Get all 29 Walter Ehresman releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of That's How A Fable Starts (single), Cassandra, Cursed, My Back Pages, Revisited (With No Blonde), Songs From the Crux, Global Search Party, South of the Wall, The Best of.....Songs of Possibilities, The Best of..........the Weird Ones, and 21 more.
1. |
Reduction
07:26
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Reduction
(© 2013 Walter Ehresman)
Draw lines, one more time,
through faraway
ghosts of friendships fallen through a crack in time;
Goodbye,
Goodbye.
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2. |
Darwin's Jigsaw
06:43
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Darwin’s Jigsaw
(© 2003 Walter Ehresman)
Some of the pieces are ugly, baby;
Some edges don’t seem to fit;
Every piece lives out on the table, baby,
unaffected when you quit.
And obscurity on the outside, baby;
Misdirection in the central core;
And the mists obscure the outlines, baby,
and the dullards hold back on the shore.
And the rancid blood of the ages, baby,
shows no balance out on the scales;
And your strength won’t lay with compassion, baby,
so your baser urges prevail;
The failed experiment of
the sentient animal calls you down;
And this train evolves to nowhere, baby,
and we overstate our renown (yeah we do).
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3. |
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Just Keep Your Eyes on the Ball
(© 2002 Walter Ehresman)
[intro: calliope music, with barker]
Step right up! Step right up! Yes, you sir; step on out of your Suburban. Everyone’s a winner! Just follow the ball, sir; win something nice for your lady friend. Anyone can do it. Just keep your eyes on the ball.
They never dreamed that it would be this easy;
They would’ve bet that you were not this dumb;
So many millions to those advertising gurus–
they could’ve saved it all and bought more guns.
If they had only known the things you’d swallow–
think what they could’ve done in Ronnie’s day!
Wrap every poison in the Stars and Stripes;
The only measurement--the flag you wave.
[chorus]
It’s just like showin’ dogs a card trick;
It’s just like selling god to seniles;
Just like takin’ candy from a baby
then saying that you didn’t just to watch that trusting smile.
[break: calliope music with barker]
Yes sir, step right up ladies and gentleman; See the Office of Homeland Security. That’s right.....kill the patient to save him. Everyone’s a winner. An Expedition in every driveway. See the Office of Privacy Surveillance. Step right up. See the Department of Environmental Economics. Step right up, don’t be shy....Everyone’s a winner!
They’re getting giddy with this misdirection;
They’re getting greedy with this subterfuge;
They’re getting sloppy with these rank diversions;
They’ve bet the farm that you will not see through.
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4. |
Snipe Hunt - Hey Freyja
04:20
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Hey Freyja
(© 2000 Walter Ehresman)
Freyja, those dead heroes at your side;
Sacrifice to you,
and even still my well runs dry;
We all tied our hopes to you,
forgot the blank look in your eye.
Hey, Freyja, does it ever bring you down?:
The sacred things to you
cannot exist in one go-round;
The riptide contradictions
tearing all your temples down.
[chorus]
Oh.........
Hey Freyja.......
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5. |
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May the Tone Be With You, Jon
(© 2009 Walter Ehresman)
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6. |
Constellations
04:07
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Constellations
(© 2015 Walter Ehresman)
Charting the stars swarming ‘cross the Southern sky
to navigate these seas I do not know.
With a song, the anchor line was severed and I’m spinning
to the shoals where your indifference let me go.
She spreads the cards; leaves before the reading’s done—
that future never had a chance to grow.
She forgets the page the moment that the next one starts the turning—
her whims look for tomorrow’s heart to show.
[chorus]
There’s more to the code than the language and there’s more to the puzzle than the guide book said;
Or maybe we were just two people instead—
semaphores and signals; both trying to read the waves;
Some to safe harbor, and some wash away;
Some to safe harbor, some just wash away.
She paints in blood—the canvas tries to overcome
the medium that drains out from my soul;
Contradictions underline the sickness that I’m feeling,
but to walk away is all that I control.
Constellations—they swarm;
Constellations—re-form.
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7. |
Native
05:50
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Native
(© 2016 Walter Ehresman)
Poison flows, with signs held high;
Say “Go Home!” (just guessing where you came from);
You cry “why won’t you talk to me?”
Can’t abide the differences they see.
Won’t recall the family tree—
one and all took chance upon the waters;
Now free to kill all those they find;
Destiny won’t allow a guilty mind.
[chorus #1]
Do you love the land—the place your feet have come to?
Do you treat it as your sacred ground, and rally ‘round it?
Circling past a finite star—
we’re all natives of the Final Blue.
Name the ones who never invade;
Name the ones whose people were all born here
and they stayed, and never conquered anyone;
No slaves; not some god’s chosen ones.
Forces try to stoke our fears;
Rich men buy endless campaigns grinding you
to tears, rotting out your better side;
So sincere—behind the flag and cross they hide.
People move from place to place,
then we choose how to treat our newest neighbor—
lock our space, or open up our hearts?
A birthplace is just part of who we are.
[chorus #2]
Do you love the land—the place your feet have come to?
Will you treat it as your sacred ground, and rally ‘round it?
Circling past a finite star—
we’re all natives of the Final Blue.
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8. |
A Ghost of Myself
06:42
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A Ghost of Myself
(©2012 Walter Ehresman)
I am a ghost of myself; the guest unuprooted whose grasp of the uptake has gotten too slow.
An echo of someone who once thought of chances; a flicker of something that left long ago.
The grains in the glass spin the wheel one more turn;
The answers are paid for with silence to burn.
My gravity heavy, like planets more massive;
My skin won’t cool down, and I feel lost in transit.
The edges gone grey, and they lack definition;
And old pleasures now patterns of rote repetition.
–stare the night
–as I’m haunting myself;
–you can see it, my friend
–as you greet someone else;
–and I know that my time is fading
–or already gone;
–but the song, and the music, play on.
So I turn out the lights, and I listen to Sandy–
her voice from the place where no one can find me;
My eyelids feel heavy, but sleep doesn’t live here;
The weight bears me down, and I fall through the aether.
Ain’t it strange how the imprints from youth won’t extinguish;
The cold psychic toll lingers on to the finish.
–stare the night
–as I’m haunting myself;
–you can see it, my friend
–as you greet someone else;
–and I know that my time is fading
–or already gone;
–but the song, and the music, play on.
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9. |
Near November
08:20
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Near November
(© 2008 Walter Ehresman)
–dedicated to Sandy Denny and Kathleen Overstreet, in memoriam
The calendar swings hard around the sun, picking up speed in its mad dash to cold, grey skies. Near November, and–as they will–my thoughts turn to you.
That song, Remember, plays–your voice a distant echo now. Beautiful, but no longer alive.......a reverberation of a long-dead bright star, fallen into an ocean’s eternity; the ripples of pain and sorrow not yet exhausted.......not yet to the shore or the far liquid horizon. Such was their strength and their depth.
A tear surprises, falls, hits the table and glistens in the window’s refracted light.
One drop, one tiny reflection, and yet in it I see the past......somehow larger and non-linear, dream-like in that I know more than I can see in these scenes. Maybe not like a dream......more like hindsight–knowledge I now have and maybe do not want. But it’s good to know......better to know than not to know, I’ve always said, no matter the cost.
Do I believe that now?
These scenes paint a pattern, inexorable and down-sloping.....and not only because I already know their ending. Your mirror was concave....or convex, something that arced your vision of yourself into a skewed, distorted frame. We could tell you, but you saw what you saw.
We could not conceive of such a distortion. We saw your spark and knew how we felt when you were near. We saw what you created, from the plumbless recesses of a heart too damaged by what filtered down from the eyes. Too susceptible to it. And we are left with that now.
Sometimes those things you’ve left behind fill the room as if you were with us still, and your art dances in our ears and in our souls. And sometimes its sadness reaches out and expands, filling the room.....filling all rooms, until we can perceive of nothing else, and we are awed by its power, and we weep to emptying at its truth, its reach, its finality.
But........sometimes.......you come to us when we’re alone, as a wisp whose passing sends a delicate gauze over the heart. And as it flutters down, to wrap and cover but all too soon dissolve into insubstantial atoms, a tear may fall.......and, in a certain light.............
--the reference in the text to the song "Remember" is one by Groove Armada, featuring extensive sampling of Sandy singing her song "Autopsy" with Fairport Convention.
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10. |
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The Last Spark of Kindness
(© 2016 Walter Ehresman)
When the last spark of kindness
fades from off the screen, we all will
walk into the darkness
and know the worst unseen;
And look back
(Oh, we’ll look back!)
Back to the time,
The time we could have changed it;
But we didn’t have the will to stem the tide.
When the very last better angel
sank under the mire;
no hearts left here to see it—
only egos of desire;
Wanting more;
Wanting all;
None to share;
In the bunkers of our greed;
‘cause we didn’t feel the need to try to care.
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11. |
I'll Walk Out of Here
03:33
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I’ll Walk Out of Here
(© 2010 Walter Ehresman)
Then I walked through that door,
–with no question inside;
–with no thought of what more
might be shaved from my life;
What kind of life
–is left to me now?
–is worth all the fight?
Chained by all that I know;
Chained by what’s gone down,
–by the boot unexpected;
–by the spears of the crown.
Starved for kismet reflected.
Starved for eyes that see inside--
past the mask beneath the mask I cannot see;
And why would I be worthy
of such archeology?
Is it fair to ask a woman for that leap?
No wonder I don’t sleep,
and jump back at sudden sound;
There’s nothing on this side to hold me down;
No call to stick around.
And my footsteps drum steady,
–with no fear in my soul;
–and no anger besets me;
and I release control.
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12. |
BONUS TRACK: Slow Time
03:52
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Slow Time
(© 1988 Walter Ehresman)
The days and the nights blend together
in the times that we spend alone;
A twilight of the mind, counting ticks while slowly dying,
and staring blankly at the phone.
You feel that you’ve something to offer
in the closeness that adds up to two,
but the wounds from the past breed the fear that holds you fast
from every trying someone new.
[chorus]
If we could see through each other’s eyes--
those earnest ideas (real or imagined),
any pain would be justified by the
quantum jump between;
To see what we really mean;
Imploring, but unheard, unseen.
Misperception kills its share of those
who chance to gamble out of the slow, slow time.
Some kind of situation with someone,
could happen almost any day--
two people killing time, telling jokes and telling lies,
with nothing really much to say.
It could lead in some direction,
or take them just nowhere at all;
The delicate balance of interaction,
just a blink, hopin’ it don’t stall.
[chorus]
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Walter Ehresman San Miguel De Allende, Mexico
Called "the quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed local disc jockey Charlie Martin , Walter Ehresman was an eccentric presence in the Austin music scene from the '80s until his 2015 move to Mexico. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist...and a restless musical spirit, always looking for something new, expressed with fearlessly honest, socially-conscious lyrics. ... more
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