01 Spin The Bottle

05 Playing With Coins

04 HOPE

03 CA Coming Down

02 What Day Is It

Lyrics

“Lost In Transition” Leaving With Extra Baggages

Packing up my things and heading out east
To a land where nobody knows me
And my mother keeps saying how she worries
But that’s just getting hard to believe
Because as time comes close she shakes her head
With a look that says she’ll never see me again
And I wish I had the right words to say
But all that came out were ‘no promises’ 

So I dug a grave before leaving home
Burying a piece of myself that made me feel whole
And I’m just looking for a reason to return
To a place I swore I’d never go

In the mix between suitcases and six string
I came across a lost recording of drunken San Diego
Needless to say it’s full of laughs
But my name got bad mouthed in the end
And there are a few words from my ex love
Over lapping with The Cure ringing on my phone
Since she always yelled at me about my drinking
And someone’s eyes were more blue then hers

So I stayed like a good boy as I was told
As she talked about how jail is like home
And we can’t listen to the freedom of the wind
Because where would you go if you left me
She said where would you go if you left me

So it’s a plane over seas and a woman by me 
Who doesn’t mind my drinking
She just keeps telling me, 
Think before taking action
Because I lie, I get lost between the whiskey and my thoughts
And message a woman I use to know
Since she would always be there waiting
Until I told her she could go

So I cut the line and fed the boat to sea
Heard her last cry of damning and cursing
And yes it hurt her more then me
But she’d never let me leave Orange County


Lost In Transistion

From the album, "...And I Called Her Ocean" (2015)

Lyrics

“10 Year Anniversary” 

Lifelines over lapping time zones on a map
Coloring in black and white dreams in the morning
With a paint brush and steam from the kettle 
Just shades of sunlight and green mint tea
And I’ve been looking at connecting definitions in my palm
Like they are outlines of constellations  
But there’s a scar or dying star from where tinsel town burnt down
Or was that when Natasha tried to find herself at the lost and found

Well I’ve never loved her more then on a bathroom floor
And when she stole her mother’s car to see what LA was about
But we were just 16 with hair in our faces
As I believed any words a woman sang

Spring brought umbrellas made out of leaves
While habits acted out like the winds in the desert of California
Oh how she cursed at me in the back seat 
Descending the 10 freeway on my birthday 
As I called her out by singing her name
Asking if she remembers all those empty promises 
Or spinning a globe like the world should be blessed to see us
Because it was a simpler time with February rain

And she never loved me more then outside that front door
Playing the Cure on her front porches at 2 in the morning
But we were just 15 spinning a globe
Believing we’d go to any country or state my fingers rested on
 
Well she sent me a message the other day
Filled with drawn out pauses
Like one of us, well, we should have more to say
But if it was not for a ghost that comes to life every years in the summer time
And a twist of fait, my name would have never crossed her mind  
Now I’d be lying by saying I don’t miss her from time to time
Those big city lights in her eyes but that was us at 17
When I played the drunken French man who’d invaded Russia in winter
Claiming it all in the name of love or my darling Josephine 
Since then those lights have faded, since then they’ve turned to silver like her hair

And we aren’t the same people we use to be
Drinking whiskey by moon light, cheersing to the sun
Saying that one-day we both will be someone
Believing those words like we were going to die young
Well hey Natasha how are the lights of Los Angeles treating ya


Ten Year Anniversary

New single from the album "...And I Called Her Ocean" (2015)

Lyrics

“Piss and Vinegar” 

I’ve been out all night again
Getting drunk and lost with my friends
Whole fifth of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red
And all the yellow lines blur together; the streetlights fade in
While I begin to question my immortal sins
But my mother always said, a good man knows when to shut the fuck up

So you know, I just talk in circles
Round and around until hitting the round
Just to dare the sunset to play catch up
While I try to out run my shadow
Cause I got weapons out and I’m ready for a fight
Yea, the bottles empty and I’m ready for a fight

There’s a girl at home waiting up for me
She questions every night when I leave
Ask when are you coming home to sleep 
Cause god damn, it gets so lonely
And all I can do is kiss her on the forehead
Before whispering it’s probably for the best if you try to get some rest

But she knows, I’ll be out passed last call
Round after round until legs give out
Just to dare the sun to wake up (someone to keep up)
While I try to keep my shit together
Because I got my weapons out and I’m ready for a fight
Yeah, the bottles all empty and I’m looking for fight

So it’s a 3 o’clock flask jacket pocket walk home
Kicking dirt lost on Olive Avenue 
While the witches play for their one hour a day
I stay one-foot step ahead of the devils whistle 
And he clicks the heel of his boots on broken rocks
Following closely all the way to front porch light my girl left on for me

But he knows, ill be back out the next night
Selling what’s left of my soul over a microphone
Just to play a game of truth and dare with strangers
While I try to keep my shit together
Because I got my weapons out and I’m looking for a fight
Yea, the bottles all empty and I’m fighting with myself


Piss & Vinegar

Lyrics

"Someone Else's Trouble"

Dolled up painted nails and broken banjo chords
Secrets or promises told with an open door
Tap dancing barefoot under the moon to pray for rain
Just trying to tame the thickening air of the Sana Anna winds
Oh how you worried so about wild fire coming over the hills
So she’d hide away in the bathroom smoking her mother’s cigarettes
And I couldn’t help but laugh after walking in as you struggled for a light
Just saying, you know those things will kill ya…

Memories play like silent films
Just movements and shadows with pieces of color
Regardless the script hardly matters anymore
Because now you’re someone else’s trouble 

Zipped up jackets with the hood up indoors
With a look that says, you never known when it will pour
Strumming sad simple broken chords 
Trying to make sense of my own thoughts and words
She says you’ve been here for days but when are you coming home
Because I’ve been locked in a room lost in spirits and chemicals
And she couldn’t help but shake her head while I laughed out a few tears
Pulling a bottle from my hand saying you know this will kill ya…

Memories play like a faulty projector
Just clipping scenes with a count down ending
Regardless the details hardly matter anymore
Because now I’m someone else’s troubles

Well I moved half way around the sea
With a women who asks if I’m having another one
In a tone that says its fine just love me the same 
Promise to be who you are in the morning
Because she worries ill get so far lost
And that’s something I can’t put her through again
Summing up details of my life in six lines
Last I heard Jordan’s still singing out her window like a lost massager bird
Treating it as a cage and waiting for the sun to rise
Oh she was always one for the dramatics 

Memories get recorded over with different backdrops
Just fresh faces and new lines
And we don’t know one another anymore
But now were both someone else’s trouble

Cause were someone else’s trouble
Oh you know this life will kill ya…
 

Someone Elses Trouble

Lyrics

“ West to North to Home”

Atlantic coast and tilted sleet 
Coming down in sheets over Galway bay
Like ships that get tossed to the rocks 
All because some words that a woman sang
And I’m watering down the whiskey in my glass with the rain
Keeping what little silence there is left at the end of the year
But words still come out with every exhaling sip
Just mutters to a god I wish I fully believed in

That I wish I fully believed in, that I believed in (x6)

It’s a double-sided coin that mocks fate
Regardless of hand shakes, a trades a trade
So it looks like the devil has my soul 
While different women own pieces of my heart
Either way I have very little left to give or hold on to
But there’s a girl with long blond hair that worries about me
She tells me a mind is a terrible thing to waist on worrying and reflecting on those who left 
So stop the gears in my head from grinding 
Because everything happens for a reason
And there’s little to be said on which direction a train goes 
Once the wheels are in motion

And I whish I fully believed her, that I believed her (x6)

My mother gave me the northern star
She put it around my neck, over my heart before I left and said, 
“ It’s for when you’re lost in the world and in thought…”
Because she knows I have a double-sided fickle mind
With a mouth of over played lines 
That loves what I’ve had but misses what’s been lost
But the women I’m with says she doesn’t care about the man I am
As long as I don’t go back to being the man I was

And I wish I fully believed my own words… when I say I promise
Yea I promise…



West To North To Home

Lyrics

 “One More For Royalty”

The sun and rain colored flowers in June
Rising in the morning to slipped off shoes
Little red riding hood is getting lost in the woods
Just to find herself, waking up as Cinderella
With the perfect fitting glass heal and all
And a halo of flowers resting on her head
She wasted no time giving herself away 
The same week I left the states

And it’s those raccoon eyes that shifts
Aiding to her words that are only meant when spoken
And it’s just as cold in Dublin as Seattle
But this city doesn’t have a queen, (x3)
Like she was the one of Washington

There are nicknames written down, folded up in a hat
That she gives away as she see’s fit
And yes, they get reused
Do you really think I am the first wolf she’s met?
So it’s a trick or treat 
A Halloween game she plays
Sending me a look or a word in passing 
Whenever she’s away from her man longer then a day

And it’s her rabbit like noise
That twitches when she wants to disappear
And wind feels the same in Dublin as Seattle
But this city doesn’t have a queen, (x3)
Like she was the on of Washington

Now she’s dressing up as a model
Running up and down the hallway
Yelling look, look, look, at me
She just wants to tell her, she’s pretty
But she stays half naked between sheets
With a 1980s film philter on the lenses
She just wants to be a star
If not to the word then to somebody, anyone

And it’s her fox like grin that few have seen
Since she only shows it before stating a truth
And it rains the same in Dublin as Seattle
But this city doesn’t have a queen, (x3)
Like she was the on of Washington


One More For Royalty

Song dedicated to my Singer Royale DeVore

Empty Nights

Lyrics

“Last Note” (On The Note)

February violets are blossoming 
While words get muttered as a silent film plays
It adds color and details to black and white memories
She believes true love only happens in 1950s movies
Because they don’t make men now a days like James Dean
And I wish I were anywhere but here listening to your absolutes

Little details stay like nervous ticks
And when you speak French for a new love
And then he’ll asks you to translate
Just remember that’s me, goddamn that’s me

Rivers change tides while voices make peaceful tones
A holding inhale is the last thing to let go
While she marks a two-year anniversary on a rosary
Repeating her praying counting off the beads
She says thank god thank god we are ending, that we ended 
Now ever girl with long dark hair and straight bangs remind me of her

Little details stay like nervous ticks
And when you curse while you fuck 
Trying to act sexy or cute
That’s me; just remember that was for me

She questions her own words along with mine
Saying to me, Irelands so far away
And if she meant something like I said wouldn’t it be hard not to stay?
But your not my Belle because you still see me as a beast
So I cut off my layers and you dye yours red
Tinted like a hooded cloak or a mermaid
Yet, she has her books of places she loves but will go to
And I have a one-way ticket

So I’m leaving and I wont see you before I go or when I get back
I’m not planning on coming back
I thought I told you that
I’m never coming back


On That Note

Song dedicated to my Grandmother 

Lyrics

“Lucky & Foolish”
	
Well my father’s best man passed away last week and he had little to say
He just sat back in his chair, poured a scotch, combed his hair
Then with a sip he said son no one said life was fair
If given the chance the world will always choose dare
And the angry ones are the last to die
So folks like you and I will survive to the bitter end
Just to put the ones who loved us but never left to rest
The only thing you can do is try and find a place to get lost

Maybe that makes us the Lucky ones
Or it’s just me being young and selfish

So here I am 6000 miles away 
From anyone who said distances makes the heart grow fonder 
All in the midst of a doctor pulling darts out of a calendar
While He tells my grandma to get her affairs in order
Because her other lung is giving out and she soon wont be able to breath
Sadly after, my grandfather will shortly follow
He’ll break every bottle of jonnie walker black that reminds him of her
Saying it’s not fair to lose your only reason to get out of bed in the morning

Maybe that makes him the lucky one
Or its him being old and selfish

Well everyone I know is either expecting or passing away
It seems like now a days both receive due dates 
Ex-loves and girls I knew that became women 
Are now growing, showing, glowing, and eating for two
It’s an odd feeling when a frame can portray what was almost your life
But my grandma just laughs like time hasn’t passed and nothings happened
She says to me and believes the good lord has a plan for each of us
So don’t be worried or scared
While looking at the spring flowers with a half hearted smile 
Like she’ll never see them again

Well, Hallelujah (outro)


Young & Selfish

Lyrics

“Old Habits Die Hard”

We got tattooed knuckles
Tears stained on our face
A permanent look that doesn’t erase 

And hey what about you?

We got empty bottles all on display
From nights we can hardly remember
With a morning that we hate

And we got rips in our jeans
From drunken fighting, in the streets
Boys on the town on a Saturday night

And hey what about you?

Because around here things just stay the same…
Yea around here nothing ever changed

We’ll we got mud on our boots
And blood in the mud
Drinking with the moon and damning the sun

And hey where are you?

Because in the morning we’ll head out to the creek
Sobering up in the river 
Then start day drinking

And we’ll call it freedom

Going on telling tall tales
Of a future life in a far off land
Where we had some money

And we just laugh it off and start howling

But around here nothing ever changed
Yea around here things just stay the same…

So we’ll end up at the bar again
Two-dollar shots
Singing about all the places that we’ve been
And hey somehow we lost you
Because we got broken hearts 
Sympathetic songs about girls
Cliché lines, were telling the words

And they’re all about you

But they always rhyme the same
Reciting the same story
While the ladies say poor baby

And then we forget about you

And as the bottle breaks in the middle of the street
Lack lustful and bittersweet

Because we next week will play out the same

Because around here nothing ever changed
Yea around here things just stay the same…

And it goes on and on and on again x2, 
What about you?
And it goes on and on and on again x2, 
Where are you?


Old Habits Die Hard

Dedicated to Redlands CA

Lyrics 

“Home, or…”

So the money has been spent
And the bank account’s running dry
But there are tickets on the nightstand Waiting for a flight
Because I’m going home now
If only I knew where that was
LAX printed on a stub in bold ink
So I’m going home, where all my family and friends rest
Sadly I can’t see them since I’ve changed and I swear they are the same
Yea I’m going home now and there are things that I miss
Like bike rides on sunset

And we got a lay over in New York but we wont stay
It will be tempting and I’ll say hey we can cash our chips in anyways
And Brooklyn’s pretty nice this time of year I’m told
She said you act like a man who wants to change his name
Going back doesn’t mean plant roots and staying

So I’m going home but I wont go without a fight
Yea, I’ll be half way sober before getting on that connecting flight
Just to get lost in that californiacation state of mind
Full drugs, sex and lies
While whiskey still stains my breath
But I’ve been trying to keep my head on straight between the coastlines
Fog lights on the 405
Star blinded eyes in the cesspool of Hollywood 
Where all the young ladies get told they were made for the big screen
Models in there high wasted jeans
Oh they’re all so god damn pretty
As they believe every line that a west coast mans feeds off to them
And I’m not better then that

Talking through the nights of all the places we could go
Chelsea, Portland, then Long Beach California rolls off her lips again
Like returning to that that State was an option when leaving
She says what would you have us do? We’ve never been happier there
And this last years been hell, at times I doubted we’d even make it through

So I’m heading home, to orange blossoms in bloom
Shooting empty whiskey bottles thrown up at the moon
Yea, I’m heading home to get asked all the same questions
Like where have you been? How was it? whats next? And how long you plan on staying
While Austin says it will be good to get my feet back on the ground
In a place where I don’t have to look before I walk, like prospect park
But this city is a haunted hallow 
Full of streets and old buildings that eco stories with the seasons
Winters nights bring back a bleached blond girl in the snow
Famous family memories that no one else remember
And these ghost make me howl, howl, howl, at the morning light

But when that plain touch down in LA I wont tell a soul
Backpacked ready, weapons out, and I’m laying low
Out in Joshua Tree, I hear the train whistle blowing
And it sounds like those hounds from hell
She says, you don’t have to tell anyone your coming back
But the holidays will get so lonely with your family 10 miles away
Just do whatever you have to do to get through the day…

So have another drinking, it’s Christmas Eve (x4)

And I’m back home…


Home, ....

Early Morning Calls (Still Waiting Part 2)

Almost Famous

Complacent Revolution

Sleep It Off

Lyrics

“Broke, Broken, in Brooklyn’s”
 
Connecting dots on a map
Like it’s a game between county and state lines
Yet, the handwriting alone paints a picture
Conveying we have been drinking cause the dress fit perfectly
But she’s a gypsy and knows it well
From all the many rings on her fingers
And the countless flawless word that get spoken
Just fiddle with tips on a tight rope and hipbones
 
Crooked stars that fall
Like raining fire arrows in the middle of winter
Since the oceans connect on the coast
All the girls have the same dresses and bangs
It’s the Brooklyn of New York (x2)
And shes a ghost (x2)
 
She keeps composers awhile holding her phone
Taking pictures of herself like a made up doll
But the colors start to bleed like dyed streaks
The bleached roots run onto white dresses
As desert rock rolls into snow whites
Making its way into a crystal for rings
Carving words and ships with her eyes
Since they did launch a thousand fleets
 
Crashing waves roll off fingers
Like rain in the middle of autumn
Since the wind carries leaves coast to coast
All the girls use the same words because its ironic
The Brooklyn of Spokane (x2)
And shes a ghost (x2)
 
So lace up boots boys and dig in deep
It’s all to right a women who controls the rain
Along with wind in her voice
That states lad be free but don’t stray
Because that last petal is falling off tattooed four arms
Being caught in the palms and head down isles
Till the I do I do I do turns into the I don’t need you
But she ends with smile saying beast stay close
 
Mountains slowly crumbly
Like stuttering words with I miss you
Since earthquakes makes wave that eco
All the girls have the same names and cloths
It’s the Brooklyn of both coast (x2)
And she’s a ghost (x2)


Broke, Broken, In Brooklyn

Rio Devore is a singer-song writer in
Seattle WA

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