Germany

W. B. Sedlmayr

​

Over the Baltic Sea, touch down in Germany

A young mother’s face in the Indian embassy

Kids will cry, you know they will fuss

Sarah draws and blows away the crayon dust

 

Rain begins to spit

First a drop, then the whole world’s wet

She clench the clothes pins between her teeth,

Folds the sheets and brings in the laundry

 

Wage of slavery

It will drive some lovers crazy

 

Curves just like a river, she bends just how she please

The cliffs of her refusal, Pine Ridge to Wounded Knee

A man can buy a sack of pride at the dollar store

See you cannot break what ain’t been broke before

 

Rain begins to spit

First a drop, then the whole world’s wet

She clench the clothes pins between her teeth,

Folds the sheets and brings in the laundry

 

Wage of slavery

It will drive some lovers crazy

 

Wage of slavery

It will drive some lovers crazy

​

Billy - Acoustic Guitar / Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Baritone Guitar

Connor - Pedal Steel

Thøger - Bass

Jason - Keyboards / Synth

Winston - Drums

Kaia Lacy - Harmony Vocals 

 

 

My Father’s House

W. B. Sedlmayr

​

Winter sets herself right down like UFOs

Over Oregon or Somewhere’s just the same

Summer is a combine, threshing fields of grain, but all she ever wants to do is rain, so strange

Pride’s a frightened silence tethered to a line, damp and rarely moving in the breeze

There are many mansions in my Father’s House

If someone asks me, this is where I’ll be

Carved in pachuco hieroglyphs, the seasons they tug on your wrist like a child, just like a, just like a child

​

Billy - Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Backup Vocals

Connor - Electric Guitar

Thøger - Bass

Jason - Keys / Synth

Winston - Drums

Efrén Cruz Chávez - Congas

 

​

Ocean

W. B. Sedlmayr

​

When did I become this man

Swim, you might remember when

Runnin’ my fingers through the oil in your hair

I am drawn to the sea, past and present fools like me

It’s up to you and down to me, it’s true, it’s true, it’s true witchery

 

Honey, Honey, Honey and Kelp

Honey, Honey, Honey and Kelp

Honey, Honey, Honey and Kelp

Runnin’ my fingers through seaweed in your hair

Come, come back to me

 

Ice plants dot the shore line, tide pools each and every high tide

Ancient and you are a newborn

Calm before the very next storm

I believe that you is she

She is you and I is me

And feelin’ like, feelin’ like, feelin’ like I’m drifting out to you and me on the seaboard

 

Honey, Honey, Honey and Kelp

Honey, Honey, Honey and Kelp

Runnin’ my fingers through seaweed in your hair

But you don’t care

 

I could be enough for you

Open myself up if you want me to

Predestined, I get lost in watching you

Calm is the daughter

Wind, then the martyr

Thunder speaks, casting nets down to me, down to you

 

Honey, Honey, Honey and Kelp

Honey, Honey, Honey, Honey, Honey and Kelp

Runnin’ my fingers through bodies on top of the air

But you don’t care

 

Unto you, I will confide, pale white bodies adrift on the tide

​

Billy - Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Effects 

Connor - Electric Guitar

Thøger - Bass

Jason - Synth

Winston - Drums 

Recorded Live   

 

 

White Powder Ma

W.B. Sedlmayr / M. Davis R.I.P.

 

These, my empty pockets

Would you fill them up with lies

Defeated, broken soldiers

Under southeast Asian skies

 

White Powder Ma

White Powder Ma

 

Smear my face with charcoal

Tie me off into the night

Somewhere where the sleep don’t end

And everything’s alright

 

White Powder Ma

White Powder Ma

​

Hard to believe that it all comes down 2 U

I can see what this place has done 2 U

These, my empty pockets

Would you fill them up with lies

Defeated, broken soldiers

Circa 1965

 

White Powder Ma

White Powder Ma

​

Billy - Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Lead Guitar Solo / Backup Vocals

Thøger - Bass

Jason -  Organ / Backup Vocals

Winston - Drums / Backup Vocals

Brian Lopez - Electric Guitar 

​

 

So Good To So Bad

Shel Silverstein

​

Billy - Vocals

Gabriel - Acoustic Guitar / Mandolin / Steel Guitar

Thøger - Stand-up Bass

Jason - Accordion 

Tom Walbank - Harmonica

Jack Sterbis - Drums

Recorded at Waterworks Recording

​

​

Harlem River Drive

W.B. Sedlmayr / L. Schwamm

 

There’s a big black hole where I throw my time

Buckets and buckets full, my words, my rhymes

And I distract myself from the things that hurt

And we weaponize love ‘n I feel like dirt

 

And it’s a matter of trust

When you hold me tight

Won’t leave you alone

In the dark of night

 

‘N I guess it’s bad luck

And I’m so tired

You light another cigarette

You light the bed on fire

 

Tell everyone I’m sorry for all I’ve said and done

This road goes on forever

I’m ready to grow young

 

The innocence when you arrive

Was lost upon Harlem River Drive

And there’s one last thing

If you’re walking blind

Must you die, to know you was alive

 

Tell everyone I’m sorry, so sorry, for all I said and done

This road, this road, goes on forever,

I’m ready, ready to grow young

I’m ready to grow young

​

Billy - Vocals

Leo Schwamm - Acoustic Guitar

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Drums / Stand-up Bass / Harmony Vocals 

Jason - Synth

Jon Villa - Trumpet

​

​

Cloudless
W.B.Sedlmayr/C.Engelbert

Seamless jet  trail,Cheeks pressed against the sun
The moon recalls the unmade bed
 All the things we get done
Funerals in heaven cry amongst the birds
Lead the blind toward  s the deaf and let them be heard
                                      
Cloudless...   Cloudless...
       
Cloudless stranger hidden in a frame
The grainy alchemy of light, Reflects the strangers name
The wolves confess their lonely cry,An updraft falling down
 Like snow in summer darling,It just melts to the ground
                                       
Cloudless...    Cloudless

​

Billy - Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Backup Vocals

Connor - Electric Guitar

Thøger - Bass / Backup Vocals

Jason - Keyboards / Synth / Backup Vocals

Winston - Drums / Backup Vocals

Lori LeChien - Vocals

Recorded at Waterworks Recording

​

​

Stoney Coat

W.B. Sedlmayr

 

I’m an empty house, chock full of holes

My eyes are not the windows to my soul

I ain’t been painted for some twenty-odd years

On a layaway plan from Penny’s or Sears

Bougainvilleas crawlin’ up the steps

Just another nonconformist narcissist

 

Ah ya-hoo

In my Stoney Coat

 

Well, my mom and dad

They’re still here

See, I’m at my best when I hold back my tears

And now a rock, washed from a stone

And on that day, you’ll runaway home

And then one day, by god, you’re on your own

And on that day you’ll drive off all alone

 

Well, I went to a priest, then I hired me a private detective

Skippin’ stones, rent-to-own,

Picked up a Shopper where the kids go unprotected

Yeah, I’m infected

 

Ah ya-hoo, in my Stony Coat, in my Stoney Coat

At ya-hoo, in my Stony Coat, in my Stoney Coat

​

Billy - Acoustic Guitar / Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Percussion

Thøger - Bass

Jason - Keyboard / Synth

Winston - Drums

Leo Schwamm - Guitar

Katherine Byrnes - Vocals 

Jean-Patrick Cosset - Keys

​

​

Teenage Jesus and the Tattooed Love Boys

W.B. Sedlmayr

 

Jesus, he didn’t get no letters, no postcards sayin’ ‘hey, wish you was here’.

It didn’t seem to bother him none, least he never made mention of it.

And you couldn’t read nothin’ from his eyes, they was a deep green color

Somewhere between desperation and courage, givin’ up no secrets

Like, like a dog caught out in the rain

 

The rest of us, well I guess we weren’t that strong

Each evening brought the sound of keys, slapppin’ them letters down between the bars

We’d all watch for the man to stop off at our cell, like he was carryin’ pardon papers or somethin’

But most nights, we cursed the unkind angels for a world that wouldn’t even scribble down a goddam note to remind us we was still alive

 

And as the years went by, we wrote letters, sonnets, tore ‘em up and wrote ‘em again

And I guess sometimes it hurt real bad - that hollow, empty feeling that sez ‘you ain’t worth a stamp or the spit to send it on’

But Jesus, he’d just grin and tell you Sancho was back home tearin’ up the old lady and her pinche perfumed letters

and that in a hundred years, who’d really give a shit anyways

And so, you see,

As tough as you are,

Somebody is always tougher.

​

Billy - Spoken Word

​

​

Naturally (She’s a Woman)

W.B. Sedlmayr / G. Sullivan

​

Take the paintings from the wall, Ma

And pull the sheets up off the bed

If this sickness takes my body

To please make sure that I am dead

 

Naturally, she’s a woman

Naturally, she’s my girl

 

These granite gardens hold no secrets

Just the sound as the wind plays through the wire

A wooden box to keep my body

A cross of wood to mark my time

 

Naturally, she’s a woman

Naturally, she’s my girl

 

Much, much further on

Lights a second cigarette from the stove

I can’t hear nobody at home

‘Cause there’s no one left at home

 

Naturally, she’s a woman

Naturally, she’s my girl

Naturally, she’s a woman

Naturally, she’s my girl

​

Billy - Acoustic Guitar / Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Backup Vocals

Connor - Pedal Steel

Thøger - Bass

Winston - Drums

​

​

Son of Sunoco

W. B. Sedlmayr

 

’64 Impala

Mud flaps and fender skirts

There’s a rosary hung on the rear view

Same old sponge dice thrown in the back

 

Now, my woman’s built like a fine machine

Her tongue it tastes like, tastes like STP

That’s okay man, ‘cause it don’t bother me

That’s okay man, ‘cause that don’t bother me

 

When we drive up from the bottom

All the way up to the top

Exit ramps and weigh stations

Heed the signs, be sure to stop

 

4-barrel carbs, 2 speed power slide

Houston ‘cross the bridge to Rural Rt.25

Upper Greenwood Lake down to Hoboken

Held up 17, man, son of Sunoco

 

Now we drive up from the bottom

All the way up to the top

Exit ramps and weigh stations

Read the signs, be sure to stop

 

Ain’t no payphones in the City

Not a cab that you can hale

 

Ain’t no payphones in the City

Not a friend to go my bail

​

Billy - Acoustic Guitar / Vocals

Gabriel - Electric Guitar / Backup Vocals / Whistle

Connor - Electric Guitar

Thøger - Bass

Jason - Keyboard / Synth

Winston - Drums

John Villa - Trumpet / Whistle

Chris Cacavas - Synth

​

​

Apology

W. B. Sedlmayr / R. Hopkins

​

Yaqui Rez Gulf station

We stop so she can pee

Her ribs like dead saguaro

Bear grass, sage, mesquite

 

Mountains with high foreheads

A turquoise waitress seems

To say her life is nothing more than an apology

 

The swollen tongue of summer’s

Flat gut power line

We idle at the railroad track

Splintered wooden sky

 

And over by that tall tree, they’ll scatter me with thieves

The sleep, the snap, the rope which sings,

One last apology

 

This is my apology

This is my apology

 

Exit ramp, weigh station

Standing medicine

Turn signal on, turn signal off

Cholla, saltbush, wind

 

These ashes shift and scattered

The moon now, will retrieve

To say that death ain’t nuthin’ more than life’s apology

 

This is my apology

This is my apology

​

Billy - Vocals

Gabriel - Acoustic Guitar / Mandolin / Baritone Guitar / Bell

Connor - Pedal Steel

Jason - Organ

Thøger - Bass

Winston - Drums

Recorded at Waterworks Recording