The night she stopped by my momma’s house, me and the fellas, we were out on the run from a town that I swear had it out for me since I was young. Step to the rhythm on a night like tonight, on the long walk from a corner bar. Like a foot on my throat, her words came in from back home and made the distance so far. There’s a reason for the things that we’re all scared to let go; a favorite record, fallen lover, or the sound of the road. Because we know that it’s now or it’s never. “Halleluiah,” sang the gospel choir as the thunder heads came rolling ‘round. We felt the heat of that smoke as College Avenue choked and the mountain burned down. We found just what we wanted. We found everything I think we need to survive, so I can’t be blamed on a dark summer night. And yet sometimes I feel the overwhelming need to retire. Return my body to the ether and the great spectral fire and lay down as the world turns over. But there’ll come a time when my wars will be won. And my once great divide be washed away in the flood and spread out thru alluvial fanning. We’ll start a new life. We’ll settle those plains. I’ll take Jen as my wife, have a boy, raise my name so I know when I die, I’ll die happy. Now I know, I can be a little bit hard to bear. I’ve been a little unwell; I drank my weight from the swell as the wave washed me under here. I can feel it in my bones every evening, and I can tell it to the ghosts that I’ve been bringing back home. Because I can’t be alone, and I can’t let it go. There‘s a distance I’ve been closing on since I was a child, a reason for the things still haunting me and driving me wild. But there’ll come a time when my wars will be won. And my once great divide be washed away in the flood and spread out thru alluvial fanning. We’ll start a new life. We’ll settle those plains. I’ll take Jen as my wife, have a boy, raise my name so I know when I die, I’ll die happy. But I’ve been losing sleep over how a man can ever reach atonement from his deeds? If I can’t ready my aim, steady my breathing? Focus my shots on a kill that takes meaning. Is it slipping away, or is it retreating? The only line I’m losing’s inside me, because she’s seen that I’m full of holes. And I know that they show if the light’s behind me, casting off the stage, my constellation heart. I sought to be assuaged and set my compass to her star over the sea. Divisional lines that divide up the king from his queen. There’ll come a time when my wars will be won and my once great divide be sweetly coming undone, and spread out thru alluvial fanning. We’ll start a new life. We’ll settle those plains. I’ll take Jen as my wife, have a boy, raise my name so I know when I die, I’ll die happy.
Micah is one of my favorite songwriters around, and also an all around gentleman and scholar. Both his solo work and his work with Two Cow Garage seem to work their way into my regular music rotation with ease. doug shaw
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