1. For Sale
2. Blackberry Time
3. Peace and Quiet
4. Down in the Crawlspace
5. Immune
6. The Raven in the Apple Tree
7. What Ever Happened to Rob
8. Too Late
9. Leave Him
10. The Men Behind the Bushes
11. Let it Go
Listen to the songs at cdbaby
Jud Caswell: Vocals, Guitar
Andy Rice: Upright Bass
Craig Record: Drums
Pat Wictor: Slide Guitar
Karen Mal: Mandolin, Vocals
Amy Speace: Vocals
Marsey Caswell: Vocals
Recorded by Jud at Frog Hollow Studio, Brunswick, ME
Pat Wictor was recorded at the Augur Compound, Durham, CT
Amy Speace and Karen Mal were recorded
at Folk Alliance in the downtown Marriott, Memphis, TN
Mixed by Jud with great help from Amy Speace and Alfred Lund
Mastered by Neale Eckstein, Fox Run Studio
Photography by Edward Caswell
Original Artwork by Kat Logan
except "Peace and Quiet" (c)2007 Jud Caswell and Amy Speace
He tore the gravel up as he parked his Cadillac
Said it was my lucky day, clapped me on the back,
Told me that his company had authorized a proposition
He figured that the cash would mean so much
to a man in my position
I ain't much to look at, I don't have much to show
Just this junk shop where I'm selling bikes beside the road
Still I never had no use for these out-of-staters
Who come to buy our neighborhood and then decide
we're not their kind of neighbors
They may say it's a price we have to pay
You gotta watch your home divvied up and sold away
But I can't stand to see that money waved around
As if everyone and everything's for sale in my home town
I heard he called his lawyers, I heard he called the town
I heard he figured if my bikes were gone
I wouldn't hang around
So he bought 'em all from me, threw them on a truck
Paid his money on the nail and drove off laughing,
wishing me good luck
(chorus)
The Wall Street Journal and the Prep School Education
Teach you nothing about the landfill and the transfer station
And where the good stuff goes when it gets thrown away
And where I went to pick up fifty old familiar bicycles today
(chorus)
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Lately I’ve been chasing after little things
that always slip away
Living in my calendar and living in my car
Instead of living in the day
But a wind blew down from Canada this morning
Like a warning shot of cold across my bow
So now I’m out here in my sandals
getting bloodied by these brambles
And eating all the berries I’m allowed
Because it’s Blackberry Time, Blackberry Time
It’s a secret of a season in its prime
When all the world is full and ripe
and quickly going by
Then it’s Blackberry Time
The air is full of cricket song and hayseed,
honeybee and dragonfly
The last full day of summer, baked and
cooling on the windowsill
Smells a lot like apple pie
And up beneath the poplar and the birches
At the border where the grass has gone to trees
I’ve got those stains upon my fingers
and an aftertaste that lingers
One part sweet, one part fruit and two parts seed
Blackberry Time…
I wish I had a cup to fill to take this harvest
home and make it stay
I wish I had that recipe to press it into wine
To seal the flavor of the day
Watching from a silver maple’s branches
There’s a catbird, sings a hungry kind of song
He says “be thankful for the sweet
ecause you know that it don’t keep
You just eat what you can eat and move along”
When it’s Blackberry Time…
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(by Jud Caswell & Amy Speace)
One by one the treaties were broken
Each time the lesson was the same
That every breath spent on negotiation
Would only serve to fan the flame
Side by side they had been neighbors
For centuries without dispute
And now there's a time bomb ticking
in each conversation
Welcome to Beirut.
Peace and Quiet smoldering tonight
Peace and Quiet
Marking time between the fights
You can pray for gentle weather
And the strength to live together
And cry yourself to sleep
In the Peace and Quiet, dark and deep.
In this graveyard of asphalt and ashes
Looking for a way to live
With no common ground and no hope
that anyone
Can forget it or forgive
So in quiet desperation
A kind of promise has been vowed
To stay on your own side,
always walk with hooded eyes
And never speak your differences out loud.
(chorus)
You read aloud from the paper this morning
Over scrambled eggs and tea
All I could think as you held forth on Lebanon
Is how much it sounds like you and me
The crooked borderlines and minefields
That make two countries of our home
The freezing detente of our cynical civility
Keeping us together and alone.
(chorus)
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Working in the crawlspace eating dirt,
dragging forty feet of hose
Spraying poison in the ground,
Dust and cobwebs all around
Filling up my nose
Gary hollers in to me the boss is on the phone
I pretend that I can’t hear so they leave me alone
Eight hours a day they own my hands
My legs, my back at their command
They rule my body and my time
But down in the crawlspace
Down in the crawlspace it’s all mine
All alone in darkness, taking back
a little time they took
Just an hour, maybe two
Where no one tells me what to do
And I can think about my book
But there’s so much I’ve forgotten
I’ve got to figure out again
Like how to get an agent
and how my novel’s going to end
(chorus)
Missouri sounds like “misery”
for a reason, one supposes
Waiting on the days of corn
and overtime and roses
Gary calls me out to give a hand
with all the piles in the garage
Broken toys and broken chairs,
Bags and boxes everywhere
There’s hardly room to budge
Gary shakes his head,
“Why not just throw it all away?
Why hang on to all of this?
How can people live this way?”
(chorus)
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You push back your hair
Stir your coffee, taste the spoon
You say you’re trying to be fair
And it’s not that you don’t care
But you’re immune
Your extroverted eyes
Could lead someone to assume
But something in me dies
When you say you sympathize
But you’re immune
For seven weeks you wrote the
history of you and me
Untangling tapestries of thorn
and rose
All alone you made us simple
once again
Reducing us to friends
You drew the curtain closed
You blow a kiss goodnight
I breathe the last of your perfume
I won’t say that you’re not right
Because I can’t begin to fight
When you’re composed as a symphony
Armored in apathy
So far away from me in your cocoon
You’re immune
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The raven in the apple tree is watching
His voice is like the rattle
of a rusty iron gate
Swinging on its hinges in the wind
Beckoning and welcoming us in
You and I have come from far away
Drawn by quiet murmurings
too steady to ignore
A siren song singing in our bones
Calls us to this place we’ve never known
You find a thing you somehow know you’ve
always missed
And then you feel so lost
Ask the raven how it comes to this
The raven says because, because, because
The raven says because, because, because
The wind across the millpond so familiar
As surely as the tolling
of the Baptist chapel bell
Ringing off of cedar tree and stone
Echoes of our history and home
(chorus)
Our little girl runs down the lanes
She skips among the rows and rows and rows
of family names
Apples on the ground beneath the raven
Windfalls of a passing storm returning to the earth
Gathered on the roots where they were made
In the shadow of their cradle they make their grave
(chorus)
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Everyone wishes we had his new phone number
John did the math it’s been more than a year
Since Rob graced our presence
And made an appearance
At this living-room soiree
It feels like he just disappeared
Nobody noticed the signs he was leaving
No one remembers who stopped calling who
Now it seems clear
After Rob cut his hair
He was just marking time
Till he worked up the courage to do what he had to
Maybe it’s best, maybe we all could use some change
A moment to rest, the freedom to breathe and rearrange
Maybe he met someone, got a new girlfriend
A new place to live, a new job
Nobody here has any idea
What ever happened to Rob
Somebody read it or saw it on Oprah
That every five years we start over again
It seems like a shame
But there’s no one to blame
So let’s lift up a glass
To the further adventures of faraway friends
(chorus)
Karl whittled down almost two-hundred pounds
and he turned his attention to Jesus
Ken’s back in school with Foucault and Camus
and he’s writing his doctoral thesis
Kathy and Stew got a family brewing and Dave
took that high-powered job
But nobody here has any idea
What ever happened to Rob
We don’t want to guilt him, just want to get filled in
About what ever happened to Rob
(back to top of page)
My fault, my bad
I wish I hadn’t done it but I have
That’s my bad, that’s my fault
Here’s your opportunity to rub a little salt
I wish it was a thing I could reverse
But since it’s not there’s nothing to be done
but make it worse
Too late, too late, too late to make it right
Too late to make it better with a kiss and
say goodnight
No one can deny you’ve earned the right
to blow off steam
So turn that kettle up and let it scream
Your turn, your go
Tell me all the things I should have known
It’s your go, it’s your turn
Let’s make believe there’s wisdom in this
lesson I can learn
But we both know this one’s all over but
the shouting
And if you’d rather skip that part, I sure
could do without
(chorus)
I used to think I knew the space between us
Come to find out I was wrong
I feel the ground give out beneath my feet
by the time I know I’m slipping I’m already
halfway gone
OK, Fine
We’ve proven we can hold this bitter line
That’s just fine, that’s OK
Before you turn the light out there’s one
thing I’ve got to say
It’s so hard for me to lower my defense
Can I say I’m sorry now or have I missed
my chance?
(chorus)
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In the front seat of her Subaru
In the middle of the night
Talking through our histories
All our mysteries casting Rorschach
shadows
In the sodium light
On a good day she would tell me
We should think about goodbye
But the bad days were the best days
When she held me close
Counting on my fingers all the reasons
she would try
To leave him, leave him
Leave him, leave Him for me
The press of skin between us
Never measured half as much
As the great unwinding intertwining
coastline
Where two lives really touch
Her solitary marriage
It is the saddest think I know
He was the strong and silent
not quite violent type
Who never gave a good enough
excuse for her to go
[chorus]
I never woke beside her
My heart beneath her head
I never spoke to chide her
And I never said to leave
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Do you see what I see?
Up there on the right
Smiling like a cat and sliding out of sight
They’ve got Reagan’s Teflon
And Richard Nixon’s soul
They’re slippery as oil
Mean as gasoline
Black as Christmas coal
Go hopping down the money trail
You find it always leads
To the Men Behind the Bushes…
Can’t you smell the greed?
They’ve solved the problem
Of seeming too unkind
Use Jesus as a body shield
As you rob the country blind
Keep it simple, let’s focus on the war
While the riptide of arrogance and influence
Drags the living wage offshore
You can close your eyes and tell yourself
They’re looking out for you
But the Men Behind the Bushes…
Know that that’s not true
Look me in the eye, tell me it’s all right
And what we see is what we get
Can’t you see the cretin king?
Can’t you see the master’s strings?
Can you see the puppeteer yet?
It’s a whirlpool, anyone could drown
When the paranoia sucks you in
And pulls you down
You feel the outrage fading into numb
When you realize it only makes more sense
The more cynical you become
You can close your eyes and tell yourself
There’s really no one there
But the Men Behind the Bushes…
Have got me scared
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It's stuck in your head
It's under your skin
And the more you rail
and the more you shout
To work it though and work it out
The more you work it in
I know, I know
It hurts you so
Just let it go
It's more than you can carry
When it's all that you can do
Just to bite your nails down to the fists
And rattle off your favorite lists
Of all the nastiness that's been done to you
(chorus)
You could spend your whole life
telling the story
Of how the world's been so unfair
But how's that going to change
your situation
And who's gonna care?
Holding on to anger
I sure do understand
But it's caught you there
in a monkey trap
And you'll never get your freedom back
Until you open up your hand
(chorus)
(back to top of page)
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