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City Songs

by Adam Bricks

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    Your Hard Copy of "City Songs", Artwork by Eric Castorena www.ericastorena.com

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1.
Man carries coffee in a business suit a woman walks her dog along an empty road if i had a gun, baby i'd shoot and leave you at the corner with your bags still on I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just making friends, sometimes I'm just weird, thats how its always been walk with me a while, you'll find you're the same playing parts until we find where they've all gone You're not who i expected you to be But that's alright with me cause i don't want your number i just want to talk let's go to the river and we'll find a spot I've been as lonely as a fish in a tank but compared to the others it just looks like I've drank Burger king Burger king Texaco the skyline looks strange when you're driving slow buildings lit up but the car is cold i know too many people who look too old When the night falls over this town it's like a king has lost his crown there are smiles going all around and if were still together were gonna be making out Now i need you more than i need myself to pick me up baby and put me on your shelf Ive got a lot to learn you've got a lot to see but I'm not gonna burn you its just not my scene January February March and May i remember the letters you sent me every day but the people we knew, honey they're all broke so now all they do is sit around and smoke and time, passes like airplanes you'll find us all the same and now baby i just want to walk with you and talk about the things that we thought we knew the day is coming to a brutal end but i don't need someone to bury me i need a friend
2.
I Was King 02:17
Thought i was king for a day i was king than came spring, and it opened up my eyes Everything was only half of what it seems then came spring, and it opened up my eyes I saw what i saw and i did what i did, they're ain't nothin to do about that And now i am here without clouds, without fear alone in this world without disguise You can buy yourself a ticket take yourself a train but they're all in vane in vane you can find yourself a place in this world just to erase yourself from this world to define But you run out of money and you run out of time and you've got to seek shelter in someone else's design but you'll see, the way it goes nobody knows so pick up your clothes and take to the wind that blows
3.
Electronic Doors go open and I'm drinking martinis all day if i could imagine the rest of my life i wouldn't have imagined it this way Gone are the motorcycles and cars and i stay awake in old time-y bars and dream of places id rather be but forget it all by the time I'm done If this is what, life is supposed to be air planes, and bad tv and coming home from work in vane with very little to explain I'd give it all to you my friend id give it all, it's all pretend
4.
A Dog 03:30
5.
I've got things to do you've got things you don't and if I'm telling you to pack them up you won't so I'm leaving tomorrow baby i don't care if it rains I'm leaving tomorrow baby i don't have to explain from comfort to sorrow every man he has his own name Say goodbye now don't forget to write me a note keep alive now won't do you no good if you won't and send me a message if you ever have to complain cause I'm leaving tomorrow baby i don't care if it rains Im leaving this city taking my time with my last goodbyes leaving the country is hard, its hard to say why you make your bed or you put it back together again and I'm leaving tomorrow baby i don't care if it rains Cause I'm stranded like a live wire in the middle of the road caught in a cross fire between my empty space and my home I'm either staying or you say I'm just leaving in vane but I'm leaving tomorrow baby i don't care if it rains
6.
Colorado Bar 03:17
In a colorado bar i guess i met my match jack was telling stories and i slid out the back and watched the stars slip into holes i got my ticket and i ain't giving it back to watch the young converse from across the room and Kristmas lights hanging out on a July afternoon we could do this everyday if the weather only worked this way into the wildest fields i would follow you we started getting cold and dead set on the south the key slipped on in and darkness slipped on out and what a world to watch unfold, i can't sleep when it gets this cold and if i do i won't be waking up I thought i saw you swaying with the trees childhood friends turn into enemies you know id save that anger if i could and turn it into something good you know i would if i knew you better than this
7.
On your doorstep, i am your trash i am the sun's brilliant ash i am the doctor, i am the priest i am the angel, i am the beast i am the cup that you left full i am the curtain that you pull i am the stranger at your door the happy millionaire on your floor and all the danger you felt before i am love and nothing more
8.
Ohio 02:08
I drove to Ohio to see a girl that i knew and there were dead deer in the middle of the road and a sky full of Indian jewels she used to hold me very careful touch me sweetly tell me i was perfect and the red brick lined the dark roads from the prairies to the townships as i lay staring at the ceiling between her body and the lamplight tommorow i will be leaving down that blood road, New York by midnight the west is calling, i can feel it with every footstep, in every day but in between your destinations and where you came from, run away
9.
Silent night, O silent night feel the asphalt drop under your feet see the crooked cops, haunting every street in the silent night Now divorce or marriage, can't tell the difference anymore might as well leave my keys, by the broken door might as well call it sacred, might as well call it rhyme but I'm glad you made it, kid you're right on time this Silent Night Because the vampires, they won't hurt you here they ain't looking for blood, they're looking for fear and its fear i took, picked it from the tree and as the flowers grew, it made a ghost of me in the Silent Night and now i stand, in front of the jury with my name, swinging from my sleeve they tell me i will never sleep i say thats ok, keep my dreams close to me in the Silent Night Oh Bitter youth, you chose right when you chose to leave me outside with my cigarettes and my candle light in the silent night but when some junkie wants, to take my life who are you to tell him that it ain't his right raises his bloody fists, at least he's ready to fight for his time Because if time is money, than money is time and the devil weeps neath the frozen pine and the songs grow ripe on the trembling vine in the Silent Night And what for the day, the ladies dance with their beads shaking round their pretty hands oh the diamond day, is gonna be alright as long as we can make way, through the Silent Night
10.
I want to work in New York, I want to be a waiter so if you can employ me tell me now don't tell me later i can sell your food, and i can do it all night long you won't be disappointed with me i will make your team strong Working till the midnights gone picking bubblegum off of chairs sleeping in hallways, emptying ashtrays paying for my room share I will be the best employee, cause thats what you deserve after spending a year in college learning english ill be glad to serve We've got a middle aged hostess she looks like she's almost dead and out of all the people sitting in this place she's the only one who needs bread it's a hard occupation but you have to make ends meet honey if i knew where they were i would offer them a seat I don't know a thing about construction i don't know a thing about cars but i can tell you what it feels like to live on Hershey Bars So if you're young and anxious do exactly as i say take pills for your troubles and an order for your pay
11.
Kristmas 04:45
Cars drivin by on an old city street the trees lit up, the cold at your feet im riding home with this letter to you just to show my appreciation for bein true Kristmas don't come til the cops come around takin down the highways for the cars comin down And there's nothin to do, but just wait and see somebody's son is talkin to me And the lights, from the stars never shined so bright Kristmas is here, im drivin home tonight She says there ain't no reason to be hopeless and scared it's just another holiday, people will share well some of them win, some of them lose some of them they'll just be sharin their blues There's a mattress laid out on the kitchen floor you're at the window, I'm still at the store When i get home, you'll be there with the light in your eyes and the dark of your hair and the lights from the cars never shined so bright Kristmas is here but im drivin home tonight I'm wakin up on a Kristmas morn, the clock ticks til someone's been born someone will die by the end of this year but i got no worries, as long as you're here see the poor kids waiting under their socks and the men loading out Chinese toys at the docks And the radio's playin, a song that you heard but no one in the car is singin a word and the lights, from the stars never shined so bright Kristmas is here, I'm drivin home tonight

about

First things first: Adam Bricks is an unabashed, head-held-high folksinger, the kind of musician and songwriter that used to push music forwards but these days gets relegated to the dingy club while vapid electronic beats bounce plasticized pop mannequins around on stage. Now, with that said, he’s decidedly not a countryish, roaming-through-the-woods kind of folkie — City Songs isn’t Fleet Foxes or For Emma, Forever Ago, and thank God for that.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against the whole pastoral-/country-folk thing in general, and I like folks like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver and Iron & Wine and Noah and the Whale and Mumford & Sons quite a bit. It’s refreshing, nevertheless, to hear folk music that’s rooted not in the bucolic fields and forests but rather in the dirty, neon-lit streets of the naked city.

Bricks himself got his start playing clubs in NYC’s anti-folk scene, which explains a lot about why he sounds the way he does. The guitars may jangle and drift along like Robin Pecknold’s, but there’s a grittiness underlying it that musicians like Pecknold just don’t have (again, not judging, just pointing out the difference). City Songs is exactly what it says it is, for once: it’s a collection of rambling, sideways-smiling, smoky, booze-tinged love songs to The City, that mystifying collection of buildings and bars and alleyways and freeways a lot of us call home.

And despite Bricks’ recent stay in NY, his album is truly an 11-track ode to his hometown, painting a picture of sprawling, confusing, noisy, messy Houston that ignores all that and pulls in close instead, focusing on those aforementioned bars and alleyways and whatnot. In a city where nobody walks, Adam Bricks has written a set of songs for roaming on foot, at night, and it’s goddamned brilliant.

I say this with all sincerity because I have walked this city at night, nearly everywhere I’ve lived within the Loop and without, and it’s always, always, always enthralling, like you’re pulling back the curtain on a play that’s no longer going on and watching the cleaning crew quietly go about doing the stuff you don’t see out in the light.

Houston’s not New York, obviously, or New Orleans, or San Francisco, or any of the other big “story-cities,” but yes, we’ve got our own magical moments, like the well-dressed guy walking down the sidewalk ahead of me late at night in Downtown who suddenly, spontaneously, busts a move for no apparent reason.

Or the wild-eyed guy in the stained t-shirt who I see slide up to a corner, look around to see if he’s being followed, and then pull off his shoe and start talking into it earnestly. Houston has these moments of beautiful strangeness, and it feels to me like Bricks has channeled some of that into his music.

City Songs somehow sounds like the city and the people that live and work and everything else in it; it’s pretty and fragile at times, sure, but it’s still got a raggedy-edged, cracked-sidewalk, crumbled brick-dust vibe to it. You can’t hear this album and think the guy’s singing about his home back in Kentucky, trust me.

The biggest, most obvious touchstone for Bricks, of course, is Bob Dylan. I can’t deny it; there’s a resemblance. More than that, though, what I keep hearing in my head as the guy sings is Lou Reed — there’s a far, far greater resemblance, to my ears, to the VU frontman’s delivery and lyricism, and hey, I’m good with that. There’s also a similar ethos of simplicity, this general feeling that the songs aren’t necessarily complex because they damn well don’t need to be. And yeah, I can get behind that, too.

The most Reed-esque moment comes on the somewhat-surreal, rambling “A Dog,” which jangles its way along like a B-side from one of his early solo albums, but it’s definitely there throughout, like on “Waiter’s Song,” which is the only explicitly “New York” song on here. There’s also an occasional hint of Damien Jurado floating through, especially on the somber goodbye of “Don’t Care If It Rains,” and even a little Glen Hansard on the elegaic “On Your Doorstep.”

Vocally, Bricks makes me think of another of my absolute-favorite songwriters, John K. Samson of The Weakerthans, who like Bricks is himself essentially a troubadour of the city. It comes through strongest on jangly, cheery “Colorado Bar” or on album closer “Kristmas,” which is a “Christmas song,” certainly, but a bleaker one than most of us think of when we hear those words. It’s gentle and swaying and waltz-y, and both the vocals and lyricism remind me of Samson’s, particularly when Bricks declares, “Christmas don’t come / ’til the cops come around.”

By the time City Songs ends, I’m sitting here in the near-dark on the couch, and I’m struck by this urge to just get out, pick up my coat, and head out the door to wander our Southwest Houston streets. No real destination, just meandering along towards nothing at all. And sometimes, yeah, that’s perfectly okay. - Space City Rock

credits

released April 13, 2013

All songs written by Adam Bricks

Band:
Adam Bricks - Guitar/Vocal
James Essary - Guitar, Piano
Matt "The Kid" Willhelm - Bass
Ryan Chavez - Drums

Horn Arrangements on Old Man's Notes, I Was King and Kristmas by James Essary

Horns are:

Saxophone - David Ajin
Trumpet - Mike Ajin
Trombone - Cade Paul Gibbs

Design and Photography by Eric Castorena
www.ericcastorena.com
Produced By John Griffin
Mastered by Chris Longwood

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