1. Cheticamp
This may come as one surprise / You may never realize / Every choice my wife makes isn’t mine.
I know I seem the aimless sort / Who plots along the easy course / But who knows what occurs behind these doors.
And all the folks in Saskatoon / Who wonder why they’re there / In Januare and Fevrier / And all the folks in Cheticamp / And Baie Comeau and Waskasieu / I drink to you and wonder too.
I know that she will think at times / About a lover left behind / Everybody does why shouldn’t she?
I would never cross the line / Of what is hers and what is mine / There’s more there than I could ever use.
I don’t really give a damn / If I’m a fool for what I am. / If that’s a fool then everyone is too. / And every choice that you make isn’t mine.
2. ex Patriots’ Day
Don’t miss the winter, I don’t miss the cold. / I don’t miss my tires going flat at 40 below. / I don’t need another holiday / But I still want to celebrate ex Patriots’ Day.
Living in New York is like a rebirth / Even in a 12 by 12 foot room I’m the king of the earth / I wouldn’t want it any other way / But I still want to celebrate ex Patriots’ Day.
Who deals the cards? / Who rules the stars? / And who knows the meaning of home / We all do (when we go).
I don’t miss your kiss, I don’t miss the fights / I don’t miss the itching nerves like mosquito bites / I don’t need another holiday / But I still have to say / I wouldn’t want it any other way / But I still have to say / I don’t miss the lover who walked away / But I still want to celebrate ex Patriots’ Day.
3. Hello Amsterdam
Here I’m not entirely / Yesterday don’t matter to me / Goodbye Saskatchewan, hello Amsterdam / Here I am necessarily.
I trade on promise and belief / I am an angel and a thief / So rub your tears away, you pay so why not play? / Don’t look for premise or relief.
Light as a feather / I shouldn’t have to work so hard for / Not much pleasure / All these streets are filled with treasure.
I’m not looking for false charity / Another victim won’t work for me / Mischief is what I got / You’d do well to laugh it off / Go on or leave it to me.
I decline if you offer up cash / In the words of the profits that’s last /But the payday is coming on fast
4. Home by Sunday
My sister emailed me again / She’s says that everything is arranged / For once her plans have all worked out / But mine have changed.
I’m all tied up. / I’m all caught up.
How am I going to make it home by Sunday? / Might as well be a million miles away.
Another note, a glass of wine / You push your toes up to the line / Do you your best, you’ll be fine / They say in time.
Another day another climb / I spent another day inclined / To incrementalize the cause / This anonymity incites / Otiose applause.
5. Anselana
I wonder where you go / I wonder what you do / I wonder do you care.
I search across the net / I watch the TV news / Dedication blues.
No-one can tell me what went wrong / No-one can help me through / No-one can tell me where you’ve gone / You did what you had to.
Anselana / Come home / I am worried about you. / Anselana / Come home / Don’t you miss my point of view?
Do you remember me / When you lay down at night? / I wonder am I there?
Can you erase it all / Or do you get to choose? / Dedication blues.
6. Are You Making Any Friends?
Well I almost quit my job today / Some guy got right into my face / With Shawinigan’s best handshake / I should have sent him on his way.
Some things are bound to happen / Some drift on by / Much is shown but little known / And less the reason why.
Well I met a girl (I met a boy) in town today (Just what I need) / She works Friday’s (But he’s new in town) at Bishop’s Place (Just like me) / Her hair it brushed (He smiled at me) across my face (I still feel the flame) / We might meet up down the road a ways.
I can remember the face / But can’t remember the name / I didn’t mean to be gone too long / But a long time just came.
I got a call from home late last night / Everybody seemed to be doing alright / And Mom brought up the same old thing again / Tell me Son are you making any friends?
7. Stalin and Babba Looey
I was drinking cappuccino / In a café found in themes / Watching Stalin and Babba Looey / Miss the point on what life means / Dreams that invite you to move in / When your living spirit warns / Northern Dancer got the roses / Jesus got the thorns
These days are like a sprocket / And I am like a chain / There’s precious little time before / Those teeth come ‘round again
Imaginations formed in suburbs / Garbage in your streams / We delegate emotions / & other people’s dreams / Judged by the colour of your stole / Or what you drive around – excusez! /‘Til you find that times when minds meet / Are scarce as common ground.
From a future without limit / In the brazen zeal of youth / To the towers where the toothless / Write the third draft of the truth
Maybe life is just a factory / That packs meaning into time / And you are just a vision / I hope to hold as mine
8. Lost at Home
You didn’t listen to your dream / You took the truth that someone else believed / You put no money on yourself / Now the dream’s with someone else.
First doorway on the right / They take your photo and your fight / They take a business look at what you’ve got / They sell success, it’s not.
Now you are miles alone / You are lost at home.
You’re always stuck inside the scene / Where your stick gets lifted constantly / You need to put the puck into the net / It hasn’t happened yet.
The eyes are hard up on the bench / There’s talk of lawyers on defence / Its time to pull those papers from your desk / The fine print should be read.
Well I bet my future on a rising star / And I moved real fast so I’d go real far / It was just bad luck when the market failed / And I stayed too long when I should have bailed.
How I wish I had a reset / But I won’t leave ‘cause it’s not over yet.
9. Willow Bluff
Back on the prairie where the river runs slow / I met a young girl with the wheels to go / So I took her hand and went down the Willow Bluff / And I kissed her lips blood red and rough.
Well my legs got loose and my head got high / And my will got weak when I looked her in the eye / So I charmed that girl for an afternoon / And I tried to make her laugh so she’d follow me home.
And when the time came / She said you’re really not that funny / When you gonna learn boy / It’s all about the money.
And you can be blind on your own time / If you want to / But I’ve got priorities / And I can’t waste mine.
Down in Lafitte’s where the roof hangs low / By the old stone wall, she talked real slow / “Can I kiss you boy, I like your stuff” / And sent time on the wind, back to Willow Bluff.
10. Tiny Letters
So you read it in a book of poems / All the tiny letters just started to grow / Inside of your head / The idea was borne.
It’s not for love / You don’t do it for the money that may never come. / You don’t need the respect / You don’t think of the cost.
Pandora’s Box is full of tools / No one gets a break where the short run rules / And self defence is learned in halls / Where Muses don’t return your calls.
Some build a world upon the truth as fact / But the truth is an emotion not a matter of fact. / There’s no giving it back, you just follow the lines
Where they have crossed. / If nothing means too much, not too much is lost / Whatever the cause, whatever the cost.
Gerry Wall – Vocals, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Slide
Steve O’Connor – Acoustic Piano, Wurlitzer, Hammond, Accordion and Synth
Jon Park-Wheeler – Acoustic Guitar, Charts
Andrew Affleck – Bass
Jimmy Boudreau – Drums, Percussion
Neil Donell and Lori Dortono – Background Vocals
Additional Performances:
Doug Johnson – Dobro and Pedal Steel
Sean O’Connor – Saxophone and Flute
Bob Rice – Trumpet
Dave Draves – Clavinet, Prophet, Electric Guitar and Tambourine
Ken’s family, friends, employees and acquaintances – Vocal bits
John Witherspoon – definitive excusez moi
Produced by Gerry Wall
Engineered and Recorded by Ken Harnden at Pinnacle Music Studios, Belleville
Mixed by Ken Harnden and Gerry Wall
Mastered by Ted Carson of MusicLane Mastering, Toronto
All songs written by Gerry Wall (SOCAN) except “Stalin and Babba Looey” by
Wall/Knight