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1. |
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Well, it’s been a long time coming
But the writing’s on the wall
In the end, the house we keep's the house that falls
Are the roads as they were always?
Is the Indian sky still blue?
Are the warriors still out creeping in the dew?
Send me some good news from the front
Tell me the lines will always be the same
Tell me the wanderers still know my name
Send me some good news from the front
Lead me upon your beaten trails
Spin me dreams of what is real
Our old waitress still serves whiskey
To the cowboys who won’t walk
While the well dries up and horses all take off
More and more, I stare out on the fields
Taste sulfur on the wind
A silhouette at dusk, a dream of my own end
I am heading East at dawn today
Just a mile on foot to start
But nothing but adventure in my heart
Peace be upon your each waking hour
May we find the passage home
Brother, I will see you soon
Sincerely, John
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2. |
Last Train to Bethlehem
05:05
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Little Susie eats her breakfast at noon
Has slept for hours and is leaving soon
She got the call down to the other side of town
Called it in sick and laid her black dresses down
She hadn’t seen him since those vagabond years
They’d starched that collar, wiped the blood off his ears
Yeah, he’d been lonely up that mountain of time
Then one day took a ride down that skinny white line
On the last train to Bethlehem
Where in the end all pretty girls are laid
On the last train to Bethlehem
Those midnight men are here to carry him home today
Sixteen’s a dream, she thinks, and California’s a con
Those old pumps fading in her suitcase so long
Now the sale is done, and you got what you paid
Lay there in silence while you roll by the way
On the last train to Bethlehem
Where in the end all pretty girls are laid
On the last train from Bethlehem
Those midnight men are here to carry you home today
Don’t you know there’s a path for you tonight? (That’s all right)
Don’t you know there’s a path for you tonight? (That’s all right)
Now little Susie breaks her little bread
Ties her medallions in chains round her head
Wears ragged lace and sits in place
Forever waits for something, someone to show her the way
As she goes dreaming of that last train
Now the station echoes at the break of some dawn
Draped in her best, a Western wind and she’s gone
She left it all, her rags and Saint Paul’s
Now she’ll tread the line today, so faithless and so enthralled
On the last train from Bethlehem
Where in the end our pretty girl is paid
On the last train from Bethlehem
They say amen, and she will carry you home today
Ride, Susie
Ride, Susie
Ride, Susie
On the last train
On the last train
On the last train
Ride that train home tonight
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3. |
Home Again
03:18
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Broken home is where the broken heart is
I thought one day after seven weeks in Spain
That seemed like years and here I was
Down in the same old digs and duds
Out in the streets where strangers greet you home again
Now I’m back alone and back where it all started
Before the racing times had even yet begun
Then under stars in Barcelona
Drinking blood-wine in Pamplona
We had found how life was all a bloody run
Now I’m running home again
Running by the way
Waiting for the day
That I’ll be running home again
And by the Spanish ocean we’d at land’s end made a motion
As erosion ate the mountains and our minds
We tossed and turned, in sunlight burned
Left then forgot what we had learned
Forgot the question, gave an answer, let it lie
Now I’m lying home again
Lying by the way
Waiting for the day
That I’ll be lying home again
And what I stole away from nights of whiskey since erased
And every face that I’d never see again
Was the lost memory of a home not built of bricks but flesh and bones
And when she came, I’d never leave my home again
Now I’m leaving home again
Leaving by the way
Waiting for the day
That I’ll be leaving home again
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4. |
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Today, my faith has broken
The office shutters sway like guillotines
Outside, the desert pulses like a gong-beat
But in here the graveyard shift is in full swing
There’s a blind commissioner on beat tonight
Fool him once, twice, and shame on all the kids
He lies in wait with lawyers and a needle
Will he wait for me when I’ve no more blood to give?
He says: “Don’t stare out the window
Out on the land of hope and dreams
Do not look for something out that window
Oh, that land ain’t what it seems”
Old Ben had stood his post for forty years
They let him out last week but kept his teeth
And now he’s out there somewhere in the heatstroke
Among the wildebeests he cannot eat
And he screams: “Well, don’t stare out the window
Out on the land of hope and dreams
Do not look for something out that window
Ah, that land ain’t what it seems”
As he crawls down empty little streets
And he says: “Lord, won’t you give me one more dream?”
Where there’s everything he’ll ever really need
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5. |
Addicted to Love
04:39
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Well, it’s been a week and she’s already spinning up the dial
And the burning season’s in for at least a little while
He’s been alone for maybe seventy years
If you don’t count Fridays, or down on Ontario Street
This time it’s different, she might hold on to this for good, as if she could
But he’s addicted to love
The pretty faces that he meets in those lonely places
Smile and wink without ever thinking what the next day brings
And he’s addicted to love
The ones who need him try so hard but can never read him
Like it’s faith that they’re feeding on til he’s gone
And his broken heart won’t heal, he wears it out too much
Soon he doesn’t even move when he feels her soulful touch
Because he’s felt it there a million times before
And if it isn’t new, it ain’t worth pining for
Like every old burden, she’s set free from that clutch she had, so sad
That he’s addicted to love
The pretty faces that he sees in those lonely places
Get him through that feeling that he’s born to lose
And he’s addicted to love
That old tunnel vision goes away for a while and then comes back itching
At the edge of his eyes where the darkness lies, where it all fades out of view
He taps the window but there’s nobody home
Only broken records on the downtown patrol
She got tired of him pulling away so she pulled on it first
And let what binded them break, and took back what was hers
Now the autumn leaves sneak in through the swinging basement door
Inside, a chaos of torn up poems and some disregarded whore
He’s lying spread there in a mountain of ash
With an eye on the door and a mind on the past
At last, he’s repented, he’s cured, he’s learned what he’s been dying for
Or he’s addicted to love
His pretty face has led him away to this lonesome place
Where the ones he desires are the ones that he has thrown away
And he’s addicted to love
For all he’s seen couldn’t save him from this ruined dream
Where the forest, the trees, and the in-betweens all look the same to me
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6. |
Losing
03:43
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He lays his smile out, like he’s playing one more scene
Walks on by the nurses and the big machines
They said it might be bad
But when he looks at me, it isn’t like the movies
When, from the start, we both knew we were losing
There down by Saint Andrew’s, where the sickies get their fix
Travelling for hours out from all the sticks
Some are blessed, he says
And others with their evil eyes are out to fool him
But what he doesn’t know just keeps him moving
And down inside the trenches, he slams another drink
Under the crimson city’s sky, the blackest vultures slink
Memories are hungry, no dreams can ever fill
He’s been feeding them forever
Been waiting for that kill
He marches to the piano, finds the whitest key
Closes his eyes, thinks about it, tries to see
He’s seventeen again, it’s like he just took off
And that hammer just got moving
But, brother, it’s okay today, we’ll sit and write the history of losing
This history of losing
Of losing
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7. |
Summer in Eden
03:34
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The palm fronds beat along a strip
Of hungry blue, and bearing news
Of bright-eyed beauties clad in scars and heels
Eyes of coal and mangled soles
Snapping at the wet cement
At the gates of Troy, supplicating for a meal
In the end, will they give us each our bread?
In the end, won’t they offer back the nothings we once said?
Will they march on in the wastes?
Will they drum out one more song?
Will they comfort us even after summer in Eden has come and gone?
“I’m home,” she lied, still grinning
Her palms spinning round my hair
“We’re in Rome,” I said, but I truly meant nowhere
You see, those sad lines bind us
Etched in every dead man’s heart
Poisoning our words like two-bit parts
And in the end, won’t they give us each some space?
In the end, will they not leave to us our hidden place?
Will they give us what we’ve earned?
Will they shed the skins they’ve donned?
Do they settle scores after summer in Eden has come and gone?
Her Cinderella appetite and Joan of Arc revolts
Had kept us warm for hours there inside our greenish vault
But who was she that day when Indian summer headed south
And drove our love away into the darkness of the mouth
Where all the libertines are fed
There glowing in the sunset
Like plutonium rods and dead stars in the grass
My baby crawling fast
To plot her last escape, she asks:
“Will you give me one more tape before I pass?”
In the end, will they kill us one more time?
Will those sirens strike us all down in our prime?
Will they stand up to admit
All they ways they might have wronged?
Or will they judge us even after summer in Eden has come and gone?
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8. |
City on the Hill
06:10
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We built it in those sunny streets
Sweating youth and making heat
Tasting salt through linen sheets
And drinking at the docks
Both of us young, and still hungry for
Eternal life and something more
The soreness in our sun-kissed pores
To cut through every little knock
Now I’ve got to find my way back up
To that city on the hill
To sweet young Alice in our seaside palace
In that city on the hill
Where we had dreams to kill, and years to fill
And time stood still
In that city on the hill
Then Alice left the ocean for a while
And came back dressed up in some Oriental style
I let the waves fill in the broken miles
While she stood at the shore and stared
As I tried to climb my way back up
To that city on the hill
To sweet young Alice in her seaside palace
In that city on the hill
Where we had dreams to kill, and years to fill
And time stood still
In that city on the hill
Now the angels slink the avenues at dusk
Flailing thumbs out stained with rust
In the dark, it’s Shangri-La or bust
And no cities in between
While I dream about the lonely nights we shared
Cut and bleeding, whispering dares
We had each other and it was enough not to be scared
Now I’ll sing a dirge to the dreams of our past
While I try to climb my way back up
To that city on the hill
To sweet young Alice in our seaside palace
On that city on the hill
When we had dreams to kill and years to fill
And time stood still
In that city on the hill
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9. |
Shantytown Burning
04:03
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Black Jack called us out in the blaze
The pastors were running and the poets were laid
There to rest and their faces were black
As they lit up the night
Mrs. Green climbed out of the wishing well
Looked for her lover and spit out a spell
And the siloes each fell
As that whiskey smell bled through the blight
Shantytown burning
Turning to ash in the night
Shantytown burning
As we head for the Western lights
Shantytown burning
Turning out one last fantasy ride
But we all know it’s been burning here
Since 1965
And the gods flapped down from the edge of town
Dragging their buckets and salting the ground
And they locked the place down we had lived
While the caravan fled
The mountain men took off for the cannibal coast
While the fairy girls dressed in their travelling clothes
Shouting “Good night, good night,
And thanks for the times that we had.”
Shantytown burning
Turning to ash here tonight
Shantytown burning
As we head for the Western lights
Shantytown burning
Turning out one last fantasy ride
But we all know it’s been burning here
Since 1965, since ‘65
Now the kids all whisper past, shattering the glass
The grass don’t grow green, but it sure does grow fast
And the merry housewives preen, scattering their dreams
Like tumbleweeds down all the old streets
Shantytown is burning
Turning to ash here tonight
Shantytown is burning
As we head for the Western lights
Shantytown’s burning
Turning out one last fantasy ride
But we all know it’s been burning here
Since 1965
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10. |
Stop in Tulsa
04:04
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Hey there, pretty sweet, is there a gate
Out of this waiting room for one of us?
The doors all look the same and
All us tight-faced players waiting on the nuts
The last snowy red-eye to somewhere, nowhere,
Anywhere is what I really mean
In the terminal at three
The silence almost screams
Look at how they move
You can almost hear them dream
Hey, Mr. Music Man, caressing your banjo
Through the gamma ray machine
It sees some things I can’t, but
Only I can see your dreams
Hey, Ms. Businesswoman, suited, uprooted
For the day in your fine designer jeans
Both dreaming here tonight
Sad king and tireless queen
Bathed in flashing neons
Borne of gasoline
And you again, my sweet, have you
Booked that penthouse suite tonight?
Or like all of the rest, have you picked out
Some parched bit of land to plant your light?
There’s an exit light that keeps us
While the wind outside might never stop
So let’s share this ground tonight
Share this fate as ghosts
Found here for a moment
Tomorrow, we’ll get lost
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11. |
The Black Hotel
05:50
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In the shade of the black hotel
She whispered to me that they had kept her well
But she couldn’t look up, and there was soap on her hands
In her eyes, memories of all those one-night stands
So she took me in to her empty room
Where the ghostliest Elvis played the harvest moon
Though the movement is quick, though the ashes don’t stick
In the end, the losers clean up and the winners are licked
We’ve come on down to the black hotel
Where we’re picking up pieces, they’re keeping us well
So, come on down to the black hotel
Where there might be an answer, but they’ve kept it so well
The desperadoes creep in through the cellars at night
To get it quick and cheap, but they are packed so light
That the long-timers laugh, taking turns from the bath
“You’re not welcome,” someone shouts. Now, who will turn out the rats
That will come on down to the black hotel
Where they’re picking up the pieces, keeping us well
When you come on down to the black hotel
There might be an answer, and they’ve loved us so well
Now the moonlight floats in like an afterthought
On all us vagabond lovers who paid more than they’d got
For a house that is breaking, and a room with a view
Where she’ll leave me for a night, and then check back in for two
Where the bellboys have eyes and the big band conspires
And the maids prepare the bathtub for the funeral pyre
And they’re all screaming out, as if this place could be tamed
As if there was some way to crawl out from the tattered remains
Of these ruins on down at the black hotel
Where they’re picking up pieces, and they’re keeping us so well
Well, come on down to the black hotel
There might be an answer but they’ve kept it so well
Come on down to the black hotel
Where they’re picking up the pieces, and they’re keeping us so well
Come on down to the black hotel
Where there might be an answer, but only time will tell
Down at the black hotel
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Johnny Coull Montréal, Québec
Johnny Coull is an independent singer-songwriter based in Montreal, Canada. His debut album, “City on the Hill”, was
released in November 2013.
Firmly entrenched in the vintage rock tradition, Coull tackles intensely personal themes, at once melancholy and incisive, set over punchy melodies, bright choruses, and virtuosic piano licks.
... more
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