stranger flowers

here's a home demo for another new song called stranger flowers:

beat radio - stranger flowers (demo)

as usual, the band version rocks out a bit more. here are the lyrics:

i love your radio show

the kind of songs you play

the way you talk real slow

i love the way you say

"we just heard the title track

from the new juliet and abel.

it's called a symphony of wildfire

out on the tramp star label."

and every word rings true

every streetlight shines for you

on the day we met

i couldn't help but stare

the way you wore your clothes

and how you'd cut your hair

at the seaside bar

you were dancing with your punk rock boy

i was playing guitar

well i was making noise

springtimes coming on

it feels just like my favorite song

we're all stranger flowers now

there's a place where we belong

we've got all this worn out joy

and we get no sleep at night

but it's morning and we're

bending towards the light

springtimes coming on

it feels just like my favorite song

we're all stranger flowers now

there's a place where we belong

a million miles

we're putting out a million miles no. 2 as our new single to work on pushing our upcoming cmj shows, which incidentally, we're super excited about. the original version of the song on the great big sea was just a 4-track home recording i had done, i always loved the sound of it and it's still one of my favorite moments on the record. When it came time to put the album out on cd with the new tracks we decided to record an alternate version of it, with the rest of the band playing on it. For a while i had imagined the song would work well as a duet and i had sort of dreamed about having phil's wife vanesa sing on it. she's one of my favorite singers ever. I also recently stumbled upon an mp3 for an acoustic demo i did of the song. I recorded that around the time when we were in the middle of recording the great big sea and our old bass player Mike had left the band to tour with this teen idol guy, and i thought i was going to have to rework the songs so i could play more solo acoustic shows. i'm glad we decided to start rocking again and finish the record. Also, this image is a photograph by robert frank who is probably my favorite photographer. I could be wrong but i believe it's taken from his book the americans, which kerouac wrote the introduction for. here are mp3's.

beat radio - a million miles original version off the great big sea

beat radio - a million miles no. 2 new recording off the great big sea + miracle flag

beat radio - a million miles (acoustic demo) home recording

coney island

i haven't been blogging much recently. it was a crazy summer. there is so much to tell you about. i have been really busy working on new songs though. here is one that seems like it's not going to work for the band, at least not in our live set for now. we worked on a few different arrangements of it but it never felt exactly right. i still like it though. i think it has a great sort of falling action montage for an 80's movie sort of quality to it, which i love it for. it's funny, posting songs on your blog is like the new releasing b-sides, at least for me it is. hope you like the song:

beat radio-coney island (demo)