I'm always grateful to be out on the road touring, living this troubadour-circus lifestyle and chasing a dream however crazy or impractical. During the pandemic I've REALLY missed it. This one is for all the bartenders, sound techs, bookers, venues, hosts and volunteers, who the ones that make it all possible!

Call It A Night

One fateful Spring Tour it snowed everywhere I went and inevitably I'd arrive and someone would say "You should have been here 2 days ago when it was 70 degrees and sunny!" So when I wrote the 'Sun's Gonna Shine when I'm Gone' I intended it as a humorous response, but ironically enough, there's a fair bit of truth in there as well.

Sun's Gonna Shine When I'm Gone

'Last Night' is about some of the great parties I've been to, back in the days when we stayed up all night, made lifelong friends and were fairly certain that something transcendent was happening. In retrospect, it might have been the alcohol and/or drugs talking, but dang it was fun!

Last Night

I co-wrote this with my girlfriend Lynn McCracken in Cambria, CA. She knew all about asking boys to a dances back in high school, while I was way too shy for that. How we rhymed 'Jitterbug' with 'Ernest Tubb' was a bit of a serendipity. I really love the Cajun-style accordion playing of Jenny Conlee-Drizos (of the 'Decemberists') on this one!

You Make Me Wanna Dance

I believe this is version #14 of this song, so even though I've finally recorded it, it's likely not really 'Done' yet. But just this once I'm going to take my own advice and waive the white flag, finally 'Surrender', and accept that "every die that's cast, gets cast aside." This song is for all the ones with broken wings.

Surrender

It took me awhile to learn that once you cross some 'Rivers' in life, that there's no going back. The thing is, our natural human inclination is to want to cross them, because we need to see what's on the other side. Some folks find what they're looking for and never come back, and some make it back scarred but wiser for their troubles.

Somewhere Down The Line

I paid $15 in tolls and drove all 236 miles of the Kansas Turnpike. In the Flint Hills I started drumming on my knee to the slap of the windshield wipers, frantically trying to keep up with a sudden downpour, and 'Ghosts of Wichita' emerged. This song is an elegy of sorts for my divorce, "these walls have seen us dance, they know all our flaws."

Ghosts Of Wichita

Some of my songs are more about me than others. I did in fact cancel my subscription to the paper but it kept showing up on my doorstep for months afterwards. It's also true that I do occasionally cry while reading the obits, and I definitely talk to myself now and again. "I don't know why I told you that, I just wanted you to know."

Never

I've been through a lot the last few years---my Father's death, the pandemic, a divorce, moving cross country---basically uprooting my whole life. I might be getting older but I'll be damned if I'm throwing in the towel yet. So "I don't care what people say, I'm gonna love you anyway! Now, Whatcha Gonna Do about that?"

Watcha Gonna Do?

I've crossed a lot of rivers while touring but usually they're out of sight before I can slow down and get a good view to see what's around the bend. That's kinda how my life has been as well, since I moved away from my hometown in 1989. I started writing 'The Way the River Goes' after I played the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas and got to open for the great John McCutcheon.

The Way The River Goes

This track is from the album Ash and Bone and is available for purchase on CD Baby here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/danweber

Wishin's Just for Fools

In Her Prime

Goodbye to Dad

3.	(I Deal with) Crazy ALL Day:
I tell this story of this song all the time. Come to a show and you’ll for sure hear it. This one is dedicated to everyone who DOES deal with Crazy ALL Day---You know who you are. Keep the faith, your sense of humor and hang in there. We need Ya’!! 

And it also goes out to Officer Henderson, who pulled me over one day after capturing a mile or so of my…umm…driving, on his high-definition dash camera. When he walked up to my car I noticed he was red-in-the-face livid. I lowered the window and the first thing he said to me wasn’t ‘Driver’s license and registration please’ (I know the drill) but instead said ‘Give me one—just ONE—good reason, why I shouldn’t take you to jail right now?’ So a Big Thanks for the ‘Warning’ Sir and for letting me get on down the highway to the next gig. I took to heart what you said, and I truly am trying to ‘Take it slower’…

Lyrics Available online at 
www.danwebermusic.com

Contact Dan at:
www.danwebermusic.com
www.facebook.com/danwebermusic
All Songs © & P Daniel Weber 2015 Highway142Music
(ASCAP) All Right’s Reserved.


(I Deal With) Crazy ALL Day

5.	Cowboy Style:
Gene Autry made 93 movies. As of this writing I’ve seen 83 of them. They’re all exactly the same, and yet completely different. One of my favorite things to do is to spend a perfectly good Sunday afternoon with a grilled cheese sandwich an ice cold Miller High-Life down in the basement watching some old Western. I’m not real particular so if I’ve seen it before I’ll probably watch it again. I may even sneak a little nap in. 

The thing is, as I’ve gotten older I appreciate the simplicity of Old West---or at least the one that’s portrayed on the silver screen. There are good guys and bad guys and still something to be said for honesty, integrity, a ‘code’ of sorts, occasionally drinking whiskey for breakfast, and always tipping your hat to a pretty girl. So I wrote this like you’d write a ‘Will’, sort of instructions of what I’d like my friends to do when my time has come. Head up Highway 142 about 10 miles, bring my guitar and a little bourbon. Go another mile past the bridge, then up the dirt drive on the left. The rest is up to you. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, ‘John 5:28’ in the New King James Version is: “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice.” That was pure serendipity…

This is dedicated to Jessica and Matt in Tucson, AZ, and with a big tip of my Stetson to their Dad ‘Bob’. R.I.P. Cowboy.

Lyrics Available online at 
www.danwebermusic.com

Contact Dan at:
www.danwebermusic.com
www.facebook.com/danwebermusic
All Songs © & P Daniel Weber 2015 Highway142Music
(ASCAP) All Right’s Reserved.


Cowboy Style

7.	Waiting on a Star: 
One morning online I happened to see a video of a hearse carrying a very famous singer who’d died recently (and tragically—too young and too strung out), driving past a throng of fans at her funeral, heading slowly through town. But it struck me that this wasn’t Hollywood: this was the town she’d grown up in, and the well wishers standing side by side, in the cold rain, were simply trying to grieve and hoping to catch a glimpse of her one last time. Ultimately everyone handles fame differently—some with grace while others never do adjust to it. It’s hard to say why, but that Tuesday, an icon got laid to rest while her fans stood under their umbrellas and sang her songs. In some ways, that feels to me like more than one can expect to accomplish in this lifetime. This is for her…

‘Thanks’ to Don Metz who gave me reason to believe in this song when I had more or less written it off. Don knows the old ‘Blue Highways’ better than anyone I know…

Lyrics Available online at 
www.danwebermusic.com

Contact Dan at:
www.danwebermusic.com
www.facebook.com/danwebermusic
All Songs © & P Daniel Weber 2015 Highway142Music
(ASCAP) All Right’s Reserved


Waiting on a Star

8.	Spinning my Wheels: 
Some songs take an hour to write, some take a week and some take a year. This one took 20 years (or longer). I had to live it first, get good and fed up with myself and eventually learn that the hardest person to forgive is your self. I think that’s what this song is about, and maybe, in another 20 years, I’ll know for sure.      

Special ‘Thanks’ to my buddy Woody Moran for suggesting I record this one 2 years after I’d written it, forgotten it and left it for dead on the side of the highway somewhere out in the desert. He saw something in it I couldn't see yet...

Lyrics Available online at 
www.danwebermusic.com

Contact Dan at:
www.danwebermusic.com
www.facebook.com/danwebermusic
All Songs © & P Daniel Weber 2015 Highway142Music
(ASCAP) All Right’s Reserved.


Spinning My Wheels

9.	I’m Comin’ Home:
I bought a pair of emerald earrings for a girl once partially because she had emerald eyes and partly because I’m a hopeless romantic and I believed that everything would work out between us. Of course I’m older now so I know that things don’t always work out, especially not the way you think it will. That ‘girl’ is older now too and she’s told me more than once that she never takes off her ‘Emeralds’. Sometimes when I’m halfway across the country I whisper her name to the four walls of my motel room in the dead of night and think “everything’s gonna work out when I get home”. This is for you Suzanne…

Special ‘Thanks’ to Sean McGowan and Woody Moran (for the chorus suggestions), and BIG Thanks to ALL the wonderful people (Brad, Jim, Dennis, Lynn, etc.) at the Sisters Folk Festival & the Americana Songwriting Academy. You folks will always be ‘Home’ to me…

Lyrics Available online at 
www.danwebermusic.com

Contact Dan at:
www.danwebermusic.com
www.facebook.com/danwebermusic
All Songs © & P Daniel Weber 2015 Highway142Music
(ASCAP) All Right’s Reserved.


I'm Comin' Home

Dan Weber is an award winning songwriter who has been described as "reminiscent of early John Prine." Legendary Folk troubadour Ramblin' Jack Elliott said "I love Dan’s songs and he tells really good stories." 

A former Park Ranger at Canyonlands National Park, Weber draws inspiration from a wide range of life experiences: growing up as an altar boy and Eagle Scout; painting houses, following the Grateful Dead; and quitting his real estate business to pursue songwriting and touring full-time. He has a knack for telling funny stories, so if you like Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen, or Hayes Carll, you’ll love Dan Weber’s music.

In 2019, Dan was the winner of the prestigious Woody Guthrie songwriting contest for 'Ever Since Columbine', and in 2021 he was named a rare 4 time finalist in the legendary Kerrville ‘New Folk’ songwriting competition. In 2022, he's releasing 'The Way the River Goes', which promises to be his best work yet. He currently lives near Dallas, Texas.

Dan Weber

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