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Hit and Run ~ An afternoon of solo acoustic, harp & vocals 2005

by Bill Mallonee

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1.
TIM B. (for Joshua) w&m by bill mallonee Now that lake was all sun cast until the storm came up Maybe Athens Georgia never promised you enough And I remember your smile; the one that held so much Ain't it just the curse of youth to be so well in touch chorus: and your eyes were a lake where the wind was never still and your heart was a sky waiting to be filled Half-truth explanations from today's vending machines And the boxes you put all your loose things in? They've been lost at sea Where sorrow is a diver who keeps coming up alone and sorrow is a father at the end of a cell phone Grief she holds you captive in a well as dark as night and that ladder of composure you built all day rumbles in a certain slant of light It's leaving you reduced while you try to catch your breath; And every tear we cry for our lost loves is really for ourselves There's no poison there to infect you now No secrets to erase No need to do anything at all except to be embraced And you're all warm and dry there Inside a blanket called the truth And there'll be no more rain Falling through your roof from Hit and Run (9 new songs​/​An afternoon of solo acoustic, harp & vocals), released January 1, 2005 Bill Mallonee: Guitars, vocals, harp
2.
ponder straight edged for a while ruminations and consequences outtakes and mending fences the errors of your ways a little courageous moment it's a plot of land and you could have owned it where everything awaits the light of day you can't outrun the black clouds when you've allowed more than is allowed the spirit leaves before the death rattle losing battle who knows where it all went before you earned it it was all spent and spending and getting and losing is all there is left to your own devices a few white lies and some compromises you tell yourself but it's not sinking in who knows where this all will go with those thousand fools you call your heroes expectations crossbars too high to reach one two three here we go is it a high-wire act or boondoggle side show and there was no safety net underneath
3.
Cinnamon 05:25
your skin was cinnamon the trail of your dress at the summer's end I never believed in much of anything till then till then bring the moon with you I heard you summon it treasures opened and we both plundered it the heave and throw of your raven hair and your breath it was everywhere stay a while stay a while this thing is so fragile waiting for a train that I've long since missed waiting for a rain to come and drench dry and brittle fields where I work and pray white knuckle clenched jaw dry mouth for the sting to go away could be what you read the chapter and the verse a sad old passing or a bright new birth you know how various combinations work that old wound that you thought no longer hurt stay a while stay a while this thing feels so fragile
4.
Jump Start 04:42
the sound of loneliness is breaking of glass it's a woman that's crying as the tires squeal past outside my old building with the outrageous rent by an open window of an upstairs apartment my battery died the very next morn you were looking kind of beat up you were looking pretty worn in that old college sweatshirt worn over your broken heart but you said kid you look like you could use a jump start with such a wound is there some antiseptic for the tears and confusion of being rejected buried under sand is there a playground girl and how does woman carry all the weight of the world he's been gone three weeks and he hasn't even phoned you were thinking about moving striking out on your own but where do you run when there's no place to hide when every distance is forever when you're paralyzed from the inside out of an outside turned in and if it came down to him coming home again would you jump off his car would you make his chrome shine would you hand him the keys and say let's go for a ride would you take your place on the passenger's side would you take it to heart his lame ass alibis and begin the cycle anew and afresh would you paint a pretty smile over your perfect wreck
5.
Lucifer 04:36
from a simple plant that was long growing there from the king of the world to your worst nightmare got you an old recipe and some chemicals to stir it might have felt just like God once but now it's lucifer oh to be clean and you know the thing is sleeping a scratch below your skin and God knows if you wake it up you gotta calm it down again and I wonder what it felt like when the waters flooded in and it got too hard to swim it feels just like a hunger but you cannot feed the thing it always wants a new song that you can't really sing it never shows you the whole truth till the poison's leaking through what you thought you were doing well now it's doing you and it could take a few years to dig out of this mine what with a shaft so deep and dark it might take a lifetime the choices they're like diamonds you found down there one night you gotta grab the one that's your true self and bring it to the light
6.
good fortune cut cleared out long ago left us only here with the curse hard luck it moved in a stone's throw away and then things went from bad to worse the November wind is at it again sharp relief is less than a few crumbs and the November wind is at it again it's blowing through the scarecrow you've become my dear father and those other fathers before who bought this land from the Indians the family well it spread out like an oak tree's branches till the banker man took advantage of those years when the fields went bare well if it all ends in judgment and it all ends in fire why does the rich man get richer and the poor they learn to lie first to themselves then to everybody else you're way less than you were but you're still more than they are
7.
Flowers 04:22
round here there's just trouble chasing after the wind buy that line with all the money in the bank and never ever look in to be so damn enlightened oh to be so free to be so down in the bottom of the ninth at the top of the century I came with dirty hands I came with blinded eyes tongue tied I could barely speak the truth about my tall lies they sold me on some pleasure till the pleasure it sold me into something that looked and smelled a whole lot like slavery we all need new beginnings the first steps make you better maybe you're just a prayer away from getting your shit together flowers growing out of the desert flowers out of parched ground flowers coming right up through the cracks of the pavement in your old town flowering's not a science it's more like a fine art flowers coming right up through the cracks of our broke up little hearts
8.
Rescue 04:56
it's the blues again and there's just no getting around it whatever colors you were hoping to find well the darker shades have drowned it get out of here and the check out time is always rushed the paint and the chrome are starting to rust out here on your highway and the face of fate never gave you the brush off glance whatever makes you radiant shines deeper than you know but that ledge you walked in the dark was so uncertain and you can never gauge when the wind will rage and if that fall's gonna leave you hurting life's always a lesson it's a new one at every turning life's always a lesson I'm not so good at learning them especially the big one about letting go but I'll learn that one too if I don't have to let go of you too much about me I fall into this trap only God's thunderclap could ever save me now honey you're about the best thing I've ever laid my eyes on it's true you're the silver around my blue too much about me now what about you when the dark veil that separates this world from the next falls over my grey eyes and I sleep the sleep of death sometimes they got to pry loose the last thing that your hands hold honey that'll be your heart and the kindness you bestowed
9.
it was all about some distant goal if you could just make it out of here but what that was and how to go about doing it was never made abundantly clear what with a family all shot to hell survival comes instinctively I got an orphan dad in love with the bottle and a mom with some sad brain chemistry now hard work never hurt anybody but still there wasn't much on the shelf and really there are no bigger lies than the ones you'll tell to yourself somewhere my compass fell apart I drifted way off course when I put the damned thing back together it never would point True North the wind has ways of telling you when you've gone too far tonight I'm somewhere between Ansel Adam's half moon dome and Willie Nelson's beat up guitar you can sell your soul to Love's higher power there's nothing that'll ever stop you or you can sell your soul to the devil he'll take you right up on the offer today's djs on the radio say you gotta buy this one it's a must but the tunes that were old and beat up and wise well they're the ones that I learned to trust the ones all full of liars and lovers robbers and murders and thieves the ones all full of saints and sinners a lot like you and me

about

There's folks that like uber-production...and folks who like a more Lo-Fi. rendering.
Me? I try and strike the balance. Hit & Run is that balance.
I think this record showcases my work as a song-writer as much as any of them.
It may sound like I was working for your ear...but I was really working for yours heart. ;-)

I made this album in one day at a friend's studio in Athens, Ga. Ben Holst was kind enough to man the controls as I opened the notebook and played through 9 brand new songs.

credits

released January 1, 2005

Bill Mallonee: songs, acoustic guitar, vocals, harmonicas

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Bill Mallonee

Bill Mallonee is an Americana artist w/ 80 plus albums over a 30 year career. Voted by Paste Music Magazine #65 in their "Top 100 Living Songwriters" poll. He was the
founding member of Vigilantes of Love. He has worked with Mark Heard, Buddy Miller, Emmylou Harris, & Peter Buck from REM.
His most recent work, "Lead On, Kindly Light" is a 23song double Cd released Feb 2020.
... more

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