Love the song. I'd like to hear a version with a band. As always, great playing and singing by all.

April 2017

Music and words : JanKun
Performed and recorded at home in Kyoto in July 2021
Picture used for the artwork : Carol M. Highsmith (public domain CC0 image)
WORK IN PROGRESS

When The Lights Are Gone (DEMO)

Cover of the Iron And Wine song ‘Passing Afternoon’ written by Samuel Ervin Beam.

Bernie «Bootsy» Tonning : acoustic guitar, main vocals
JanKun : acoustic guitars, backing vocals, orchestration

Bootsy recorded at home in Colorado
JanKun recorded and produced the track at home in Kyoto

Passing Afternoon (Iron And Wine cover)

Bernie Tonning - Shine (original)

Uploaded with AudioShare app - http://kymatica.com/audioshare

Dropbox - Can't help falling in love (Elvis cover)

Brush with the blues( jeff beck cover)

Dropbox - Angel from Montgomery

Last time I heard the trees call..    
         
Last time I heard the trees call, I was lying in the desert
Sun was ripping out my eyeballs, sand the cushion for my head,
Breathing in and breathing out, the shadows on the wall,
must have slipped there from the ceiling, 
There’s a black crow on a dead tree, it’s a harsh a bitter call.

Now they’re waggling their little leaves, 
the fingers spread, the singing trees
I crawl to them on broken knees, 
it’s just mirage, a gentle breeze…

The last time I heard the crow call, I was sweating in a junkyard
full of broken dreams and bottles that had splintered on the ground,
I have no recollection of the time that went before,
A kaleidoscope, a melody cascading to the floor,
In a rivulet of pity, in a parody of dream, it’s a broken down occasion 
if you can’t tell where you’ve been

Then you open up the television, tuck it all away
It is simply not appropriate to carry on this way,
If they happen to annoy you, trees can simply be replaced,
We have plastic ones that play a tune, you hug them and they smile a little,
Talk to them and they will hum a cheerful little tune a little tune..

In the rainbow coloured lorikeet, the jungle of my brain
the exploding of the forest – it’s a deep primeval pain,
Shifting sands, the trees are singing deep, the thrumming of their voices,
It’s an overwhelming drowning, it’s an overwhelming song…



*    *    *    *    *    *    *

Sung played and mixed up by Emma... including an assortment of 'found sounds'...


Last time I heard the trees call...

This is the beautiful and poignant film that inspired me to write this song. It was like I had Ellen in my head for three days..... https://www.channel4.com/programmes/ellen
Ellen is taken from The Hag and the Whore, the third album from Steph Sweet, singer-songwriter and underground musician and author. Influences of freak-folk, psychedelia and angel-punk and songs about hags and whores, paedophilia, the selfie-generation, a beautiful girl, a break-up, teepees, death and spamsters and wolves. Album art by Skinny Graphix
stephsweet.bandcamp.com/album/the-hag…e-whore-album

Ellen.
Ellen, she’s at the changeling age, only fourteen.
Her Mum’s lived inside a bottle, since she had her at fifteen.
There’s drinking ‘round the house most days.
Let the men in. Let the men in.
Her Mum just wants to dance with them.
Her Mum just wants to dance with them.
It’s like they’re factory-farming humans just to boost the GDP.
There’s no way out for the working classes, no jobs and no money.
Ellen’s lonely and she’s hurting, hurting so bad inside her head.
She lashes out at everything.
Ellen wishes she were dead.
She’s difficult and mouthy.
Doesn’t make a good poster-girl for the BBC.
And everybody turns their head.
Ellen is the girl that they don’t want to see.
And everybody turns their head.
They don’t want to see.

He’s older and she thinks she loves him, he gives her tenners, vodka and speed.
A plastic bead of kindness in a vacuum looks like a diamond ring.
Who's going to help Ellen?
Nobody.
Who's going to help Ellen?
Nobody.
There’s a million girls like Ellen in all the big cities.
Too difficult and mouthy to be poster-girls on tv.
It’s like they’re factory farming humans just to boost the GDP.
No vegetables unless they’re frozen, crisp sandwiches for tea.
Ellen’s lonely and she’s hurting, hurting bad inside her head.
She lashes out at everyone.
Ellen wishes she were dead.
Who’s helping Ellen?
Nobody.
Who’s helping Ellen?
Nobody.
Nobody.
Nobody.
©Steph Sweet September 2016 All Rights Reserved

The Hag and the Whore

Ellen

download

Sounds from Tuesday evening

There is talk of space mining
the parsing of asteroids
and the drilling through of rocks

(as they float to some gentle tune
amongst a sky not at all a sky
speckled mostly black
but a piece of space as far as the eye can see 
caught in the cinema of its memory
of you and me).

For a moment more than most
I see the past and the future
and the many films
that show ourselves mostly lost
and involve the metaphor of mining
in some low-gravity world
which harbors bad things

(the virus of resentment
and of lonely men undone).

Even as I consider this
and want to shout silently
that’s far enough Goddammit
I also know I’m calling out against
the ceiling of my own space

(nothing more).

Johnny Goodyear - Space Mining

This is taken from a poem My father wrote in 1941 I believe. I took his words and turned it into a song a few years back.

Fantasy (words by Bernard Tonning Sr)

More than that

Calm Down

masks

the first time I saw
you were wild as a bright
bitter mask of forgetting
the armour you wore

the next time I saw
you were he you were me
you were all I could see
all those masks that you wore that you wore

and now that I see all those pieces of me
the colours dissolving the collage unfolding
the first time I saw
you were just me

the third time I saw
you were mine you were everything
mask upon mask upon mask that you
wore that you wore

and now that I see all those pieces of me
the colours dissolving the collage unfolding
the first time I saw
you were just me

.................................................
there's a video for this :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuhQZglPDgA
Written made played and sung by Emma

masks

Experiments with Crackfield in Kontakt and Live 9

First track I have ever published

Bernie Tonning - Shine (original)

Bernie Tonning

Recent comments

Artie Norton

Related tracks