Age and Wonder
by The Waxwings
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Digital Album
Immediate download of 15-track album in your choice of high-quality MP3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.
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CD
Go old school! Our new CD comes in a snazzy no-plastic eco-wallet (100% PCW recycled chipboard) handsomely printed by Stumptown Printers with beautiful artwork by Adrienne Leverette based on drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569).
Includes immediate download of 15-track album in your choice of high-quality MP3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.
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Terra Incognita
03:44
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Flight 202
03:47
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Out of Bull Run
03:31
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Blind Train
05:22
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7. |
Abandoned Love
04:24
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Dust to Dust
03:35
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11. |
High on a Mountain Top
03:27
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13. |
100 Miles to Go
03:13
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14. |
Sonora
04:33
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credits
released 11 August 2011
recorded live on June 25-26, 2011 at Nettleingham Audio
engineered and mixed by Kevin Nettleingham
album artwork and design by Adrienne Leverette
images based on drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)
all songs © 2011 the Waxwings of Portland, OR (except 7,11)
recorded live on June 25-26, 2011 at Nettleingham Audio
engineered and mixed by Kevin Nettleingham
album artwork and design by Adrienne Leverette
images based on drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)
all songs © 2011 the Waxwings of Portland, OR (except 7,11)
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The Waxwings is a band of friends from Portland, OR. We take our diverse musical influences (classical, rock, folk, what have you) and channel them through acoustic instruments to unearth themes of love, loss and the pursuit of soul-searching redemption. ... more
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- Track Name: Terra Incognita
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Left my home one winter's day, some business in the town
Walking back I lost my way as the sun was going down
As darkness fell I scanned the sky
No stars did shine, no moon to light my way
No compass and no map had I
Just the blood out on the streets and the doubts inside my mind
I wonder if I'll ever make it home tonight
Foreign tongues and hungry eyes on every stranger's face
Dangerous and compromised by the hard edge of this place
Maybe they were once like me
Lost along the road to somewhere else
I won't surrender quietly:
I might be stranded here forever with no hope of getting out
I wonder if I'll ever make it home tonight
Crickets stop when I pass by, the night birds mock my plight
I cannot stop, I will not lie, though no trail ahead seems right
All I have are your last words to me to keep my footsteps light
Your last words to me...
I wonder if I'll ever make it home tonight - Track Name: Flight 202
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Early in the morning I think I feel your hold
But the bed there's empty and your side is cold
It's only Saturday, but I miss you my dear
You're flying high, and I've disappeared
I can see you across the eastern sky so blue
Takin' him out in sunshine to play
But there's no one here you see
Just these ghosts a-tellin' me
That I am the fool who sent you away
Call in the doctor, call in the nurse
Am I getting better or just getting worse?
I've been on a blind date since I met you my dear
You're doin' the two-step, I'm on the wall over here
...
Late in the evening I want to hear your call
But the sun keeps on setting, there's no call at all
For years I've been thinkin' I was riding your train
But I've just been standing watching you pull away
... - Track Name: Recklessness and Hesitation
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I walked through Northwest in the morning
The sky, blinding cold and so blue
I hadn't thought twice, I didn't sleep in the night
And I, so much younger than you
We were two lovers crossed by recklessness and inhibition
No innocence lost, but how could I know?
An abstract collage of impulsiveness and intuition:
Oasis or mirage, how could I know?
I waited at home over New Year's
For the echo of you to fade out
But the records you played on that December day
Filled me up and left no room for doubt
And from that moment on, my priorities and my ambitions
Have always been drawn in the ink of our love
I never put it past the authority of my convictions
I never had to ask: Which way towards home?
They said you'd break my heart
And maybe you did once or twice
But love's a sharp knife, the proof of my life
Happiness bought at such a small price
The party came to an end: my recklessness, your hesitation
I said it depends on where you want to go
We were headed straight in to a flood of heavy implications
But we'd only just begun, we had so far to go - Track Name: The 5,000 Flames of John Shaw's Hell
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They call me coolie number 139
My name’s been erased and a number assigned
On a ship bound for Cuba, out of old Macau
To work the plantations of sugar and tobacco
The coolie master’s paid five dollars a head
To deliver us alive but gets nothing for the dead
A more cold hearted man I swear I never saw
This coolie master’s name was John O. Shaw
Number 326 was a hard fightin' man
In the Opium Wars he defended Foshan
But he took up the habit just after the war
And that’s how they lured him away from the shore
When five weeks at sea the supply it ran out
He screamed and he wretched and he twisted about
He jumped overboard on the 47th day
That was five dollars less for John Shaw’s pay
Number 7 worked the fields a harvesting rice
A quiet sort of man I heard him speak only twice
Once of the fortune they promised he would find
And once of the girl that he left behind
He’d send back for her just as soon as he got free
But the slow fever took him he was buried at sea
A black haired girl’s waiting in a yellow silk dress
And old John Shaw get’s five dollars less
220 was a fisherman from the Pearl River’s shore
Like his brother on the Kate Hooper four years before
He conspired with 6 others to blow up the ship
So they put him in Irons for the rest of the trip
Refusing to eat, the master tried in vain
To feed him full of cungy but he died there in chains
Never to return to his Shenzhen Port
And old John Shaw’s another five dollars short
Sailing from February on into May
And a month of quarantine in the Havana bay
The doctor is drunk and the food’s all gone bad
We’re sick & we’re dying & we’re stark-raving mad
From consumption and dropsy and opium withdrawal
The number of dead was one hundred in all
Never more to see another red sunset
And that’s five hundred dollars John Shaw won’t get
This is but one of a thousand more tales
Of deception, abduction and death under sail
Robbed of our home and deprived of our will
By unscrupulous brokers with quotas to fill
The dead among us envied by those who stay alive
For the darkest fate awaits you after you arrive
The misery of slavery no tongue can ever tell
But there’s five thousand flames in John Shaw’s Hell - Track Name: Out of Bull Run
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Walker Cory was a heated boss
Couldn't bear the Stumptown rains
Nary spoke a pleasant word
The dampness filled his veins
He had no love for the jacks who toiled
Beneath his stony glare
Would not abide the man who bled
He'd shoot you on a dare
So I packed it in for Illinois
Been away too long
Shout so long to old Bull Run
And tell the chief I'm gone
Friday night in a Sandy bar
When all the boys were high
The foreman's blood was runnin' hot
And no one asked him why
Cory bellowed set me up
The last call come and gone
The barman Lyle cut him off
He'd never see the dawn
...
He flew into a fit of rage
And swung his fists around
So me and Mickey banged him good
His forehead struck the ground
The barroom filled with silence
All the drunkards fled the place
And only Cory's lifeless body
Filled the empty space
...
I guess I'm bound for Naperville
My hometown family fold
To fit my face with a joyful grin
My loved ones can behold - Track Name: Blind Train
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Boy hit by train in Maryland
Walking home along the tracks one November afternoon
Walkman playing a tape, his new Rites of Spring LP
Sunset at his back, he was starin' straight ahead
Couldn't he feel the earth tremblin' at his feet?
Didn't he see the long shadow loomin'?
Blind Train, Blind Train
Blind Train come to take him away
Oh, did you know him? Did you see him that day?
Before the Blind Train come to take him away?
The next day at school the police were asking questions
About a possible suicide, but his friends all said no way
Word was getting around, pretty soon everybody knew
His presence never stronger, now that he was gone
And all our pent up teenage grief for innocence lost and the assault on our souls
Found focus for one cold moment in the death of one of our own
...
The sun was going down
The evening commute had begun
Trains headed out of the District out toward Baltimore
We walked the tracks for hours
Til we came to the spot
A dozen or so punks were already there
Someone had a boombox
Someone lit a fire
We stood there sayin' nothing by an old tumbled down brick wall
And every time a train passed by we hurled those bricks as hard as we could
Shattered the windows and dented the sides, made the passengers jump back
After three or four trains like that, the cops showed up, everybody ran
Scattered into the night, it was over
Blind Train, Blind Train
Blind Train come to take us away
Oh, did you know us? Did you see us that day?
When the Blind Train come and took him away - Track Name: Dust to Dust
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Workin' the land—Worn out boots and blistered hands
Out in the field—Our labor turns to something real
Deep in the corn—All wet with dew before the sunrise
I disappear between the leaves the earth and the sky
Driving a load—country songs on country roads
Summer evening sky—thunderclouds and fireflies
Sometimes I see—That work is love and love is work now
If only everyone could be so lucky
We live but a moment between the dust and dust
We sow our seeds and hope against the worst
Call it a day—Call it a life already
Fading away—One step forward, two steps back
Can’t stay afloat—with so many tryin' to pull you under now
You owe your life to the ones who bite the hand that feeds
We live but a moment between the dust and dust
We sow our seeds and hope against the worst - Track Name: High School Break Up Song #1
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Across the universe he flies
Master of his own disguise
Looking for that one true love
Hanging at the shopping mall's
Like swallowing a cannonball
Of popcorn and angel dust
Diamonds, you're mining for
Bring dynamite and trucks of gold
Of all the stupid acts to pose
Everyone there got a bloody nose
I wish I had hit you first
Across the stars and meteor dust
Your Hercules there, he's turned to rust
All your great heralds fall
Diamonds, you're mining for
Bring dynamite and trucks of gold
Through the ancient mariner times
You were my best friend
Now there's a sea of monsters between us
Shaking their ugly, deceitful, jealous head
Because diamonds they do sparkle
And glitter bright with age and wonder
But you and I, lost that luster
You and I, we've lost that wonder - Track Name: Between the Lightning and the Thunder
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Night—settles down like dust on the land
Time—buries us under with the sweep of the second hand
Gonna send my horses over the hill
Bury a jar full of seven-dollar bills
Black clouds break with fear and wonder
Counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder
Lick your finger and check the wind
Looks like the end is about to begin
Coin’s in the air gotta call heads or tails
Kneel down in the ballast with your ear to the rail
It’s comin round the bend
It’s comin round. Can’t see where it starts but you know where it ends
Right now is all we got
Right now is all we need
Holding onto you
You’re the only one who can get me through
We—all pretend we don’t know what we know
We—all pretend we won’t reap what we sow
How long the fences and how long the walls
That keep the world so impossibly small
The same earth trembles under all our feet
The vandals hit every house on the street
If you don’t get it then there’s nothing to get
All the hungry people that you never met
And the ghosts that haunt the castle walls say
For every kingdom that rises there’s a kingdom that falls
And we got no place to go
We set sail but the stars won’t shine and the wind won’t blow
Right now is all we got
Right now is all we need
Holding onto you
You’re the only one who can get me through
The Moon so pale the sky so black
Birds gone south they’re not coming back
Sky so black the moon so pale
Light a fire in the belly of a whale
South side north side east side west
Cow-bird takes the sparrows nest
North side south side west side east
Sing your heart out in the belly of the beast
It’s our only chance
We just have time for one more song and one more dance
Right now is all we got
Right now is all we need
Holding onto you
You’re the only one who can get me through
The curtain’s coming down
The houselights coming up
Turns out we’re not alone
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls - Track Name: High on a Mountain Top
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As I look at the valleys down below
They are green just as far as I can see
As my memories return, how my heart does yearn
For you and the days that used to be
High on a mountain top, standin' all alone
Wonderin' where the years of my life have flown
High on a mountain top, wind blowin' free
Thinkin' 'bout the days that used to be
Well I wonder if you ever think of me
Or has time erased your memory?
As I listen to the breeze whisper softly through the trees
I wonder if you ever think of me
... - Track Name: Letters from Sea, 1864-1867
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600 miles from the mouth of the Hoogly
This is the longest, weariest time I’ve ever known
To be such a short distance from the Port
Where your letters are waiting to be opened
Still I often think how wrong it is to complain
Of the wind and the weather when we can alter nothing
We should be content to take what comes
But we complain of trifles if we do not get trials
Out of the bay around the cape and cross the line
We begin to think we’re almost home
Oh what foolish mortals we are
So glad to get into port and so glad to get out again
September 8th West of the cape
A melancholy accident this morning at 2am
A boy fell overboard from aloft while furling sail
It was impossible to save him
Many are the thoughts that I shall have of you
As I pace the deck alone
I wonder if you’re looking at the full moon tonight
Knowing that you think of me, I must be content
…
Two of the men went to fighting today
Brought aft with bloody noses and torn shirts
I’ve put one of them in irons by himself in the hatch house
For he seems a little dangerous and slightly crazy
We go along tonight in a stream of phosphorescent light
In the ship’s wake like a fire in the darkness
I am reading your letters and writing these lines
I hope you’ll kiss the children for me
… - Track Name: 100 Miles to Go
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You thought you’d beat the worst one
You thought your feet could rest
Now the cold wind’s got you running again
It’s another mortal test
One foot before the other
Sunset and sunrise
We cannot see the home stretch but
I’ll match your stride
Rivers freeze and rivers thaw
They all run to the sea
Yes days do break and nights do fall
But the carry you and me
A hundred miles to go
But it’s a hundred miles that you don’t know
When you’re running for someone else’s life
You know you’re not alone
And I hope I don’t mistake
The shore for the lake
The give for the take
The heart…for the ache - Track Name: Sonora
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Time takes a common toll
It wears you out
The days push and the years pull
And we all try to slow it down
To quiet the din
Of the seconds’ cold beat
And the hours’ mad rhyme
So let’s make a sound
To drown out the whole loud world
We’ll shake off the day
And give ourselves up
To the song
The strength of the strings you strum
Now that we’re here
Let’s make the night long
And sing through these tears
Loss cuts a common wound
It lays you low
The ground shifts and the wind blows
And we all try to shut it out
To quiet the din
Of the unsteady heart
And the dissonant mind
...
