nealonsongs

I started fooling around with these guitar licks in 1982, sitting on the porch steps of AO house in Charlottesville, Virgina. It only took me 20 years to get around to writing some words.

Doug Day had taught me Mississippi John Hurt's "Sally, Where'd You Get Your Liquor From?" No doubt you'll recognize a lick from it in this.

Proverbial Rag
Words and Music by Dave Nealon
Copyright 2002 Dave Nealon
All Rights Reserved.

They say you can’t go home, but I never went away.
And if I ever get on the road, I wouldn’t last a day
because I’m late to bed and late to rise; I’m sick and poor, and, moneywise,
I’m another day older and deeper in debt, and I got bills to pay.

I leapt before I looked. I didn’t stitch in time.
I hesitated and lost, and now I popped all nine.
Well, I wanted because I wasted and wasted because I hasted. I started from scratch when I should have cut and pasted.
As the saying said I made my bed, but now I won’t lie.

You can’t make a silk purse from the ear of a sow no matter how you try,
so don’t throw your precious pearls on the ground in front of the swine.
You get irked if you try to teach a pig to sing. It annoys the critter, and he don’t learn a thing.
You might as well jump out of the pan and right into the fire.

I couldn't even boil water because I watched the pot.
I put my idle hands to work in the devil’s workshop.
Well, it’s worse to be sorry than to be safe, but I cut off my nose despite my face,
and it looks like I spoiled the child when I spared the rod.

You can lead a horse to the water trough, but don’t look it in the mouth.
That’s like shutting the barn door after the horse is out.
They say that pride goeth before a fall,
but it feels so good when you finally stop knocking your head on the wall.

I woke a sleeping dog and tried to teach it new tricks.
There’s more than one way to fall off a log, and oil and water don’t mix.
Well, I counted my chicks before they hatched, and I put all them eggs in one little basket.
I should have left well enough alone. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Mostly glimpses of sun, cloud, and wind on the Atlantic shore, but some scenes from the garden harvest and camping on Beagle Gap, too. Author Hannah Hurnard described the falling creek as a picture of the servant seeking the lowest place and yet mystically experiencing the high country.

I remember almost feeling the ocean spray and smelling the campfire and hearing the whippoorwill while hidden away in the basement studio in the wee hours of the morning.

Stream Descending
Copyright 1986 Dave Nealon

It was only a moment disappointment flickered in your eyes but I could see
And in that same instant I saw forgiveness in your tears
Like stacks of clouds against the sunrise I'm washed in glory a guilty man
Tear back my skin, crack open my ribcage, beat my sleeping heart with your hand
With you hand

And let the freedom roll around you
Firelight glow around you
Feel your soul start to sway
And let the sea spray blow around you
High tide flow around you
Southwind tow your heart away

The truth of our happiness isn't like my tired mind, my wandering eyes
Or the bad taste of the day's events and the things I said still in my mouth
We're clean as sky
And we're feeding from the garden in the year of the drought, but we're not dry
Love is like a stream descending, leaping down the mountain; it feels high
It feels high

There is a pleasure that's not in the pleasant moment
It's in the memory of struggles of the past
A trip to the top involves a slide to the bottom
The way to win is racing to be last

We spent the night on a baldhead peak
The wind that swept the mountains brushed us, too
And the whippoorwill called all through the night
Till just before the first pale light filtered through
We hiked back down and hurried home, backpacks filled with the breath of mountain sky
Love is like a stream descending, leaping down the mountain, it feels high
It feels high

From my unauthorized autobiography.

Cleaning Up My Act
Copyright 2002 Dave Nealon

Well, this time, baby, I'm cleaning up my act
I'll break away from the pack, go on the attack
And I won't relax till it's established fact
That this time, baby, I'm cleaning up my act

Last week's clothes are lying on the floor
There's shirt and shoes and my wallet blocking the door
It's hard to find a place to walk
I say I'll do better, but that's just talk
And the mess just piles up ever more and more

Every flat surface becomes a shelf instead
The chair, the table, the sofa and the bed
The papers are scattered all over the rug
I just hope the mice chase away the bugs
And the piles of books I still haven't read

Well, I got so excited when I finally got it straight
I called her and invited her to see my spotless place
But she said she was looking for clean of a different kind
What I really want is to clean your dirty mind

Well, this time I won't leave no sack unpacked
About time I straightened up this ramshackle shack
I'm gonna extract, detract, weedwhack, ransack
Leave nothing intact that might serve to distract
In fact, to be exact, I'm cleaning up my act

Branches of Smith Creek drain the dales of our neighborhood into the North Fork of the Shenandoah.

I wrote Over and Around while riding out a fairly mild hurricane on Chincoteague Island. Something about my daughters' fear and excitement and trust worked on me. The last stanza is for a good friend who stayed loyal despite my poor judgment.

Over and Around
Copyright 1999
Dave Nealon
Lacey Spring, Virginia

Waves surge over me, rush toward shore
I dive quiet just below
Rip tide pushes; currents pull
In the power of ocean flow
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around You’re washing me
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around like foaming seas

Inspiration is spirit-wind
Breathes a word that’s always true
Endless space behind the sky
Deep black fades to windy blue
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around, You brush by me
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around October breeze

Sway of hammock rolls me to sleep
Sunshafts fall through lens of green
Oak and poplar, locust, beech
Quilted canopy for my dreams
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around, You shelter me
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around like spreading trees

I never noticed, I’d just heard the poets
And phrase catchers but I listened to the real thing this time
Oaks rustle warnings and pines whisper calming
And I want their message to change my mind

Now I miss you every day since I’ve gone
Never give up though you know me best
You’re beside me in the storm
I treasure most your forgiveness
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around, You comfort me
Over and around, Over and around
Over and around You’re my family

Made this up by singing it to myself in the car on the way back to North Carolina after hearing a professor's presentation on her work in Africa. Somehow it brought into focus the intersection of failing to take risks and yet never being satisfied with what I've got.

Break Away
Copyright 2002 Dave Nealon

My life reminds me of that woman who impressed us with her slides
Of the month she spent in Africa adopted by the tribe
But there's synapses in her network with her global village friends
And when she landed back in Virginia, it left too many loose ends

The poets all urge us to seize the day, but I step so cautiously
By the time I make a decision the day seizes me
And I'd need some initiative to leave here, but I'm stuck in my inertia so I stay
Besides, it's me, not my surroundings; my own mindtrap I can't escape

I'm gonna break away tonight

Just once I'd like to meet the challenge; tonight I'll take the dare
To make something from nothing and reap where the ground bare
Faith is insurance on your longings, down payment on your dreams
And love defeats ambivalence, and hope is more than it seems

Glimpses of the Caribbean and of citizens with sledge hammers at the Berlin Wall. Vague memories of reading a diatribe on colonial agriculture. Strange how ideas weave around each other.

Appearance give no indication
Water blue and tropical sun
But I hear whispers of desperation
Mother sigh for her little one

Aftermath of colonization
Who survive this intrusion
Land tied up in sugar plantation
Institution of seclusion
Institution of exclusion

Each man pass through tribulation
Recognize Lord of creation
Brother and sister in jubilation
You join I this celebration

Blind and hungry developing nation
Put the horse behind the cart
Subdued with token occupation
Revolution in they heart

Evolution of delusion
Watching walls of freedom fall
Observers draw their own conclusions
A hand is writing on the wall
See the writing on the wall

I don't always do what I wish I would.

How can I feel so empty
When I stuffed myself so full?
How could I drift so far
And not even feel the tide's pull?
I change my heart, I change my mind
Can I change my hands and feet?
Make a vow, reform my life
Till I forget it next week

Like a panther in its paces
You roam and patrol
Or a leopard's leap of bloodlust
Out to devour my soul
But you can't have me
I'm no-one's victim anymore
I was a man of peace
Until you declared war

I don't want it
I don't need it
I'd feel so much better if I didn't feel so good

You measure the merits of everything you do
I'm sure the irony is not lost on you

Like a brick through my window
That's your voice in my ear
You invade my every situation
How'd you even get in here?
You overindulge my desires
Take the place of my plans
A breadcrumb trail of might-have-beens
Falls from my hands

I was sawing on the fiddle in the back yard on a clear fall day and caught this one on the breeze.

The freckles flash beneath your eyes, the wind tosses your hair
As you climb the ladder reaching for the apples way up there
You toss them down to me earthbound till our basket’s past the brim
I figure, hey, not a bad way to spend the days we’re in

And there’s something in the fall sunshine
As it blows across the orchard, and the cider smells like wine
You know it won’t last long like this fading song
But you long to hang on to fall sunshine


The final flap of canvas as the wind fills up the sail
We make no sound but splashing and leave nothing in our trail
These hours of ease—the gift of the breeze—we take just what she gives
I figure now I know somehow this is where my spirit lives

And there’s something in the fall sunshine
As it flashes on the lake and dances in your mind
You know it won’t last long like this fading song
And you long to hang on to fall sunshine



But autumn doesn’t guarantee an easy time
If you’re not splitting wood you’re always raking leaves
A hurricane might bring the flood that sends your crops downstream
Or you might resign yourself to the coming winter freeze

But there’s something in the fall sunshine
It’s just the eye of the storm, but I don’t mind
You know it won’t last long like this fading song
So you long to hang on to fall sunshine

And there’s something in the fall sunshine
Like a friend who can only stay here a short time
You know it won’t last long but it gives your heart a song
And you long to hang on to fall sunshine

We used to gather in a big circle in Prism Coffeehouse on Tuesday and Wednesday nights to jam. I'll never forget the sound of 5 or 6 fiddles echoing around that room.

Cindy Swiatlowski taught me this tune in Charlottesville in the early 1980s.

Contemplations from my basement in Greensboro, North Carolina.

When you come back for me I’ll be waiting
When you descend I’ll be the one who’s jumping toward the sky
When you return to sing and make the forests laugh in echo
When you come back I’ll be here waiting

Where is the green and warmth of summer?
My body’s whipped like shocks of rye chastened by the winter wind
Mind is muddy and cold like the creek that drains the stubblefield
When the pond is frozen over

I’m an abandoned farmhouse—empty
Petty greed and jealousy like kudzu climbing over me
Once they laughed and cried inside but now they’ve died—it’s quiet
Screen door slaps against the frame

I’ll wait for you
I want you to come to me
I can’t come to you

When you congratulate the losers
When you leap off your cloud to celebrate the helpless child
When you reach out and dry the grieving eyes stained red with crying
I will remember all your kindness

I’ll wait for you
I want you to come to me
I can’t come to you

When you come back for me I’ll be ready
Plummet through the atmosphere, I’ll stir at your first cry
Tensing muscles raise my arms in two-fisted shouts of satisfaction
Plant your feet in bloodstained soil