Ear, Seawater Stories (standard)
D6 Dmaj7Am / GC D / Am CEm / Asus2 Cmaj7G
Elsewhere in the world there’s a riot going down
Elsewhere in the world people marching, right or wrong
Staring in the mirror making faces, all the same
I’m sitting here and watching the North Dakota plain

Somewhere in the world a heart is breaking up
Somewhere in the world there are solemn lifted cups
Someone laying on the ground and praying for the rain
I watch the storm clouds race across the North Dakota plain

In the forest people fight against the deadly black snake
In the forest there’s more than just survival at stake
The air around is thick with all the voices who explain
It’s okay, just sit, watch the North Dakota plain

Down the street there lives a woman that no one ever sees
Down the street is a room full of hopelessness, machines
The sidewalks are scattered with mysterious stains
Someone always sees you coming ‘cross the North Dakota plain

Am Bm / Gsus Gbar / Am Em / Dm CG
Quietly in darkness as the corpses start to cool
The saltwater whispers of the proscribed fool
Covenants are broken as prosperity declines
I know these things are happening, I hear it all the time

Someone right beside me’s waiting for the beacon’s light
Someone right beside me holds an ember growing bright
We haven’t talked much lately, my voice is tight with pain
Deep as the horizon of the North Dakota plain
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Ear, Seawater Stories

Berkanan; Grandmother’s Grove
Dm7sus2 G/B / C Dm7 / Dm7sus2 G/B / C F6sus2 / Em F / C G/B / Dm7sus2 G/B / C F6sus2
There’s a park in the center of the city
That people find a little hard to look at
It’s all on a hill, and the birch trees are pretty
But you have to pay attention to see that
The neighborhood’s a mess of graffiti alleys
Burned out churches, all-night laundromats
Folks don’t go out too much lately
Developers circle like sharks at a blood bath

But the fog comes in like old wool shawl
And the streetlights loom all fallen angels
I’m alive to the sounds, in awe of it all
Facades loom like shipwrecks through spacetime tangles
My feet know the map in the sidewalk cracks
And I’m humming along to some half-known song
My hands in my pockets, the wind at my back
The stranger beneath me is humming along

The park is a graveyard for lost tennis balls
Rolled up in bruised shadows of birch trees
I walk past the toilets with the graffitied up stalls
Smelled the smoke of an October freeze
They say bootleggers once made a stash here
They say the hill was built on a mansion
As I climb both are true, and there’s still beer
In the dirt choked upper stories that I walk on

At the top there’s a circle of old crones
And I smell grandma’s cooking on the breeze
The fog gives way to moonlight on these old stones
Peeling silver bark, and the still-green leaves
Arms outstretched in comfort and welcome
I sit and sip coffee from a thermos
Sirens break the stillness, I think of going home
But I sit a while longer, my fear can’t find purchase

There’s a park in the center of the city
That people find a little hard to look at
It’s all on a hill, and the birch trees are pretty
But you have to pay attention to see that
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Berkanan, Grandmother's Grove

Spooky Action At a Distance
D G / A D :||
When we were kids I’d leave you offerings of river sculpted rocks
And you would find them on the doorstep before school
You’d wonder on the bus about fairies and their plots
I shot spitballs like a bells-on dancing fool

My house was built on some delusional foundations
The wind blew straight through its sagging angles
I guess that you were used to that kinda situation
Like lucky quantum particles we ended up entangled

C F / G C
And the years are disappointing as the days go on and on
I’m just glad to be a chorus in your song

You made it out of town and spent some years just wandering
I haunted church basements, learning how to breathe
When you turned up at my trailer door you looked so small and shivering
I fed you and I fell back through the cracking in your teeth

Once upon a time you tried to kiss me, it was weird
We spent that summer swimming, running free
I was trying hard to fit behind a grown man’s beard
You said that all in all you thought you owed me

Well I’ve known my share of women tried to do my best by them
I’m lonely but now I’m alone on purpose
I don’t mind crashing on the couch if you end up in my bed
My friend I’m humbly, and ever, at your service
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Spooky Action at a Distance

Mannaz; the Shapeshifter
D C / G D :|| A G / D A
He’s a lot less pretty when he steps down off the stage
Must be down to some kind of mask he wears
You were screwing up your courage with some honey of the brave
The kids at the back door they just stood and stared
As you walked up to him with that open bottle invitation
Asked if he was looking for some liquid inspiration

The after party was a mess, there were bedsheets on the carpet
Somebody’s cat was getting handsy with the cushions
He chatted with the hostess but you could tell he wasn’t into it
He held but didn’t drink that glass of obligatory bourbon
In the spare bedroom he confessed he wrote some wild poetry
You asked if he would read it, you thought that he was joking

Asus G / Bm G / A C / G A
Breath, and blood, and fingernails, sings the shapeshifter
Carbon, sugars, building blocks, I think you get the picture
Something inside animates us accidents of dust
Habits have a nasty habit of turning into trust

There’s a bit of missing memory, the candlelight and shadows
Made fertile breeding ground to plant imagination
You can feel it even now, joints popping, hair grows
His words they sort of stripped away the situation
Maybe mead makes miracles of bodies bent together
By morning you were shivering, he left you with his sweater

The cigarette you split was like incense in the aftermath
Makeovers make it muddy, heat dummies and tinsel chaff
Everything that happens to you happens in your head
Even sweat damp sheets and that one spot in the bed

Great is the claw of the hawk that circles high and crying
As you walk along the riverside to your apartment
Row boats cut through molten steel, surf reflecting sky
A world adorned with wonders, headaches and contentment
Coffee and a shower, run a comb through your hair
Catch a mask in the mirror, meet the doppelganger’s stare

Breath, and blood, and fingernails…
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Mannaz, the Shapeshifter

Fehu, Song of Wealth (DADGAD)
Dm Gm / Bm A :|| C G / DD7D A
Once upon a time we sang of dragons
The dripping golden hordes of the wyrm
Now it’s respectable robber barons
At the head of inscrutable legal firms
Gone are the days when wealth was gold rings
Flowing freely from the fingers of warrior queens

Now a grey wolf in the skin of a man
Sips his third martini at lunch
The colonizer’s clock is a memetic brand
He bets other people’s money on a hunch
Win or lose, up or down, the rich get richer
His walls are papered over with his own picture

Am F / G A / D C / G A
Fire on the sea, path of the serpent
Wealth is a comfort  to all
Give it away or become its servant
Coin sows the seed of its own downfall

Beowulf cast away his useless sword
To grapple with Grendel barehanded
The wolf-man plays with himself and gets bored
The shouting outside, he can’t understand it
The poor will have bread or we’ll have blood
He punches his own wall and hits a stud

There’s something to be said for bread and roses
A penny shared comes back a thousand-fold
Winner-takes-all such a human psychosis
Makes for brighter flames when all is told

There’s dancing downtown at the office
He hangs by an ankle in the corner
The sparrows take division of the profits
This cutty-wren and getting any older
And maybe they’ll make all the same mistakes
Norns alone know all human fates

Fehu, the Song of Wealth

Ur, Trial of Initiation
Intro - 7th fret Dm to Dm#5 Ddim...etc
D5 Asus4 / Am7 G5 / Dm Asus4/e / Em#5 Asus4 / Asus4 Am7 / G5
Clashing of horns and churning of hooves
Runaway pistons of the factory floor
Carefully calculate the littlest move
There’s those who’ve lost fingers and more
But you’re paid by the piece and the belt is moving
There’s bellies at home that your work is soothing

D5/a D5 / Gsus2 Asus4
A dream of rain upon the moors
A silhouette stalking, great curving horns

Intro riff, verse strumming

Break room burned coffee and bitching
She says there’s a problem with boiler five
We’re just here to make a living
It’s a wonder that anyone gets out alive
We all know the score but we don’t do a thing
Fifteen minutes later and the break bell rings

The word on the floor is a deal’s been made
And we’re all feeling the crunch
No time and a half for the second-shift brigade
Be quick on your feet and work through lunch
Then there’s a moment you stand up or drown
The quiet defiance of tools set down

Arrangements made in text message chains
Now all that was left was to find out
Who would stand together, what dross would remain
A few at a time we began the walkout
Shoulder to shoulder we formed up a line
On the rain soaked asphalt we claimed our time

Creatures of mettle, we want what we’re owed
The auroch bled out on the frozen snow

Ur, Trial of Initiation

Pine Tree Sitter
D CG / G Em Am C / C Em / D CG
There’s nothing quite like sunrise on hills
To ease the sting of the sting of the credit bills
Live on acorn meal and rabbit but still
We do it ourself and that’s a hell of a thrill

Of course we heard rumors of a new gas line
The knock on the door was just a matter of time
He came in shiny shoes with a smile like slime
Spoke a lot of words but no reason or rhyme

G C / EmG C / C Em / G CG
We didn’t move to the country to get away
We came here to help in our own small way
And by god if it slows them just one day
Then it’s here in this pine tree I’m going to stay

Sorry, I said, but I steward this land
And pipelines explode no matter how well planned
I eat from this creek, this soil, understand
I’ll not be moved, I swore on my own right hand

Now it’s cold in the night and I wonder how long
I can last up here starving and singing this song
But the cry of the loons is keeping me strong
I don’t know that I’m right, but I’m sure that they’re wrong

Water is life, it’s true what they say
I’ve shown my cards now, made my play
I see men with rifles, no uniforms today
They watch me, I’m waiting, and starting to pray
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Pine Tree Sitter

Lutheran Basement Lock-in Fall of ‘95 (capo 3)
Bm D / G Em / Cadd9 D / G Em / C Em / B7 Em
The pipes all pitched fits when the heater kicked in
You said there were ghosts in the bathroom
Cinderblock walls sweated condensation
Charlie made out with a push-broom
We turned out the lights played sardines in the dark
Packed close in a closet awaiting a spark

The so-called responsible adults
They’d been kids themselves a few winters ago
They egged us on, laughed at the results
Snuck drinks from a flask like we didn’t know
We were all snatching handfuls of one another
Thick-tongued memories of swimming hole summers

Fbar Gbar / D CG
I recall that ritual coming alive
In a Lutheran church basement, September ‘95

We feasted on gas station pizza
Mighty Ducks played on badly tracked vhs
We told stories but no one believed us
About pale faced watchers on the park at recess
The crawl space was there like a doorway to hell
I crawled in on a dare and that broke the spell

B7 / Em / C / D
Annie went into the army
Died on a distant shore
Dennis worked the family farm
Never asked if life should be more

Burned pancakes and bacon sizzling
We emerged blinking into the day
I’d seen visions in the water stained ceiling
Thought maybe we’d make it okay
Driving back home, outside of Bemidji
I watched the fields roll by, red sun and greasy
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Lutheran Basement Lock-in Fall of '95

The Newfoundland Sealing Disaster
Asus2 Em / GD Asus2 :|| Asus2 C / GD C
In 1914 we set out to sea
On a tub called the Newfoundland
In the employ of Westbury Kean
Son of the fleet captain
Our wood hull creaked, the sea froze tight
Kean he ordered us onto the ice

We lived on scrip from the company store
But seal skins they payed for in cash
So year after year we chased the score
That would buy our freedom at last
Whole families shipped out, father’s and sons
For the bloody work to be done

Asus2 Em / GD C / G D / GD C
Oh, oh
They left us out on the ice
Oh, oh
Left us out to die

That morning it was sunny and warm
Some left their jackets on board
But sundogs warned of the oncoming storm
As the officer’s pushed us forward
The ice pack was punishing broken and heaving
The snow came on, the ships were all leaving

We packed snow against the wind
Skipper Tom kept us moving all night
Abraham held his son ‘gainst his skin
Neither one saw the morning light
I hid beneath corpses, numb to the pain
‘Round about morning the snow turned to rain

I don’t know how any survived
Two nights we were trapped on the ice
Long past hope the Bellaventure arrived
Tea, hardtack, and respite
Seventy seven souls we left behind
I’ll carry their names for the rest of my life

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The Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Singer/Songwriter, Storyteller, Swordsman

The Tom O'Bedlam