Song Sampler - C.Way

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O Soul 
I got some bad news 
For you
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O Soul

For everyone with alleys shadowing their map

Andrew Parsegian: Additional Mixing/Mastering
Thanks to  EP, HP (the Ps!), LB and everyone else who helped on Sound/Production

Love my girls

Black River Rise (Again)

Written after reading the horrible news story of a man who shot himself in the woods after discovering he'd accidentally left his infant son to die in his hot car in the middle of summer.  

Other than that catalyst, this is all entirely fiction. Note: this is NOT a song glorifying or making light of parental neglect, or tragedies like this. At all. It's a fictional song inspired by something real that happened, attempting to get inside the anguished mind of someone who fucked up in the worst way and paid the ultimate price.

Hot Car Death (A Capella version)

Hot Car Death

Buy at Bandcamp

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An almost-lost 2-take improv
**(wasn't a pure 1 taker as I'd originally written) 
A lil ruff
But thought I'd set her free all the same

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Floating in Honey
Floating in Amber

Wings still perfect
Wings still perfect

Candlelight trembles
Candlelight shivers

My body is sweet
My body is kept

Oil in water
Heated and breathing

Vision blurred
Vision misted

Floating moment
Slow lazy hover

Honey, Sugar
Licorice, Musk

Breath

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Thought I lost you

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SKY
RULES MY LIFE
MAKES ME WANT
MAKES ME CRY

THE HORRORS PERSIST
THE WONDERS PERSIST
AND SO DO I

thanks to SJ

Re-mixed Aug 2024

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SKY

Cover of That Mexican OT's "Slide"

Music/Lyrics by That Mexican OT/ Virgil Gazca

Performance, vocals, mixing, recording by C. Way/ aka Mangrove Coil (c) Winter 2023-2024

Slide (That Mexican OT cover)

What if you knew?
What if you knew everything there was to know at the beginning? 
What if you knew the roots, how deep they went, the flaw of their grasp?

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"We’re put on this earth to do a job. And each of us gets the time we get to do it. And when this life is over and you stand in front of the Lord… Well, you try tellin’ Him it was all some Frenchman’s joke."

The Gardener

Gardener Song

(Free download)

A different lo-fi take of this classic bolero composed in 1929 by Cuban group Trio Matamoros. Performed/recorded by me. Song art is a detail from a still from 16m film UNSTRUNG( 2007) by Cecily Brennan. 

Recorded around March/April 2016.

This take was cleaner than the main take, but to me not as soulful. Thought people might dig it.

Lágrimas negras

Lágrimas Negras (Cover - Trio Matamoros) - Alt. Version

Big Star cover I did in 2006.

This song is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)

I'm In Love With A Girl

I'm In Love With A Girl (Cover - Big Star)

(Free download)

Fully improvised, first take with guitar recorded July 2016.
Feb 2018: added backup vox.

I Know

Outtake from my 2009 album "Needle Out". Written & recorded around 2006-2007.

This song is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)


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Lyrics: 

Fear is the father     
Fear is the mother   
Fear is the first light
Shining your waters

Born into its arms
Borne out by its sails 
Born into its arms
Borne out by its sails 

Fear is the watcher
Fear is the listener
White hidden flower
Daily devourer

I can’t ever build
I can’t ever love
I can’t ever build
I can’t ever love

Father #2

Buy on  Bandcamp

My cover of one of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs

Take This Longing

Take This Longing (Cover - Leonard Cohen)

Improvised fragment written/recorded in 2010; vocal overdubs added later. Stumbled across this little critter the other day.

This song is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)

Rivulets

Buy on Bandcamp

Track from my 2012 record "The Body Begins", available here to stream or buy: https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/the-body-begins

The Body Begins

Book of Sand

Book Of Sand

Unreleased tune from 2006-2007 sessions for Needle Out LP (released 2009).  
Will be included on upcoming LP to be released in 2017. 
Image: painting by Rebecca Vicars (rebeccavicars.com).



DANDELION CLOCK

Nights when the heart chews its own legs.
Nights when the heart chews its own legs.
There is no bear trap but what I've built myself.
There is no bear trap but what I've built myself.

Waiting for a palm to cup you,
Carry you to some new blue field,
Set you there to bursting apart like a dandelion clock.

Scurry away from the mirror again.
Scurry away from the mirror again.
Knife and some wood: carve another face.
Knife and some wood: carve another face.

Waiting for a palm to cup you,
Carry you to some new blue field,
Set you there to bursting apart like a dandelion clock.

Dandelion Clock

2017 Cover of a song by Luke Barnett (https://soundcloud.com/warehouseband). Arrangement by C.Way.

This song is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)

The Reach

The Reach (Cover - Luke Barnett)

Shall we?

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Lyrics: 


In the hyacinth night I come (shall we)
This blood it rearranges my veins (shall we)
Moon pearl's in the sea  (shall we) 
I got so hollow that I floated away (shall we)

You're calling now, you're calling now

Crying

You're calling now
My earth is turned again

Blossoms up the trunk of a tree (shall we)
Burst the bark in pain (shall we)
Desperately they bleed (shall we)

You're calling now, you're calling now

Crying
Crying
Crying

My earth is turned again
My earth is turned again


Very special thanks to https://soundcloud.com/wormgirl for background vocal ideas


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Written and performed by Chris Way © 2017

This song is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)

Hyacinth Night

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There's a language of blood
There's a language of how birds fly in groups
Language of petals fallen to floors
Of raindrops brailleing on the mud

New void, new void, new void, new void

I speak all these tongues
So do you love, I know you do
But everything is trying to speak
Everything is trying to speak to me at once

New void, new void, new void, new void

When a room is filled with a block of voice
It's the same as no voice at all
When you fill the void of a page,
Fill it with ink, a new void appears

A new void appears A new void appears
A new void appears A new void appears

Everything is trying to speak to me at once.

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Written and performed by Chris Way © 2017

This song is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)

New Void

My reading of the Walt Whitman poem "On the Beach at Night Alone".  August 2017.

Poem: 

On the Beach at Night Alone
By Walt Whitman
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48856/on-the-beach-at-night-alone

On the Beach at Night Alone (reading of Walt Whitman poem)

Walt Whitman: "On the Beach at Night Alone"

Walt Whitman poem "On the Beach at Night Alone", set to original music.  August 2017. 


On the Beach at Night Alone
By Walt Whitman


On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

Also see - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48856/on-the-beach-at-night-alone

On the Beach at Night Alone

On the Beach at Night Alone (Whitman poem set to music)

My reading of the poem "from Stone: 122" by Osip Mandelstam. Translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin.

Poem: 

from Stone: 122
By Osip Mandelstam
Translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin


Let me be in your service
like the others
mumbling predictions,
mouth dry with jealousy.
Parched tongue
thirsting, not even for the word—
for me the dry air is empty
again without you.
 
I’m not jealous any more
but I want you.
I carry myself like a victim
to the hangman.
I will not call you
either joy or love.
All my own blood is gone.
Something strange paces there now.

Another moment
and I will tell you:
it's not joy but torture
you give me.
I'm drawn to you
as to a crime—
to your ragged mouth,
to the soft bitten cherry.

Come back to me,
I'm frightened without you.
Never had you such power
over me as now.
Everything I desire
appears to me.
I'm not jealous any more.
I'm calling you.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/141941/from-stone-122-5909feadd9bb6

from Stone: 122

Osip Mandelstam: "from: Stone 122"

Alternate version of my song "Cells", featuring gorgeous backup vocals by https://soundcloud.com/yellow-belly-547482436 (thank you YB!!)

Song written/recorded 2017

This song is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)

Cells (feat. Yellow-Belly)

Oct 2017 version of "Dancing" by Tindersticks.

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"I understand everything
I understand everything"

Dancing

Dancing (cover - Tindersticks)

Track off my 2003 record "Whelk's Milk".  Early bedroom lofi recording days.

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Where Is My Wind

Where Is My Wind (2003)

Improvisation / effects test.


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Wojj

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Three o'clock in the morning, I can't move
Black rose blooming in the middle of my forehead 
Dread, anger, belonging to nothing, collar my throat
Skin thick with centipede feet, making me twist my sheets
Twist my sheets

Now I can move
Now I can move
Now I can move

2.5, 5, 10 milligrams 
2 glasses, 3, half-bottle I can't move
Chart it, log it, scattergraph
Cardboard instruments dissect, disentangle
This thickening knot of days
This thickening knot of days

But now I can move
Now I can move
Now I can move

Planet of ocean
No land, no land
Wrap me, foam me, carry me in
There's a copy of me waiting in you
There's a copy of me waiting in you
There's a copy of me waiting in you



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Written + performed by Chris Way © 2008

Now I Can Move

Older long-buried song of mine, but I've always been fond of it.....  first half of the lyrics come from musician Joelle Jaffe. Rest of everything else (music, arrangement, recording) (c) 2005, 2010 Chris Way

Danny

Please support what I do and buy this track (and other stuff I make) at Bandcamp --> https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/track/renee -- thank you!

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Lyrics:
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What am I? What is this door? 
Cold black wood, familiar
Worn black wood still warm from touch
My touch

I've walked this hall
Changed milk back to blood
This is my prayer
I am listening

Father's ghost is watching me
The Spanish mosses hang low
Am I part of the field of God? 
What is this path?

The blue hallway is ready
I see shadows
I see lights

O I hear children laughing
I hear nothing but slow shuffling feet
Now is my prayer hauled out of the earth
Trailing roots

This is my life
Renee, I never knew you
I won't do what he did
I am like him but I'm not him
Renee, let me hold you

Stay in my heart
Stay, stay, stay

Renee

Stay, stay

Renee
Renee
Renee

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All lyrics, music, production (c) 2018 Mangrove Coil

Renee

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For Rin. 
Happy Birthday!

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Learned /recorded in about an hour.  1 take w/ a couple of edits. 1 mic (AKG C1000S) and a flamenco guitar.

Jewel Box

Jewel Box (Cover - Jeff Buckley)

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Written, arranged, recorded by Chris Way,  Jan-Feb 2019.
Final mix-down: Feb 24 2019. 

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Lyrics (excerpt):

And I couldn't feel me
And I didn't keep the light
And I chose against the balance
Ran from the reason 
To the shore

And the tides they called me
Night after night
Like a sob
I began to heed the sound
Stopped hearing love
Chose the rush 
And the roar

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The Balance

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Written/Recorded: August 2019 - December 2019. 
*Remixed Sep 2020
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"A purple blossom growing in my  mind 
Filling everything
Recedes from my vision 
Fills me  again 
Fills my heart;  You are with me
Shows me I'm not alone

A purple blossom growing in my mind
Makes me sing again
Sighing and shaping
Re-making
Washing my eyes
Helping me see
How I am not apart
I’m empty; I'm fillable
Be with me"
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Purple Blossom

NYC soul-folk & spells

Singer-songwriter, composer, poemmer, whisperer, hollerer

**Spotify: @cardamutt
**contact: cmc at chriswaysongs.com

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Love n peace,
C/MC music factory
aka The Mangrove Coil, The Far Crier



p.s --> Background image: detail from Thornton Dial's "Beginning of Life in the Yellow Jungle" (2003)

C.Way

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