Purchase download/unlimited streaming here:  https://walterehresman.bandcamp.com/album/cassandra-cursed

This album closer is one of the most ambitous pieces Ehresman has ever attempted, and one of the most succesfull. It shines a light of hope and peace, after some of the darker themes in the preceding songs, and features what may be the most emotional guitar playing of his career.

Ehresman tells us: "I've been talking about how this new album is unique in that all the songs on it came to me in dreams.....Whereas, in the past I've just had a few dreamed songs sporadically here and there...... This particular dream was about a scenario where the consciousness of all the people who die on a certain day on the planet come together and host an ecstatic meeting with their loved ones, having one last opportunity for the departed to communicate their deep feelings before their essences dissapites forever. I'm a lifelong atheist, but I thought this was a nice idea."

"I think the seeds were planted for the song when I listened to a Todd Rundgren interview on YouTube before I went to bed that night......He was talking about how, as a kid, he was obsessed with fireworks and got to know the men in his town who did the annual big shows on the 4th of July, etc.......They showed him a piece of equipment called 'the finale rack,' which was the special rack of fireworks used for the big finish of each show."

There is a strong Pink Floyd influence here, but the song is not derivative. Rather, it takes the approach and turns it into something new and uniquely Ehresman's own. If you know his past work, you can't see how anyone else would have written something like this. A very emotional, uplifting and satifying end to the new album. 

The Finale Rack (© 2023 Walter Ehresman)

With a blaze of light, we bring down the curtain;
Leaving all that we have, leaving nothing unsaid;
Sharing all of the love, so you can be certain
of the place that you hold
in the depths of our souls,
and to help ease you into new sightlines that lie ahead.

Please don’t cry, and please raise up your eyes;
Reach up into this light, as it folds back the night;
We could only be here
with the ones we hold dear—
merging hearts one last time in explosion of brilliant insight.

Be joyful for us as we lay all these burdens down.

Walter Ehresman: vocals; electric, acoustic, slide & Ebow guitars; 5-string electric bass; keybaords & key percussion; electronic percussion pads; drum machine programming; sequencing.

Produced & engineered by Walter Ehresman at Snipe Bog Studios, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

p. 2023 Walter Ehresman. All rights reserved. Snipe Bog Records

The Finale Rack

Purchase download/unlimited streaming here:  https://walterehresman.bandcamp.com/album/cassandra-cursed

This song was influenced by latter-day Utopia, which is unsurprising given Ehresman's lifelong love of Todd Rungren. Aside from the obvious power pop element, and the extensive use of synths, you can hear the Utopia influence in Ehresman stepping out to try new and more complex vocal arrangements.

He tells us: "This song is about something that I think we all face, to some degree--trying to have our reactions to people and situations be in the "now" as opposed to being controlled by traumas from our past."

These Strings (© 2023 Walter Ehresman)

We all want personal autonomy
--control our actions in the “now’;
Holding fast in each calamity
--looking forward still somehow.

No one perched above the stage
--slyly pulling on our strings;
No one writing on our page
--trying to tell us when to sing.

And so we go and flow, although tempo is slow as we bestow these changes--on ourselves;
And try to hide the scars inside, as we deride the glorified outrages
--that we tell.

[chorus]
What to do with these strings?
I’m so vigilant to keep them off of my back;
Now I can’t see a thing,
but I feel them stretching backwards into my past;
What to do with these strings? What to do with these strings? What to do with these strings?
Just play.

I tell you that I will always be
--here with you in the “now”;
And I’ll never stop my work on me
--‘cause you deserve no lesser vow.

Walter Ehresman: vocals; keyboards & key percussion; electric rhythm & slide guitar; 5-string electric bass; talking drum; drum machine manipulations.

Produced & engineered by Walter Ehresman at Snipe Bog Studios, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

p. 2023 Walter Ehresman. All rights reserved. Snipe Bog Records

These Strings

NOTE:  THIS TRACK HASN'T BEEN MASTERED YET, AND SO YOU'LL NEED TO TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS A BIT.

I wrote this one last October as the first song for my upcoming "heavy music" album, which I'll release under the name of The Last Chingon and which will be called "Heat Death Coda".  I've been working on it off and on since then....composing the music as I go in the studio.  Musicians usually don't like to think of genres, but bascially this album will have all "heavy" sounds (I realize my lyrics are usually heavy anyway, but you know what I mean.....).  Crank it up! :-)

By the way, I think it's fair to say that this one was more than a little influenced by the UK band Van Der Graaf Generator, especially their pulverizing '78 live album "Vital."

Better Than We Are (© 2023 Walter Ehresman)

When us monkeys got the light bulb, and our sentience rolled upon the scene;
It did not temper our killer instincts—it just made us monkeys mean;
And so quickly, then, we scrambled to commence the fouling of our nests,
and to club our neighbors senseless, make all our desires manifest.

We call delusions “madness” unless enough people share the same one;
Then they control the power structures until the day their “blessed Rapture” comes;
And woe betide if you feel different—thinking we should all work for today;
“You better get with the program, son”, or the machines will grind you into the clay.

[chorus]
Now I ain’t sayin’ this is every person living on this rock;
‘cause we’ve all met a hundred good ones, who use the mirror to take stock;
But if your interest in this planet includes life outside a bell jar,
then we need 7 billion people to try being better than we are;
We need 7 billion people to try being better than we are.

Evolution sure don’t care if you believe in it or not;
And the science of survival slices through your gordian knot;
And there is no god to save you from your primeval pit of tar;
So if you really want to help us, try being better than you are. 

Walter Ehresman:  vocals, guitars, 5-string electric bass, keyboards & key percussion, electric drum pad, drum machine programming.  

For official releases from Walter Ehresman, please click here:  https://walterehresman.bandcamp.com/

p. 2024 Walter Ehresman.  All rights reserved.  Snipe Bog Records.

The Last Chingon--"Better Than We Are" (unreleased; unmastered)

NOTE:  THIS TRACK HAS NOT BEEN MASTERED YET, AND SO YOU'LL NEED TO TURN YOU SPEAKERS UP A BIT:

This is the second song recorded for my upcoming "heavy music" album, which will come out under the name The Last Chingon, and which will be titled "Heat Death Coda."  

Normally when I write songs, I get a flash of inspiration (increasingly, these days, in dreams) and have the whole song in my head.  Then I just have to quickly write down the words, grab a guitar or piano and write the chords down, then record the whole song within a day or two before I forget how it goes.  But with this song, I decided to go in and compose in the studio (with lyrics I'd already written in late 2023), as I went, with just a general idea of the feel I wanted it to have.  And so this one came out a bit experimental (and long......).

"We Must Read the Skies" 
(c. 2023 Walter Ehresman)

The wind’s tooth sinks deeper
into the flesh of the new day;
The sky a swirling morass
of portent and dismay;
The bloody kings of all these lands—
predictable as tides—
will sacrifice the common man
for the spoils of genocide.

Never enough to have so much
locked up in golden rooms;
The ecstasy is taking it
from me and then from you;
Then watch us fade as we cannot
survive on what is left;
Then watch us sink into the earth
with all around bereft.

Or, better still, use silver words
to make us love the theft;
To kiss the whip and blame
another victim marked for death;
In drawing rooms, the servants wait
upon these chuckling men,
as toasts are made to endless days
of staying like it’s been.      

[chorus]
If there is one lesson to impart—
one truth on which to rely—
you must dig for what is real,
and you must learn to read the skies;
We must learn to read the skies.

Walter Ehresman:  vocals; vocoder; keyboards & key percussion; lead & Ebow guitars; 4-string ac./el. fretless bass; Godin Glissentar; electronic percussion pads; drum machine manipulations.  

Produced by Walter Ehresman at Snipe Bog Studios, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

For official Walter Ehresman solo and band releases, please click here:  https://walterehresman.bandcamp.com/

p. 2024 Walter Ehresman. All rights reserved. Snipe Bog Records.

The Last Chingon--"We Must Read The Skies" (unreleased; unmastered)

NOTE:  THIS TRACK HASN'T BEEN MASTERED YET, AND SO YOU'LL NEED TO TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS A BIT.

This is an instrumental track that I wrote and recorded for my upcoming "heavy music" album, which will come out under the name The Last Chingon, and which will be titled "Heat Death Coda."

I got the title of this one from construction signs I saw in Queretaro City a few months ago, while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the rain at the giant highway construction project they were doing in the middle of town.  Thought it was a pretty cool sign, and one that needed a song named after it :-)

Excavación Profunda (© 2024 Walter Ehresman)

Walter Ehresman:  electric guitars, 8-string electric bass, electric sitar, key percussion, drum machine programming.

Produced & engineered by Walter Ehresman at Snipe Bog Studios, San MIguel de Allende, Mexico.

For official Walter Ehresman releases, please click here:  https://walterehresman.bandcamp.com/

p. 2024 Walter Ehresman.  All rights reserved.  Snipe Bog Records

The Last Chingon--Excavación Profunda (unreleased; unmastered)

Called "the quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed local disc jockey Charlie Martin, Walter Ehresman relocated to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in Feb. of 2015. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist, he is equally at home presenting a delicate acoustic ballad in an intimate club as he is busting out screaming lead guitar with a full rock band on a roaring stage. However, he’s just as likely to be holed up in his Snipe Bog Studios, surrounded by odd gear and recording strange, unclassifiable experimental music at 4am with a big grin on his face. The consistent factor is a restless musical spirit, always looking for something new, coupled with sophisticated and fearlessly honest lyric-writing. July of 2022 saw the release of his 20th solo album of original music, "My Back Pages, Revisited (With No Blonde)," which featured new versions of some of his old songs, covering a 27 year period and going all the way back to the '80s.  The new album was recorded over the course of the pandemic.

The Last Chingon--"We Must Read The Skies" (unreleased; unmastered)

Walter Ehresman

Related tracks