Get all 6 Roman Candle releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Debris, OH TALL TREE IN THE EAR, WHY MODERN RADIO IS A-OK ep single, THEY SAY ep single, EDEN WAS A GARDEN ep single, and SAYS POP.
1. |
EDEN WAS A GARDEN
03:16
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There's a pine warbler sitting on a hollow limb
he seems to have the whole morning out right in front of him
and everything he sings from the branch that he's sitting on
seems to hush the leaves and the colors all around.
First he sings and then he goes.
And what it means? It's hard to know.
Baby works down right off of Barbur Blvd
and writes down everything on the back of a business card.
Everything she writes will turn into a song or two,
she puts it on the stage and all goes still.
Now if she sings a forest clear,
she puts a tree right in your ear.
Now why can't it stay with me?
Why don't you tell me cause it makes a fool of me
Well Eden was a garden you know.
The birds were in the trees until the place was gone
they scattered to the wind and then they just kept moving on.
Just the other night the clocks were moving awful slow.
I heard a woman's voice coming up from the street below.
I got up from my bed, the song was so enrapturing
and found my real to reel just to see if I could capture -
by the time I turned it on, and turned an ear
that voice was gone.
Now why can't it stay with me?
Why don't you say it cause it makes a fool of me
Well Eden was a garden you know
the birds were in the trees until the place was gone
they scattered to the wind and then they just kept moving on.
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2. |
ONE MORE ROAD
04:10
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Baby let's take a ride tonight,
just you and me and the dancehall light.
We'll ride out to Albuquerque and see
what's waiting there for you and me.
All of our friends have left this town
and there ain't no reason to stay around
unless you want to smoke weed and sit on the ground.
Honey it ain't for me.
Sometimes a whistling train will make me want to go.
Sometimes it's music playing on my radio.
Sometimes we gambled and the money never showed.
But everyplace we end up seems to lead to one more road
Let's ride on out to where the sand is white
and the moon is high on the windowlight
We'll watch while the nighttime see is pearled
and walk outside and sleep on the world.
When the sun comes up on are car so brown
you'll look me up and I'll eye you down
and we'll be grateful to the bones we're not waking up
in the same old bed with the same old luck
Sometimes a whistling train is warning in advance
Sometimes it's music from another room by chance
Sometimes in spite of everything that we've endeared
The longer that we hang around the longer it gets weird.
Baby let's take a ride tonight
while the highway's got nobody in sight.
We'll pull off to the side if we get tired,
and we'll try to get fed or we'll try to get hired.
I've got no desire to run on forever
with a romanced hobo heart that tarries
but i'm going to take this slot machine by the lever
and hope that we pull down three big cherries.
I've walked the spanish steps across the streets of Rome.
We sat and listened while the old brown river flowed.
All trying to find connection looking for a home,
but every place we end up seems to lead to one more road.
Sometimes a whistling train will make me want to go,
Sometimes it's music playing on my radio.
Oh baby doll in spite of all that we've endeared,
the longer that we hang around the longer it gets weird.
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3. |
WHY MODERN RADIO IS A-OK
03:49
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I was down at my favorite watering hole
with a buddy of mine that was out on parole
and we were flipping through the jukebox,
talking how we’d been and how we are.
He’d got a library card and he’d pierced his tongue
and a buddy in prison had turned him onto Neil Young
and he thought that it’d be best to play some for the entire bar.
Now he didn’t know, but while he was in jail,
I’d had my heart broken by a woman to wondrous to tell
and we‘d fallen in love to half the songs that jukebox played.
So when he flattened his dollar on the side of the machine
and I saw “Comes a Time” come on the karaoke screen
I’d realized there was a couple things I had forgot to say:
Don’t play Neil Young
Don’t play Van Morrison
Just let some high school emo band start versing and chorusing
Because there’s no way it will break my heart as far as I can see
and that’s why modern radio is A OK with me.
He said a pop song used to be a powerful thing,
you could turn on the a.m. and John Lennon would sing
or Frank Sinatra would be talking to all of the girls.
And you could think like a hawk or think like a dove
or think of a winter afternoon when you fell in love
and ten songs on a record sounded like a string of pearls.
Now my buddy rattled on till an hour'd gone by
and I thought to spit a mouthful of beam in his eye,
maybe leave him for dead, but a friend is a friend to stay.
So I listened to him talk about Johnny and June
And how "I don't know where I stand" is a true love tune
I bought another round just in time to hear him say:
They don’t play Sam Cooke
They don’t play Merle Watson
They just trade some Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham for a broke-down Datsun.
And there’s no way it'll break my heart as far as I can see –
And that’s why modern radio is a sack of monkeys to me.
He said it makes me so mad I want to get up and shout it
and I smiled and said I hadn’t thought that much about it
We walked out the street and parted ways.
I might‘ve gone to a movie, but my money was spent
so I went on home, and Lord knows where he went
but I wrote myself a letter to all modern dj’s:
Don’t play Bob Dylan
Don’t play "Loose Ends"
Don’t play anybody that’s ever read Sir Patrick Spens
Because there’s no way it'll break my heart as far as I can see –
And that’s why modern radio is a-ok with me.
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4. |
THEY SAY
04:17
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Outside the big red sky is getting dim
shooting pool and talking, making new friends.
But in the morning they're coming around
and in the evening they're bringing me down
I started asking what are these words in their lungs
if there's a time, if there's a time to be young
They say it's over.
Found my way in the morning out the door in the dark
soft rain and cops chasing a kid through the park
and in the evening feeling so tired in my shirt
and in the morning walking the hallways at work,
you start believing all of these tunes being hummed
if there's a time, if there's a time to be young
They say it's over. Oh Baby it ain't.
Well people talk talk talk and their hearts are getting
weathered they remind you with a grin now that nothing
lasts forever, well I've spent a lot of time a lot of time I've
been stuck and I can tell you what they're saying when
they tell you good luck, they say it's over.
They say it's over. Oh Baby it ain't.
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5. |
BIG LIGHT
03:57
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Sometimes I get a little lost.
And the good life is so hard to see.
Sometimes all I can see is the cost
when the prize standing right in front of me.
And it ain't easy to get along
when you've got things going wrong
and there is no luck to be found besides.
Spend my natural prime, thinking money and time,
wondering where they go, and they go.
That's when I need you to put me in line.
Come tell me something, any words are fine.
Fill up these four walls with old melodies.
Let me know if the big light is shining on me.
Some nights when the wind is blowing soft,
it's been so long since a dream filled my head,
there's a beauty in every streetlight and every moth,
but all I want to do is lay down in bed.
And it's along road to travel down
when nothing good seems to stay around
and I'm a solitary man with my pride
at the end of my mind, talking unkind
feeling in the dark, in the dark.
That's when I need you to put me in line.
come tell me something. any words are fine.
fill up these four walls with old melodies
and let me know if the big light is shining on me.
That's when I need some time spent with you.
Come tell me something. Any words will do.
Fill up these four walls with old melodies
and let me know if the big light is shining on me.
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6. |
SONNET 46
01:55
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Some freezing rain is falling on my shoulder
and a winter wind is blowing through each lung.
Some things about this weather make me older
some things about it make me feel so young.
There's a quarter moon that knows the hours i'm keeping
and a glittered highway showing back its light.
There's a baby at home in my room that's sleeping
and a woman that won't be alone tonight.
So let the lads and lad-ettes keep Ibiza
and morning walks home, cocktail on their chin.
I'll spill my own drink listening to Aretha
with my girl and a fireplace in our den
If being young is one prolonged farewell
I'll find it undiminished somewhere else.
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7. |
A HEARTBEAT
02:51
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Every night I'm staring out my window wondering what to do.
I ask myself what would you think about me if you only knew
that I'm looking for a little more than a drink and a walk up the street,
and I've got something more in mind when I get you in the passenger seat.
I've got a heartbeat baby a heartbeat baby that belongs to you
I've got a heartbeat baby a heartbeat baby and there's nothing I can do
When I was young my mama sat me down and told me how it goes
You'll walk the world but most of what you're looking for is under your nose.
Now I've spent plenty of time getting lost in the citites where the hours disappear
and I've got something more that's burning up my neck and pounding in my ears.
One cup of coffee, two shots of whiskey neat, ambulance sirens blasting down
a side street, here you come a walking like a punch right to the gut but I guess
until I tell you then I have to keep my mouth shut.
And listen to the heartbeat baby a heartbeat baby that belongs to you
I've got a heartbeat baby a heartbeat baby and there's nothing I can do.
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8. |
WOKE UP THIS MORNING
05:21
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Well I woke up this morning with love in my heart.
It'd been a long time, It'd been a long time.
Well I woke up this morning with love in my heart.
You know it's so hard to find it. It's good to be reminded.
I was moving around my empty hotel room.
I had the front door open wide at 4 o'clock in the afternoon
It had rained all night and the leaves dripped on the tree
the whole day felt straight ahead, and not a bit of it belonged to me
And I'm not sure if it's anything to do with you
And I'm not sure if I'll feel it again, or forget.
And I'm not sure if it's anything to do with you
but if I had to bet, but if I had to bet.
I woke up this morning, everything tastes good to me:
Captain's wafers from the hotel bar, a styrofoam full of lipton tea.
I could see the pavement where the sun was shining hot
making little heat waves of rainbow across that empty parking lot
Well I woke up this morning with love in my mind.
I had started to wonder I had started to wonder.
I know a thousand people that will tell how the end of the whole song goes.
I'm thinking that nobody knows. I'm thinking that nobody knows.
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9. |
I WAS A FOOL
04:10
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Out in the evening past the bridge and below
frogs and cicadas left and right growling low.
I've spent so much time round here when spring is done
been here a thousand times, not heard a single one.
Birds in the morning while I'm shoveling the snow
coffee pot wheezing soft as my stereo
All of the things I've had whether I've known or not
All of the things I've known and then somehow forgot
When I was young riding aound
beer in my lap, one window down
bird in the tree, kiss on the mouth
I thought that I had figured it out
I was a fool. Then I met you.
Dusk was the longest hour when I was a kid.
Beautiful things sometimes can seem pretty hid.
Funny the things that make you want to walk the land
are the things sometimes you barely understand.
Found lots of crooked road before I found you
hard to curse any road but sometimes you do.
Feeling all strung out, drawn up from head to gut
I was calling out, I didn't know for what
When I was young riding aound
beer in my lap, one window down
bird in the hand, kiss on the mouth
I thought that I had figured it out
All of these things so hard to find
up in my face, lost to my mind
hand on the knee, kiss in the mouth
I thought that I had figured it out
I was a fool.
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10. |
STARTING FROM SCRATCH
03:31
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It's a long walk down from my door to the Cadogan Hotel
but I make it every night when the sky gets dark.
The serpentine is black and doesn't show a single star
And I'm just off work and walking through the park.
Girls in evening clothes are talking on the phone,
Got their bags from knightsbridge and their walking home.
Can't distract me honey I know where I'm going
to sit down with a g & t and watch the night so long.
Well the drinks they pour at this bar never run too cheap
and I've got no plans to meet anyone it's clear.
But the history in this postal code runs deep,
and it might be lost on most of the ones in here
I can't say for certain honey where I'm bound.
I've got no rich relations, got no extra time.
But when they shut this bar tonight I know I'm going
to walk down by the riverbank and watch the night so fine.
I don't know how other folks get by.
But there's one thing that I've learned for fact.
There's a music you can only hear
when you're starting from scratch.
A roach's wings are fluttering soft and clear
in the midnight of this quiet flat.
There's a music you can only hear
when you're starting from scratch.
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11. |
EARLY AUBADE
03:40
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I'd like to thank all of the stars just for shining out tonight
like a hundred scattered eyes in the aether.
I know that it ain't normal thanking stars but it ain't normal seeing stars
outshine the London streetlights either.
So make up your old bed and check the drawers for clothes
cause everything outside the world is telling us it's time it's to go.
I could wish against the dawn of day, sit and wish that we could stay
in this room we could wait till the tears come.
Oh but that don't work for me and you doing things the way we do
it'd be a conch shell stuck to our eardrum.
With every passing minute as a faint heard roar
of a rolling ocean talking about some road we'd never seen before.
I've often wondered about a room, about these four walls standing,
keeping better folks than us from the cold rain.
Wondering if every joke that's told, every cigarette that's rolled,
every song sung, sinks in the wood grain.
If every whisper on the floor and every christmas carol
saturates the surface like the whiskey soaking into a barrel.
Now If I could I'd pull them down every wall by the panel
and I'd build a tree in our back garden.
Maybe we could sit beneath it naked reading Paradise Lost
while the green leaves color and harden.
But watch now how the sun is gathering in the blinds
and the time is coming quick for you and me to leave this big old room behind.
Now when the roses bloom this year and our soul's up in our ears
with some newer music sung in a strange place.
oh and all the songs will move through us, giving music to the thrush
and every trash can alley a new face,
we'll let them linger to their end and watch them go without grieving
cause that music as it moves, will let you understand it best when it's leaving.
And the last thing we'll leave is a love song for this vacant room
sunk in the walls, and trapped like the ocean enshelled - with everything else we ever exhaled.
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