criticize

With all the dismissal in their eyes

And I've been scaring them

Since I've been knowing them

Confusing them, long since been losing them

It's just the way it goes

Strong and wrong, long gone

Strong and wrong and long gone

down their path

There is no answer fit

Why I shouldn't quit forever

Their company

+ Tristesse Oubilee'

+ Thunderhead

(Shannon McNally/Mark Bingham)

Watching the horizon for signs of a storm

Knowing that the right will undo all the wrong

I can feel this child inside me move

She rolls with nothing to prove

She's gonna change the way I choose

Looking forward to the blood and pain

Feel it coming down like rain

Washing over and through my veins

Come the thunderhead moving down the pass

Come the thunderhead break the silence at last

Now I can come clean find words for all the seen

Find some peace inside the stream

Turn in and endure the mean

I can feel this child inside me move

She rolls with nothing to prove

She's gonna change the way I choose

Come the thunderhead moving down the pass

Come the thunderhead break the silence at last

Blind by the sun cleansed by the pain

Dancing with spirit elders in coats of gold

Crawl through the spot where the world

Was pulled like a root, pulled by it's leaves

Gathered and burned as the dinner of thieves

Then returned as the body of Eve

Reckoned by the grace of grace

+ Rock and Roll Angels

(Shannon McNally/Mark Bingham)

Rock and roll angels and barroom saints

Reliving your checkered pasts

Composing your Hallelujah chorus

tying memos to your tattered masts

Will you always be broke

choked on slivered dreams

with dumb luck and fat chance

as the constant features on your silver screen

Or will the seas part to that other land

Where things will get easier and you'll get a hand

How much more can they sell you

Sell you things that money can't buy

Can you believe a word they tell you?

It's the words they left out that left you this way

Those things that they forgot to say

When I was single I dressed so fine

My shoes did not squeak across the floor

I was led to the altar wearing black crinoline

Summer star as the evening began

Be good to the first for the last is much worse

They will turn you to dust in your grave

And the moon gives no light

You're traveling blind

Soon as your back's turned

You're cursed and maligned

Like the book of Job in three quarter time

How much more can they sell you

Sell you things that money can't buy

Can you believe a word they tell you?

It's the words they left out that left you this way

Those things that they forgot to say

From less of an altar and more of a dashboard

More from the wand and less from the lord

Into your dreams we'll gather in flight

Hoist your song deep in the night

Rock and roll angels

so far from saints

+ Toast

(Shannon McNally/ Mark Bingham)

Dragonflies and the sun was out

Next thing I knew

The sun's going down over the river

The sky is orange

We've been passing the days like

We could live on air

Your love is relaxing

Even delicious

I want to remember this song

A long long time from now

When we're tired and we're mired

In the work of every day

So tonight I toast

to the memory of the dead

As the friends we love are by our side

These days are not so easy

These days are not serene

There's too much motion

They are thick with tension

Little is as I would like it to be

Your love is tempting

Even sneaky

I want to remember this song

A long long time from now

When we're tired and we're mired

In the work of every day

So tonight I toast to the memory of the dead

As the friends we love are by our side

My breath is my divine faith

Teach me to be quiet

Teach me to forget myself

To remember the many many kindnesses

+ Little Stream of Whiskey

+ In My Own Second Line

(Shannon McNally/Mark Bingham)

Tonight the streets are quiet

The battleships are docked

Angels working on the chariot wheel

Ghosts wait for daylight cast no shadow

Your orishas took my beer

My memories have moved on

A drop of spirits on the tongue

As we burn the photographs

Might as well be looking up

From the bottom of the sea

Extinction of that beam to heaven

Rainbows at the serpents’ tail

Remember the hills and the valleys below

Poly Ann drove steel like a man

And I see you in each step I take

In every sugar pine

I'm standing still in time

In my own second line

Out on interstates where truckers roll

Carrying gold from town to town

Wanna hide away like Jean Lafitte

Get drunk on the money till judgment day

Sooth the sorrow, heal the wounds

Beautiful fields lie just beyond

Starry crown on my head

I know this time ain’t long

Oh Willy, oh Willy

I'm afraid of your ways

Your soldiers of pleasure

With your fife and drums

Watch the empire crumble

In your private disgrace

A drop of spirits on the tongue

As we burn the photographs