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

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

CELLS


My cells
My spirals
My shadows
Spread like syrup down the hall

Open
My heart
To constellations
Bottom of the pool: I found my design

My blood
Calling back to me
My cells
My spirals

I give them back to all
I give them back to all

Written/recorded 2017

{Inspired by many things, among them J.G. Ballard's "The Voices of Time"}

**This the original version, sans backing vocals.

The final version, with beautiful backing vox by Yellow-Belly, is on my 2018 album "White Hidden Flower" (https://chrisway.bandcamp.com/album/white-hidden-flower)

Cells

Cells (original version)

My version of Brazilian guitarist and composer Baden Powell's "Retrato Brasileiro" (1972). This composition is found on Powell's 1973 Album "L´ÂME DE BADEN POWELL" .

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

Retrato Brasileiro

Retrato Brasileiro (Cover - Baden Powell)

Written and performed by Chris Way © 2006

Alternate version of a song from my  2009 album "Needle Out"

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Lyrics:

It's no good what you do to yourself
More reasons to choke up your mind
It's no good what you do to yourself
More reasons to help you go blind

You say you'll change
But hope's another high
You promise pages
Why is your book hollow inside?

Won't let him through my door anymore
Won't keep letting him drink from my well
Won't leave all my keys in the door
Won't have him at my table no more

A father is
A jacket handed down

At first it's wrong
But when winter hits, it fits like a glove

It fits like a glove
He fits like a glove
Fits like a glove on me
Fits like a glove on me


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Image: painting by Rebecca Vicars (rebeccavicars.com).

Hollow Book, Winter Glove (Alt. Take)

Hollow Book, Winter Glove (Alt. version)

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

Buy on Bandcamp

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"

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)

My reading of the Mary Oliver poem "A Settlement".  
Recorded Jan 2018.

"A Settlement 
by Mary Oliver

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow, happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

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Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you
for everything."

A Settlement

Mary Oliver: "A Settlement"

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

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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

Written June 2020, Recorded July 2020 & August 2020 (w/clarinet).

Guitar, music, words: Me

Clarinet: Emily Praetorius (https://soundcloud.com/emily-praetorius-composer)

For R.

Scout

Buy from Bandcamp

NYC soul-folk & spells

Singer-songwriter, composer, poemmer, whisperer, hollerer

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

🇲🇽     🇲🇽     🇲🇽     🇲🇽     🇲🇽     🇲🇽 

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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