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The River You Drink From Will Drown You

by candle

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1.
Like Ghosts 05:12
There is no use in turning back now and all the roads that have brought you here have been drowned. In that hotel room, it’s just him and the moon and the hunger in your silence says you’ve not been found. There’s a chill in your voice, a thought of the past, in the words to a stranger, “just make it fast.” And the morning crawls in; on those little cat feet. It comes to tug you from the safety of swollen sleep. With those pills on the floor and that bottle under the bed, you’ll try to fog up the mirrors inside of your head. I still remember you, lying beside me, you said, “there’s nothing as useless or as lonesome as a dream I’m lost out at sea, but I’m thinking about the coast and how all our kisses, in time, come back like ghosts. I won’t see the land for three long weeks, and I won’t see my true love again until my boat sinks. So I’ll swim and I’ll swim, just to keep my hands warm until I’ll wake up crying and coughing inside her arms.
2.
El Río Calle-Calle (free) 05:13
I’ve been waiting on the spring for a year now it seems and when it comes, well I aint gonna stay. So If I’m not around to feel the sun kiss this town, well I’ll still dream of it from somewhere far away. And the flowers in bloom and how I’ve filled my room with all the words I just could not say. How I wished she was mine when we were walking that time along el río calle-calle. So what can I say? Oh what can I say? I’ve been betting it all on the hope of someday and in the hope hope hope things turn my way. It feels so long ago, back in San Diego when she said “it feels just like you’re running away” I knew that she was right but I still left in the night and by morning was waiting on a plane. Now she’s long gone, so when I get back home there’s no parades, no welcome back parties; just an empty bed and some books I never read. That’s all I’ve got waiting on meBut what can I do? Oh what can I do? Everywhere I go it’s always the same old tune. I’m always wait wait waiting on the blues. Pitched open like a tent, and buckling in the wind , my heart’s not much shelter from the storm but if you climb right inside, and stay through the night, well you might find yourself a little warmth. Until I pack it all in and start walking on again and when the sun comes up, we’ll be all alone. So maybe one day, I’ll find myself a place and I’ll settle down and build myself a home. And what I wouldn’t give, oh what I wouldn’t give just to open those doors and say to you then love love love come in.
3.
Hear me dear, if I’m not around this time next year, tell my friends they can all just follow me down. I’ll be dancing with a ghost to the siren songs of the old west coast, on the PCH with a hand out heading south. I’m heading south with the wind, I’ll catch that train and ride on in to a town that knows when to cry a long with me and when to wake up the sun like an old friend who says, “you’ve had enough so sit right down I’ll keep you company.” I’m getting drunk, off drinking rain and my skin’s as pale as the old door frame of the house of my first love, I remember well. That door was open wide, on a summer’s day I walked inside and that’s where the story gets just too hard to tell. So California take me back, I’m lost out here on this one way track and I know that we have both seen better days. In these blind/broken dreams I’m walking on a high-rise beam and I look down below and hear somebody say “Love, let go, fall down” “Kevin - come here, come on down”
4.
Katherine 04:50
Katherine There’s blood in the snow down by government hill. I was out there last night: Katherine, the devil and I. His face formed in fog, from her breathe in the air and the words that she spoke left me cold, shivering, bare. There’s blood in the snow and Katherine’s getting cold and they’re searching for her. She’s somewhere better I’m sure. If I could take it all back, well I’m not sure I would. I want her for myself and sometimes it’s so hard to be good. There’s blood in the snow, there’s knocking at my door but I won’t let them in. They won’t make me clean again. So I promise to myself under the light of the moon that I’m leaving here tonight. So Katherine, I’ll be seeing you soon. There’s blood in the snow, fresh powder’s coming down and down there we’ll lies in that white hill side. If you dig way, way down you’d find a garden green; in my heart, and in my soul, it’s just been buried so deep.
5.
Snowfall on an Anchorage Graveyard There’s no birds singing in theses trees. There’s no secret poem written among the leaves, just a cold, dark forest that’s been growing, growing up inside me. There’s no sign of shelter in her voice. There’s no warm refuge from this raining noise, that’s falling down, falling all around me. Outside my window, of this lonely hotel room, snow as cold as the stares of the dead it’s falling onto and the secret they keep buried with them, long after they’ve expired. If you find yourself above the ground, you better find yourself a fire. There’s no flowers growing beneath these ribs. There’s no blooming whites, no bleeding reds, just a single rose – locked up and sealed and waiting for you. There’s no great hero in these shoes. There’s no angel wings, no empty tombs, just a crippled, broken man whose been leaning upon you. So I sink the things I’m to scared to say, and I sing the things I’m to scared to think like how it wasn’t some girl who up in the night walked away from me. It was the holy ghost, the fire I’d found floating up away from me. So out into the void I sing to you now, “Come back, come back to me, please.” In the morning the sun lays down to rest upon my cheek. Outside I see a bird on a branch open its mouth to speak, and two people pressed together like palms sending up a prayer to heaven and time goes on, in its mercy forgetting us.
6.
We Won’t Ever Die We traced the shoreline for miles through the fog outside and climbed rock ladders with hands tied up into the sky, where the clouds bathed in soft truths bridging day to the night. We will be made to dust and then brought back to life. We won’t ever die Our hearts are enslaved in a delicate cage of flesh and bones and they long to break free, taste sunlight and grow and to bathe in the river, carving canyons and flowing and our love ages backwards, towards birth and the knowing. We won’t ever die.
7.
My Old Ways 03:04
My Old Ways If I was crying on the way back home, it was for life and nothing more and nothing less. If I’m a thief like you say I am, well then I’m keeping everything that I’ve stolen and if your world turns cold and, suddenly, your old you can come back and find me sometime. I’m still here, just counting up the years, but I’ve been getting pretty good at getting by. So if I am spending every cent I make it’s just because money kind buy me nothing true. If I’ve been sleeping for half my life, well that’s alright because I’m just dreaming of you and the way that your hair melts into the air and how your laughing looks just like crying. My dove, my dove, well I don’t see you enough but I’ve been getting pretty good at getting by. So if I was singing a sad, sad song it’s just because beauty sometimes gets mixed with pain, and if I’m not the man that you thought I was, well I’m sorry, I’m just stuck in my old ways and my sorrow grows wings with every song I sing and it flies out somewhere into the night. I know, I know it will find its way back home but I’ve been getting pretty good at getting by.
8.
Northern Gales I have been traveling long, with the weight of this unwritten song and now here you are, here you are and it’s gone. When the room gets filled up with dark, I will listen to your hummingbird heart and for the fluttering, the fluttering to start. I tried to map it all out, in the flowerbed you were reading Cummings out loud and the petals pulled were scattered and strewn into puzzles by your beautiful mouth. You with your raincloud lips, your tiny hands and your earthquake kiss, you have covered me, you’ve covered me in this. Your name is a strange souvenir from a place I’ve never truly been near, but I will carry it, I’ll carry it through the years. I tried to settle the swells, and coast into port on the back of these sails, but the canvas was worn, tattered and torn into threads by the northern gales. So it’s here I’ll stand and I’ll wait, like a soldier at some ancient gate. With his head bowed down, away from the crown of a queen who’s only known as fate.
9.
Stay Awhile 03:38
Stay Awhile There’s a wind that’s been blowing through every corridor of my heart since the day I saw you out there, by the lake, like a forgotten work of art. But these gusts have blown me cold, and I’m shaking like a child. Won’t you please come here and stay for a while? Last night, for a moment, I almost thought I felt you lying there. I didn’t want to stop my dreaming to count up all the years. I’d give up all these songs for another chance just to see you smile. Won’t you please come here and stay for a while? There’s a new train rolling in and out of this old town everyday and every whistle blowing is a secret wish that things get better, somewhere, up the way. I’ve never seen a sight like the sun settling down on this coast, and in the murmurs of the ocean I can hear your voice and I think I’ll keep it close. The moon is low tonight, and the phacelias have been growing wild. Won’t you please come here and stay for a while?
10.
Goodnight little firefly, dancing under the cover of a warm night; humming a little song that sounds like springtime. In this way it seems, you’ve washed my eyes clean with your light. I said farewell to California and denied these arms that longed to hold you and from Kodiak down to Patagonia I have seen your face in every hidden place that I have moved on from. I blew out my candle and wandered up the coastline towards Seattle my plans and dreams all left in shambles and without a light to follow I fought the most hollow of all battles. Now I'm still just a sinner, chest-deep in some eternal river and the stars start to shake and shiver. When my heart caves in, its all I want then is to be nearer. But these memories turn gray in time like the words of poet that speaks by doesn't write and the hardest things left to say are left out in the cold or buried in a grave. The boats keep leaving and the boats keep coming and the song keeps playing and the heart keeps drumming. The sun keeps sailing across the blue ocean ceiling, behind black clouds sinking of whose tears that I'm always stealing and whose sorrow that I have seen in the hours I'm always drinking and in the thoughts that I’m not thinking and in the song that I'm not singing and in the words I am not saying and in the prayers I am not praying and in the word I am not seeking and in the love I am not giving and in the God that I'm not seeing but somehow, still, still believing in the hope that he will find me here.

about

The River You Drink From Will Drown You

On my seventh Sunday in Valdivia, I laid myself down on the sandy banks of the Playa Niebla because I wanted to drink the blood of the sky and eat the flesh of the earth. In time, everything washed back into itself between the white tides, muddy clothes and the gray stillness of heaven. The outer world became reflected within, and I could feel them swimming beside each other: my wish for freedom, something like the Holy Spirit, and the women I would leave behind. When I woke up there was not a dream remaining I had not tied to anchor, and let go. I wrote on the sand, “How did I wash up here?”
The highway has always looked like a river to me. I used to stand on its banks and cup my hands up against my mouth as if I was drinking from it. I dreamed about floating to the end of it and all the things I’d see and people I’d meet along the way. So I let go, and rode it north until I arrived at the mouth and then kept going, out to the ocean.
I used to think the sea was vast and romantic until I tried living on its back. We rocked and rolled together and I took beatings along with the moments of beautiful calmness. When I returned back to land, my legs would wobble and world seemed to still be shaking. The sea roared on, inside of me. So when I came back home, I couldn’t find that stillness and so I kept going south until I could go no further down.
Carl Sandburg said, “there are men and women so lonely, they believe that God, too, is lonely.” I think I might be one of them, walking into a forest, talking to no one but the moon or in the corner of a bar, where everyone looks the same. In Tony’s in Kodiak, Alaska fishermen sing “Whiskey River take my mind…” and drift away. In Chile they drink their wine the same way.
I find myself, now, with nothing but ten songs to my name and the words of a stranger in my mind. I was walking home along the Cau-Cau river over ruins where a village once stood. The man was carrying two jugs of water and nearly breaking his back to do it, pacing over the place he used to call his home. He said, “Remember this, above all else: be careful where you build you house because when it rains and rains, the river you drink from will drown you.”

-Kevin Coons

credits

released March 3, 2011

recorded, mixed and mastered by Nolan Perry
all songs written by Kevin Coons
photos and artwork by Kevin Coons
performed by Candle:
Kevin Coons - vocals, guitar, harmonica
Rachel Spotten - piano, vocals
Paul Frankel - drums
Brenneth Stevens - guitar
Morgan Enos - bass, mandolin, vocals

with:
Chloe Smith - vocals
Ross Major - mandolin, organ
George Major - violin, cello

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candle San Luis Obispo, California

Candle is a folk/rock band from San Luis Obispo, CA. Mostly active 2006-2011.

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