JOHN LYLE: Down The Road And Far Away

John Lyle

Down The Road And Far Away

© 2002 John Lyle, Penny Lyle, John Murray & Garry Macpherson (634479501593)

CD IN STOCK. ORDER NOW. Will ship immediately.

SPECIAL: 40% discount if you buy more than one copy of it today!

(About MP3 downloads at CD Baby)

Beautiful, soulful, mostly acoustic collection of stunning songs in the folk, roots and blues styles

notes

‘Down The Road And Far Away’ is an exquisite album, overflowing with the yin and yang and salt and pepper of a musical and literate personality whose creative juices are flowing. The over-riding mood is one of gleaming optimism, belying the witty fatalism of many of the lyrics. The performances are built around Lyle’s astounding vocal sound. His timbre is golden, but his inflections and phrasing are blue. Most of the melodies are beautiful, and when they are not, it’s because the songs don’t want them to be.

Instrumentally, this is an acoustic guitar album, despite the presence of two tracks using keyboards. I would suspect these recordings ‘Centres’ and ‘the Camel’s Back’ are from an earlier era, but the liner notes are uninformative. There is an edge to the vocal attack on these two songs that sounds and feels much younger than the other world-weary and lower-pitched vocalizations.

‘Down The Road And Far Away’ is book-ended by two extraordinary tracks. The opening song is ‘Just My Kind Of Girl,’ a joyful, if opaque come-on, stuffed with ironic asides and two gorgeously panned acoustics, one finger-style and the other flat-picked. It sounds as though Lyle played them both on the same guitar. The other-worldly chorus is eminently singable, if you can stifle your laughter-

‘There ain’t no doubt about it
She’s just my kind of girl
Too bad she lives so far away
She’s half asleep and far too deep
Into this crazy world
There ain’t no doubt about it
She’s just my kind of girl’

The closing track is ‘Way Past Now.’ I cried when I first heard it, and it has been a very long time since I’ve wept upon hearing a song. That is in itself a sad admission for me. Perhaps it’s my Catholic upbringing, but I could not help but interpret this composition as a direct attack on a ‘religious’ hierarchy so corrupt it would turn a blind eye to rampant abuse of its most vulnerable parishioners. This is the third verse-

‘Way past now past the trampled vows
And the pleasure that is cruel
Some old man with an empty hand
Speaks the language of a fool’

The sound of the guitars on this track creates a sonic image of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza mounting the first of many hills at sundown. I hear spurs jangle, and leather creak while morons speak. And best of all, there is the chorus, addressed to the patron saint of virgins Agnes-

‘I’m feeling helpless, Agnes
And a little reckless too
Take me down your garden path
And I will go with you’

And I went with John Lyle on his musical adventure and found a new companion for the recordings I treasure. ‘Down The Road And Far Away’ is an album of substance and joy and despair and outrageous laughter. It is laid back in its rhythms and tempos, and, with repeated listenings, I found that, time and again, it had laid me out with killer lines that hit unknown targets within. As with the best of folk blues, I can feel the heart of one musician and poet beating his own time.

Heartily recommended!

-Keithly O’Conner

Bio-

Headed for a career as an English professor in the mid 1960’s, John Lyle was ‘broadsided’ by Bob Dylan and The Beatles. His degree went out the window, and so did he, playing in a series of bands and then performing on Canadian network television and radio as a solo act. He was also signed to two record labels during this era, but realized that because of his highly sensitive nature he was not cut out for the performing life.

John returned to his home in the Vancouver area, and devoted
himself to his family, supporting them with a career that may have been more dangerous than the perfomance stage. He became a postman. John Lyle’s wonderful body of work is evidence of a life lived on the streets and in the home, filled with all the love and loss and joy and despair that are part and parcel of being alive. The songs are vital, not written to imitate a commercial trend or to fulfil a contract, but to reflect the intensity of experience and to remain sane.

Feedback -

'John's songs are amazing!' Frazee Ford (The Be Good Tanyas),

'We love John Lyle. We listen to him all the time.' The Sumner Brothers,

'There's lots of nice stuff on there!' Paul Rodgers (Bad Company; Free; Queen),

‘Magnificent!’ The late Robert Altman’s word for John Lyle’s music,

'John Lyle will take you gently to your safe place, and then sneak up on you with a song as uncompromisingly ferocious as a grizzly in a maternity ward.’ Dennis Albo, in his reality novel ‘One Bullet Left,’

'Wonderful, odd genius...I hate to think what they'd find if they opened up his head'-American comedian Heywood Banks,

'Super, passionate stuff!' Mark Smith

DOWN THE ROAD AND FAR AWAY - lyrics:

JUST MY KIND OF GIRL

I asked her what she did for fun
She said she didn’t know
She did the days seemed shorter now
Love had lost its glow
She said all her bags were packed
And waiting on the bed
And if I thought I had a chance
I’d better shake my head

She said complete removal
Was quite beyond the pale
She had to stick around a while
Until she saved the whales
She had to stick around until
She made me see the light
All my ideals are only
Clouding up my sight

Chorus-
Ain’t no doubt about it
She’s just my kind of girl
Too bad she lives so far away
She’s half asleep and far too deep
Into this crazy world
Ain’t no doubt about it
She’s just my kind of girl

She said she’d given up on hope
And all that it implied
She looked at me and said I see
Sadness in your eyes
She said when you stop arguing
With what has to be
You’ll learn the only lesson
You’ll ever learn from me

I got a funny feeling
We met somewhere before
Maybe in a focus group
The year before the war
You had a red bandanna
Wrapped around your pretty neck
I would have loved you way back then
But someone stacked the deck

OLD JOE CALLS FROM THE HILL

Old Joe calls from the hill
To the boy standing alone
Old man drunk by the still
Don’t know nothing he’s done

Momma in the kitchen
Cuts you with her tongue
Old Joe calls from the hill
To the boy standing alone

Hair yellow as straw
Eyes blue as the grass
Heart lone as the pine
But it don’t know what to ask

Somewhere from the hill
Old Joe’s plaintive moan
Drifts upon the wind
To the boy standing alone

MY LOVE IS EVERYTHING

Clean and pure as a mountain stream
Dignified as a college dean
Alive as life has ever been
My love is everything to me

Chorus-
My love is everything she can be
My love is everything to me
My love is everything
Dancing in the heart and mind
Of everybody she can find

Reaching to the heavens
Probing inner space
My live is touch and sight and sound
And always in good taste

Yet one thing can defeat her
And bring her to her knees
And force her from my memory
Like the moon removes the sea

But what care I for Father Time
He too is growing old
And at least for now, I am warm
While he is always cold

CENTERS

I’ll bet nothing can get so small
It can’t be cut in two
And I’ll bet nothing can be bigger
Than what’s inside of you

I’ll bet it all goes on forever
Not just outwardly, but in
I’ll bet we’re each of us a center
And that’s what we’ve always been

So if you’re feeling out of things
Lonely tired and blue
Remember you’re a center
And there’s centers all ‘round you

LITTLE KNIVES

I’m tired unto death from all these little knives
It’s not the big one that gets you
It’s when they come in fives
I don’t know what I want but I know I want it now

The snow lies heavy on the powerline tonight
I don’t know where I find the strength to hold you tight
Maybe it’s the same place I finally come to see

All the contradictions holding me down
Ain’t nothing but the chatter from a brain-dead clown
Ain’t nothing but the chains I’m dragging to my grave

Don’t the rain sound lovely hiding in the air
I tried to cross my heart and say it wasn’t there
Help me tie my shoe and point me to the stair

I need to be deliberate in everything I do
I’m being left behind by everyone but you
I want to go so slow I get behind my mind

If I could see through this illusion I wouldn’t say a word
I wouldn’t try to argue what we both know is absurd
I wouldn’t lift a finger in anger or in trust

THE CAMEL'S BACK

If you’re disappointed, the old man said to me
It’s ‘cause you expected what was not to be
That’s when I shot him and as he went to hell
I said remember you’re my major disappointment number twelve

Chorus-
Disappointment number twelve didn’t break the camel’s back
I’d guacamole fro a camel
If a camel had the knack, I’d climb upon its back
I’d ride into the desert ‘til the desert starts to crack
Righteous anger burns the sea, flood the land and calls to me
Kill the moon and blind the sun until the revolution’s done

I was feelin’ like a mountain climber lost inside the Alps
When she came between twin heartbeats and said she needed help
That’s when I unloaded, and as she met her fate
I said, remember you’re my major disappointment number eight

I was telling these stories to another friend of mine
When he came up with this classic line
Don’t that gavel get heavy? I said let me be the judge of that
And you’re the worst disappointment I ever had

JUST MISSED MEETING (by Garry Macpherson)

In the museum of your life I was a dinosaur’s lost tail
A relic of an ice age once delivered in your mail
In the springtime of a morning when the sun was on your mind
And the postman’s parting message was, the wind of birth is blind
There’s no undoing

All the windings in the coil around the core of all you’ve been
While you wandered through the attics and the mazes of your dream
Time and the valley of the city when the mail train left the track
I found you sleeping in the ocean with my name burned on your back
There’s no returning

All the letters that I sent you that you piled beneath your bed
To remind you of the childhood you’[d kept hidden in your head
Drowned in dissolution when the ebb tide cleared the shore
And washed away the blood stains I’d painted around your door
It left no meaning

To the words of misconception of the metaphors you bore
And though you often heard them screaming
You could never guess what for
You’d ignored their unasked questions of the gaps between our thoughts
And our search to find the answers
And insert them in the slots between our lifetimes
There’s no beginning

HIGUEY HAIRCUT

Higuey haircut’s mighty fine
Takes a bite out of my mind, my mind
Barber, help me travel light
When I take my homeward flight, tonight

Broken pavement tricks my feet
Sunshine burns the hanging meat, the meat
Sugar coffee don’t do squat
Por favor, another shot, make it hot

Tim can rollers on her head
Clank upon her marble bed, he bed
Power and water come and go
But nothing stops the passing show, the show

Hot merengue fills my ear
Time to have an otra beer
An otra beer, over here

Ay carumba, she can’t do the rhumba
She might have a bug
Chills and fever, will they ever leave her
She might have to take a drug

WAY PAST NOW

Way past now, past the burning cow
Where the salesmen never stop
Where the road rolls deep
And keening sheep sacrifice their crop

Noble steeds have lost their fee
While Agnes chews her mop
Way past now, space and time have wowed
But no one calls the cops

Chorus’
I’m felling helpless, Agnes
And a little reckless too
Take me down your garden path
And I will go with you

Way past now past the trampled vows
And the pleasure that is cruel
Some old man with an empty hand
Speaks the language of a fool

I just listen to my teardrops glisten
As they slide into the sand
I’m too tired to fall asleep
But I’ll do what I can

reviews

Please log in to review this album.

email

Please log in to email this artist.