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Hophorn Hornbeam

by Hophorn Hornbeam

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GREATHUNTER
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GREATHUNTER Terrific debut LP with a nice blend of genres creating something special. Favorite track: Deporter.
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1.
2.
Has anybody seen my wife She’s got a dollar or two of mine and I’m without a dime But ah well now, she’s probably already spent it Could you tell the taxman that for me I’m sure he’s more inclined to agree with you Unless it’s your door he’s knocking on next Well it took them a good ten years to catch up to me But it’ll take more guns than that to put me down in the ground More taxes on my head to lay my burdens down Thirty and seven months pregnant With a man who ain’t of my dreams but he’s honest and he’s ageing well And my job placates me, or so it seems But oh, once I lived and oh, how I lived In the cities of the world Getting by on looks and occasional crooks who would Throw five down for a drink with a girl But darkness on baby’s birthday gives rise to the hegemonic cry Oh wonder oh wonder, oh what’s the use When nothing lays ahead but a few new ways to die There’s only so many fights that a man can lose before he’s bound to give up Only so many times that a woman can try till she knows that it’s never enough Only when every corner of western thought is kicked while they’re down in the back Will we come to understand there is too much to ask So fathers don’t let your children grow up to be cowboys like you Too cussed to live and too mean to die And holding onto fear like reason Though you’ve long lost the reasons why
3.
The moon is sitting low Barely peeks above the trees The wind is howling, howling Howling long way from a breeze I can’t help but feel so paranoid With it all whirling round me That’s why the Greeks made gods in the stars and Joan of Arc burned for free The highway signs quiver Throwing phantom lines Bumps in the pavement throw my chassis around Playing tricks upon my mind It’s late October now and don’t you know I hear the howls and cries of demons and wolves as Gods and men hold each other intent on Being the last to fall Working on a working title For the last song you sang Speeding along the pot-holed ground Outrunning the ghosts and the pain Born of occupier’s blood I must inhabituate in the flood as though I watch myself from myself I see it’s not good and good is not enough When something ain’t right Something in the air You’re burning through gas that’s Eating the cash you don’t have But you don’t care Cause there’s something bigger than you Might be a comfort if only it didn’t Make the hair on your neck stand up and Catch you when you’re down and lonely See the eyes that shine They look so alive What more could you want From a death such as time Well it’s one eye over your shoulder and One hand on your heart One chance to get it right after you’ve rehearsed the part But you don’t have to say That you’re bound to fail When the devil’s got you by the tail No you don’t have to say When you’re bound to fail That old devil’s got you by the tail
4.
Legendary bush pilots Sports fans for the love of the game Relics of the past, faceless forgotten names These days Frankie waits For a man who shoots more than blanks and Johnny writes cheques to cover the lawyer’s gains I guess they wouldn’t care What you’d choose to call your own But to have another crack at it, would they choose to grow Wolf hunting from a helicopter Witch burnings, lynchings and wars to kill off the poor If you ain’t feeling sorry I’ll give you something to feel sorry for With church doors locked nowadays Corpses wash up on uncaring waves It’s a funny thing – a line on a map I pledge allegiance to this or to that Disturbed by a spot of light You won’t get a nod tonight You wait, eyes burning and ready for flight Come comrades, let us weed our minds Sky’s too red Take it down and paint it blue Good luck, sing the children, perfecting the hue Dead relatives cry and it falls like rain as they Turn ‘round in their graves You look on down swearing ‘I ain’t gonna go that way’ But would you wait and wait As waiting is the greatest sin of a slave It’s not that life don’t have nothing to offer But too much to take away I guess you wouldn’t care What they’ll choose to call their own But to have another crack at it Would you choose to grow In the evening with everything kissed In a warm pink light It causes me sometimes to stop and think Hell, maybe we’ll get things right
5.
Domesticated 04:19
What happened to you sickle moon You used to loom so large, perched on the horizon Now you’re diminished by the stars Hanging there in the middle of the night sky without a friend Makes a man want to bring on home his head in his hands The folk singer sings to an empty room his lonesome songs A couple in the corner are making noise but they ain’t singing along Another show for the books and I guess this one goes to say Just call him a singer-songwriter These songs ain’t for the folks anyway Piano lady introduced a song she could not explain She told me it was a boogie-woogie ballad with a honty-tonk refrain But it sounded more like the stolen words from a long-forgotten, foreign bet When she said she’d come from the city tonight And do you have a Native cigarette Outside your window the coyotes have started howling The dumpster is getting filled with trash and your neighbours have gone out prowling For yesterday’s promise of tomorrow’s cash With a lightning rod I thought it couldn’t get no worse till they said Cash ain’t king, it’s god They’re no different than the thugs and the scabs and the cops that we’ve always had Who would pick you up and shake you down and drop you just as fast The spoiled youth of a spilled seed We’re slave to ingrained sense of greed We all want to die easy but this stubborn life precedes Do you deem yourself alive, or awake in a nightmare Well now, who controls the strings decides How and when those strings will wear It must be what’s roaring through the blood of a young man That catches him in tortured throes of desperation and What makes a head so heavy that it needs a loving hand
6.
Daddy 01:06
7.
Old Stock 02:17
Old dogs using new tricks To get their last chance To get that vote fixed To be the hand that feeds Be the hand that beats Those fuckers are knocking on every door Running dogs as masked mailmen To up their price, call it Workers’ compensation Oh what, you didn’t know that? Well now you do Some men, nine-to-five All they’ve got is a Saturday night You say you’ve been down Hell, if only you knew Brother why are we kicking each other I’ve got two boots with names on them Our shoes ain’t ever gonna get filled By the likes of those few It’s all fun and games Till someone brings the guns and the fame It’s not the goodbye that hurts so much As all the things it made us say Circle the grounds executioner Tell me now what have you found It’s nothing of mine, your simple life But still there’s something foul around They’ve drawn a line with the hand that feeds Don’t wince when the other comes down
8.
Deporter 05:36
Notes from the back of an empty room Tell me all I needed to know About how to send a song to my baby back on home I gaze upon with my eyes but not my mind Smiles covering up domestic crimes The crow may be ugly but he’s king of the goddamn pines In between the smiles and the ugliness we find I do believe we’ve met a couple times Kiss me on unceded land Show me love in the face of A truth I could never understand A truth I could never understand A lie that will never be enough There is someone inside us who is born with a knowledge of the blood When they crack then we’re fucked Cause it sure won’t be another Twenty hundred years for the fires and the floods Of a godly exhibition mowing us down in the rush Show to me the colours of your skin Tell me what they mean Apply the words like fingers dipped in kerosene Borrowed words, gestures in a tongue we ought to know But honey tell me Are those the same words you use when you’re praying in the fold They took our heroes and chained them to a god we didn’t know So to rob us with our good eye closed Flat-sawn nightmares of the tall-topped trees now come to me with Strange familiarity I ain’t coming home till I’ve found the real thing
9.
He wore his passion in his pockets And his head like a whispering crown Someday you swear you’ll be lifted up by the same things That are keeping you down This hard land will make you out of a man And cast you out into the throng The pleasures are few, though they’re simple but I know It’s the lows that are heavy and long The sun and the moon’s daily showdown Ended with no surprise Brother, you know not to put your damn money down When it’s a draw every damn time Babe, if you’re reading this I smashed every window In the house and broke all the glass I found And I burned the shop right on down to the ground After drinking every last bottle down Be less a fool if I did, but a liar if I said That I’d considered the natural laws When I hedged my bets on a drive into town Counting on being guided by the wings of a dove I guess there’ll always be another driver And there’s no telling what they’re gonna do And sometimes that curve comes a little too fast And that rock wall is headed straight for you
10.
New Stock 03:43
Boom and bust Another fool’s gold rush And they’re gonna do it all again in north Ontario Where the Indians roam But don’t call them that today I guess the name change is gonna make it OK As they line up the next dead souls to come and go Unnatural predators Wild and wooded and unwilling pastures Hard pressed for a fight to the death that could end any faster Put your money down Put it where I'll find your mouth Cram it till you choke but don’t you dare spit it out All the while I’ll be there asking Hey, how do you like it now The bloodletting has got to take its form If I gotta suffer alone, what am I suffering for The natural world, the walmart superstore The plastic trash, the iron and the ore We’ll give our children sacred objects for To cut them on their palms when they reach out for more Just as my father cut off his arm And handed it down gratefully He said “here son, now this is yours It’s no longer good to me” We in turn will give our children ordinary names and Dream stationary dreams and lose at all the same games

credits

released August 28, 2020

Gavin Dyke - Vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, mandolin, harmonica
Pascal Desgagné - Pedal steel, electric guitar, mandolin, slide guitar
David Pierce - Bass guitar, vocals
Brad Martel - Drums

Piano on "Domesticated" by Charline Daigle
Drums on "Daddy" by Ian Pierce
Recorded and mixed by Phil Colborne and Hophorn Hornbeam
Mastered by Stefan Jurewicz
Artwork by Tyler Williams

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Hophorn Hornbeam Ottawa, Ontario

Country/rock/folk/music. The familiar and the unknown.

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