d’ville
A collection of song-stories from a small town where dark secrets appear in half-remembered dreams.
Release date: February 2022
jh0st: guitars and vocals / 4catsncoffee: violin
Although d’ville was recorded in 2021-2022, the songs were written 30 years prior at the end of my time in Charlottesville, Virginia. These are orphaned tunes from the 1993 single, statik 3, which was originally conceived as a full-length album. In the same vein, d’ville presents 5 vignettes from the forgotten edge where small town meets expansive nature. Veins of ice-blue mountain streams and warm-rust human blood intermingle. Immersed within this melancholy landscape, the sun shines through branches and leaves illuminating occasional flashes of joy.
Sweet blessing,
why are you playing dead, eyes in the back of your head?
I know even though your skin is cold
You’re playing the fool in me.
Just last week? Just last week
you wrapped your pretty head around this old tree
and tried your best to drown
but when darkness came down
Whispered please save me…
Sweet blessing come back, come back down
Way down with your hands on the…
‘Cause lately I’ve been thinking of
starting over as we grow young.
On Sundays you go to church alone
Leave your sister’s children
Wondering why their two moms are so distracted…
When you come back
you come back, and break all the mirrors again
and scream that dying’s the only fair thing
that’s left in this world.
Sweet blessing come back, come back down
Way down with your hands on the…
‘Cause lately I’ve been thinking of
starting over as we grow young.
Close those books
Close those books, they smell like dust and ghosts
These old words can’t convey the pain
’cause our time is forever near us.
I know a place…
Know a place where almighty sky in the rain
Towers above the earth where we once lay
So bring that broken…
Broken violin with just one string
And I’ll, I’ll bring the drums
and we’ll sing and dance a play the darkness away.
Sweet blessing come back, come back down
Way down with your hands on the…
’cause lately I’ve been thinking of
Starting over as we grow young.
Never enough to know
that fireworks don’t always explode
40 days have passed us by
Left smoldering glowing skies
no one knows your early story…
Blessed be the creaking stair
warning you of all that you fear
Heavy breath and humid air
that swallows angels’ dusty prayers
No one knows your early story…
heard it through the open window
whispers in the form of curses
Floating on the Ely Sky
Beneath our backs dark water flows
Million stars and northern lights
witness your secret undertow
No one knows your early story…
heard it through the broken window
whispers in the form of curses
…already gone
Will you promise me just this:
steal the dollars hidden under
First you walk and then you run
turn to dust your father figure
Steal away on the midnight bus
connect the dots across the water
Save yourself and only you
One last eye to the Ely Sky…
No one said that
we would see
Family to no one
Sunlight through trees
No one asked for
an early grave
Stones of names a fade away…
When the clouds come down
water upside down
Order of each name
Feather on tongue
Thousand heart beats in the trees
now gone on the wings of…
day’s fading green
Traces of smoke
Lingering soft hope
Words spit like flames
under the up-town train
Together alone
through the heat summer storm
Yes it is…
faded away
No it ain’t…
the way it should stay
Church bells of peace
The devil’s timepiece
Once in a while
love speaks, to the right one
‘Til then I pray at the station
Penn the hymn to the speeding train
Yes it is…
No place to stay.
I saw the city lights
turn dusty moon
I saw the blue gas-light
split the summer sky
(Yes it is…)
Last place I’ll stay
No it ain’t…
the only doorway
Oh, gentle violence
Time will rewind it
Oh, blame the summer wind
Sound the sirens
Who will write this down?
This is the only sunrise
Edge of the amber darkness (cut the)
veins of blue mountain water…
A path to the lullaby wind
We’re stumbling…
not knowing the
The child from within
This is the flash of madness
Traced in the scraping branches…
A path to the lullaby wind
Sung by the…
child that sees out from within
Gravity, on and on (and on…)
Spots on the sun
Sung by the…
devil behind those closed eyes
Yes, promises chase the magic
breath, skipping the one heartbeat between
Faces and thousands of lullabies end in a single word
This is the only sunrise.
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