You got your own version of the madness, don't you? Cutting up paper dolls in the moonlight. Hold a sign in the rotary at noon time. I got a death wish, take a ride with me, it's gonna be madness. I got a death wish, take a ride with me. Who cares if you regret it? All in all is all I see. Don't try talking to the neighbors. Please don't leave it up to me. I'm just staring at the ceiling. I have no testimony. I'm just looking for a door through which to leave. There is more than one kind of dream. I'm just telling you what you've been telling me.

Madness

As I stood in amazement, I caught something in the corner of my lazy eye. But I could not make the shape of it amid the omnipresent haze and burning sky. It takes a load off of the heart to admit it's given up, funny you should say: 'So has mine.' That was nothing. That was just me struggling. When we were strangers for the first time, one off-hand remark invited rude replies. Why did I apologize? When after all I was not feeling sorry. You did not recognize me then, just as you would not now, and that alone is enough to make me cry. That is nothing. That is just me struggling.

Guide The Minder

There was this one time I was feeling bad. There was this one time I turned a corner. And the plot thickens. And there's a lot you don't know. No one's making me a fool under some night watch I don't trust. And I'm looking back so much you don't know.

My, My, Oh My

I think you once told me
The fever breaks slowly
Like an origin story
Like a curtain rising
Until a faint skyline then appears
And you see for the first time what is there

Bear witness to 
My witnessing
I'll see you there too
Doing your thing

That's how it starts
That's how it ends
Loud on arrival
Quiet when departing

I can your footfall 
In the hallway 
Echoing

I can hear voice
Half-talking
Half-singing

Don't it turn a good start
Into a bad finish? 
Change the narrative arc
And your place on it? 
Don't turn a fragile heart
Into a clenched fist? 
That can't be taken apart
That won't be broken again? 

Fall away
Fall away for a while

FWD Devils

Here's how awakened at a lonely hour in service to my own disquiet I wander the hillside. I've been here a while as long as I recall. Make room for some space and make your way with love and you'll always have your racket. Content is king. Context is queen. You won't always have the pleasure of a principled thing but you'll always have your racket. It isn't up to me. I wish it was. Do you have all you need? We'll follow your lead.

Photo: White Angel Breadline, San Francisco (Dorothea Lange, 1933, National Archives)

Billy's Racket

I'm not even joking a miracle happened today
It was a low hanging sun showed me the error of my ways
I left my old way of thinking abandoned on the side of the freeway
Close your eyes now baby see me rip it on down a fast lane

The road is dark
The night is long

Hey, you might have had something on me
You might have had something
Hey, you might have had something on me
But now you got nothing

Nobody Here Is Perfect

"[A] wistful, sometimes melancholic, and  world-weary collection of sounds; and yet the songs are also life-affirming (see "Maelstrom"), and offer up gorgeous melodies (as on "Torre de Belem"). All of the songs here are meticulously arranged, instrumentally sophisticated, and anchored by carefully chosen programmed rhythms. The result is an album which is by turns stately and classical (as on "In a Bad Way"), but also grounded in the quotidian and classic (see "Talk Don't Cook"). With a song such as "Pocketwatch" we even hear, from time to time, a touch of jazz." — Francis DiMenno www.dimenno.wordpress.com

Torre De Belem

J. L. Pritchard is a Boston-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter.

J. L. Pritchard

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