1. |
Sweet Kentucky
03:51
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Oh my sweet Kentucky, my only home,
Left my heart in the country to plow these fields and these roads.
If the wind should do my bidding, and the beasts unknown
Should handle all my planting,
Let these weeds be my home.
Consider all these lilies, consider all these fields,
Planted by no hand but an aimless wind.
I’m turning sideways into you til you catch my knees,
Take me to wherever you damned well please.
I look to these mountains, to the skies up above,
I look to these hills where my help comes from.
Winter will kill, claim all our skill,
We’ll meet her with the love that this summer gives.
There’s vanities that I have kept from you mother,
There’s vanities that I have kept for your sons.
I will go down to Jordan cast off my burdens,
I will go down to Jordan cast off my pride.
What clothes will I take off of my body
When this water warms and winter ends?
These currents I carry the river can keep them,
For there’s room enough for all of my sins.
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2. |
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How can I ever tell you darlin what you mean to me?
When planes and trains and automobiles are well above our means,
Rich folks must not have our longings for transportation needs,
How can I ever tell you darlin what you mean to me?
Been dreaming that I was a donkey, born with travelling feet,
I’d wander every back road toward you, hell, I’m a faithful steed,
But darlin could you love a donkey, love an ass like me?
Been dreaming I was born a donkey, born with travelling feet.
Digging my grave, making my bed to share with the woman I’d rather be with,
It’s Braves or bust, or Astro dust, leave the great white north for a southern sun.
I’m heading back home, wherever that was, wide open road and whatever’s to come,
So fill me up with whiskey, hell let’s get frisky, and finally get down to making love.
If my legs were made of engines, pistons, wheels, and steam,
I’d come as fast as hell come for a dead man’s dying dreams,
I’d make my way on tracks of cornbread through canyons, plains, and trees,
If my legs were made of engines, pistons, wheels, and steam.
Darlin, I am just a mammal with normal mammal needs.
My arms aren’t wings, my feet aren’t streams, I ain’t much on speed.
But, nonetheless, hell, I’m the best, the mammal that aims to please.
Darlin, I am just a mammal with normal mammal needs.
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3. |
Kansas
03:16
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4. |
Fire Next Time
04:24
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There’s an anger like hot coals that burns through my own soul
‘Bout all of the company you keep.
In cathedrals, in steeples, you enshrine the shit-speakers you claim that you never grieve.
The price that you pay, the devil only knows,
No tobacco-bought prestige will buy back your soul.
In creeds and confessions you sell false beliefs to reconcile all to your guileless deceit.
There’s room at the table for all who bend low and bow down their heads for this unholy yoke.
And the silence just proves what is already known.
When a hard rain comes, there’s no place to go
When the stones from your quarry are the stones that you throw.
Judgement will come, fire next time,
Build in the floodplains for safety while those hard waters rise.
What indulgences to sell
To pay the price of hell,
To pay the price of hell,
To pay the price of hell?
Bishops, kings,
Queens and deans,
Have made an empire’s economy,
And gather now to make pawns out of you and out me.
Pray for a hard rain to come, for a fire next time.
Where can you run to, you plantation lord,
When the hounds of hell will hunt you down
And you’re turned from heaven’s door?
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5. |
Not Here
03:27
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6. |
Bones of My Beloved
04:16
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Miss my friends,
Miss they way that they love me,
Miss the sweetness of whiskey, miss the mourner’s gin.
Miss my home,
Miss the way them mountains hold me,
Miss the virtues of the morning, miss the nighttimes sins.
I made my own way to New York,
Followed a storm to Houston,
In all of my wandering I have made my own bed,
So lay the bones of my beloved at the feet of my friends,
For home is now the place where all my friends live.
Miss that rolling river,
Miss that generous giver,
Winding like the snake of love through them clearcut woods where the devil’s camp set up.
Miss that rolling thunder,
Miss that fire upon the mountain,
Shaking like an empty grave on that judgement day when the Resurrection comes.
Somewhere between right and wrong
There’s a place where my friends belong,
There’s a fiery sword on the threshing floor
And a river that we must ford.
So I will raise my Ebenezer to consecrate all of my leaving,
For it’s by thy help now that we’re on our own.
Valley of dry bones, dry bones,
This place was never our home.
With the smoke we rose from the burning oaks that our fathers’ alters stoked.
Left behind a graveyard,
Left behind them crystal country stars
Left to find another way to say the same damn thing about who the hell we are.
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7. |
Who Haunts This Place
04:21
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Who haunts this place, who holds the key?
Who sets my hearts restless pace
Only you and you alone
Your love's my only home.
Whatever comes is whatever comes
Just give me all your reckless love
I'll give you all my hearts desires
Til to dust we turn, til time retires.
I have loved you since my first breath
Was reborn in the moment the first time we met
Borrowed love as my memory I'll never forget
Let your love be my greatest warmth.
Let your love be my only home
With this ring, I set now to roam
Only leave and I will follow
Spend up all my love on wheels we borrowed.
So bends time, So bends time
Spinning round it's broken rhyme
Restless arcs of restless years
Our love bends all to draw us near.
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8. |
No Other One
03:37
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The things that we carried are now of no use
From New York to Houston I watched her pack up and move,
But the songs that I wrote her are the things that are true.
It’s a hell of a summer for a winter’s blues.
There’s a used-to we’ve grown used to
Ain’t no use to change how we’re grown,
If I fuck this up, it’s ‘cause I’m only missing home.
We’ve made our own measure in first steps and false starts,
Counted the weight of our love in the miles apart.
There’s no other one that I’d rather love,
There is no other one but you.
In whiskey, in gin, drowned in coffee I’ll spend
All my days without you.
I promised to love her, I promised I’d stay,
Bet every bottom dollar I’ll keep those promises I made,
But now back to the quivering, the shivering, that shaking, that cold,
At the end of the summer, I’ll be coming back home.
When the heat settles in with no cooling wind,
And the earth covers you with her breathing.
When the dust proves I’m gone, carry on, carry on,
‘Cause for me, there is only you.
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9. |
Gideon
03:55
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I’ve only come to pay for my father’s tears,
I’ve only come to pace his mother’s ground.
What idols are made by such righteous hands,
I pray in all my traveling not to take any back.
I was raised in these mountains,
You are only passing through.
I have stared death in the face,
She has only looked through you.
The demons that you fight are only worms in the soil.
I have set off for love’s embrace rather than for her toil.
Gideon, oh Gideon, your father calls,
For your dusk done deeds are now found out, come to collect their cost,
Hide your face, oh Gideon, when that angel calls,
For your father’s idols at your hands will one day soon fall.
Gideon, oh Gideon, your father calls.
Gideon, oh Gideon, your father calls.
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10. |
That Great Quiet
05:17
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Hold me back from that great quiet
That has swallowed all my friends
Who sleep now from the sleeping gas of pious men.
Let every myth of my holiness
Be consumed by all my sins,
Till I know no sacred name to name the absence within.
I’d rather pray for enemies
Than to pray for fickle friends,
Whose kindness is a judgement
On all my wrestling.
I only long to prove you wrong,
I only long to sin.
To break with words of virtue
With fear and trembling.
All I want from heaven’s court
Is a ship and steady crew,
A blessing and a promise
For wherever the hell I’m off to
That if my ship should come back again,
Let my brothers’ anger burn with him
For the finest calf you saved and spend on my prodigal return.
Each collar shows a peddler
Selling answers they can’t hold,
A future that’s too bright to tell,
A memory that’s too old.
My blood runs thin like snake oil,
Heaven’s breath smells more like gin,
Each icon keeps on pointing
To an idol that I kiss.
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Nathan Evans Fox Nashville, Tennessee
Born and raised in western North Carolina, Nathan Evans Fox writes songs that sound the way gas stations feel. When it comes
to Nathan’s approach, Americana Highways writes, “It’s not cornpone, it’s not alt-country, country-western, or pop-country. Fox has a solid hold on a serious genre of country seldom covered by many artists. It cuts through the commerciality of country music.”
BMI
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