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1.
I used to be a midweight boxer ‘til I got knocked the fuck out Used to be a British rock star and all the girls would scream and shout Used to wonder where you are, used to worry, used to doubt Used to be a beauty queen and I would wear the freshest style Used to play the tambourine just to try to make you smile Used to make the hippest scenes, just to make my life worthwhile I used to be a famous painter and I would only paint in blue If I was a great explainer you would see why this was true Had I been a better man would I still be there in bed with you? I used to be a rich man, dined on ptarmigan and grouse Used to be a poor man, I would break into a rich man’s house Used to be an architect and I designed a monument To my own intellect, the critics called it insignificant Used to think that I was glamorous, amorous, intelligent Although in retrospect I was well beyond my element I used to be the man you loved but now that’s all irrelevant And it’s been 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 days since you’ve been gone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 days something went wrong 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 days did you know all along? I used to be a famous painter and I would only paint in blue Used to be a great explainer and you might see why this was true And if I was a better man would I still be there in bed with you?
2.
We haven’t got a lot in common (at least that’s what our mothers seem to think) Except a shared love of power tools and shamanistic rituals And putting something extra in our drink And we will not be made so silent even though we’re not sure what we have to say Committed to the principle of opposition through non-violence At least until someone gets in our way So we put the pen upon the paper. We are searing certain secrets in our souls. And all that transcendental poetry, it doesn’t do that much for me But some people say the same of rock and roll. We don’t know very much for certain (except for certain songs we know by heart) Anyway, who is that man behind the curtain? He used to take a lot of drugs, now he just makes a lot of art You were standing by the doorway I had my head inside the kitchen sink And I heard you telling the policeman “It’s okay, it’s just that somebody has had too much to drink” I read all about it in the papers: the replacement of humanity foretold By collections of transistors and capacitators And never will we die, we will just keep on growing old. And from the head of a pin there sprang forth the whole of creation Oh, look what can happen if you use your imagination So we went down to the coronation (without our picket signs and shaking fists) Stood in the back of the congregation Amongst the cripples and the atheists Gritting our teeth in concentration and confessing everything we once denied And in each heavy exhalation Equal parts regret and carbon dioxide And from the tips of his fingers there sprang forth the whole of creation Oh, look what can happen if you use your imagination
3.
Sweet Marie and Marianne Come round here one time again Hoping you will find out something new I’ll be in the bar behind the Super 8 Got a few things I wanna celebrate Not the least of which is memories of you And we are the things that we desire A small gathering of wires For lack of a better signifier Can I call this feeling love? Everybody knows that I’m a liar So you better call the fire department This one was set from up above Now I’m up on stage with my guitar Got no idea where you are A whole lifetime in a name dropped In a lonesome country tune And if you hear it then you’ll know Just like the last buffalo I hope someone remembers you For what you never were You were never taken unawares Never carried up the stairs Never did I go across the threshold of your room But I heard the pilot’s daughter Had control the day they crashed into Ohio She was steering for the moon
4.
On the Radio 03:47
Well I met you at a show It was a punk rock band from Ohio And you gave me a ride home in your dad’s Mercedes Oh I asked if animals have souls You just reached for the volume controls Cause your favorite song had just come on the radio The second time we kissed I thought Nothing else I do will ever equal this The sun had just come out and you pointed at the rainbow I was trying to tell you how I felt But the words weren’t coming out So we just smiled and sang along with the radio (On the radio) Can I take you out tonight (On the radio) Walk together in the moonlight and the sun will rise to find us arm in arm and dancing slow Got no words to tell you how it feels to be with you right now right here So let’s just turn the song up on the radio So we were dancing in the street To an imaginary beat All the haters on the sidewalk throwing shade yo And I asked if you believed in destiny And you just smiled and looked at me And from a second story window I could hear the radio (On the radio) I‘ll do anything I can (On the radio) To be your kind of man And I’m begging you oh please to be my lady, I’d like to tell you all the things I want to do with you tonight But you can’t say that on the radio (On the radio) Can I take you out tonight (On the radio) Walk together in the moonlight and the sun will rise to find us arm in arm and dancing slow Got no words to tell you how it feels to be with you right now right here So let’s just turn the song up on the radio
5.
6.
free radicals / lease Cadillacs / take sabbaticals / drink sazeracs good citizens / lithium batteries / take Ritalin / go to matinees post-colonials / invent dystopias / act ceremonial / deny their phobias new critics / in their citadels / drive Honda Civics / take sleeping pills Homo sapiens / in mass hysteria / build football stadiums / and rest areas and something here isn’t quite right, think it might be the water ao lock up your libraries, let loose your daughters. Sing a song for your great-grandmother, she went there before. Let us be the ones who will walk through that door. old historians / sear plastic hairnets / date neo-Victorians / Play bass clarinets perennial favorites / in diaspora / elect their saviours / bake Alaska a hotel lobby / West 23rd / a great love affair / feft without a word midwestern poets / we do not celebrate/ are still inchoate / may reincarnate so let us make of our lives something stranger than fiction. Let our hearts be fore’er tempest-tossed. Let us saturate lines with our symptoms, our signs, our addictions. Let us be the ones on whom nothing is lost. feminist lithographer / telephone directory / great stenographers / of the 20th century
7.
Brontosaurus 03:20
We built an ark out of balsa packed it up with creatures to the brim two by two with elephants and wooly mammoths Brontosauruses and hummingbirds, protozoa and bacteria Sure enough that night we hit an iceberg Turned out none of them could swim! ‘Bout half the species made it to the lifeboats the other half, well, pour out yr drink for them ‘Cause nobody know what came before us Nobody knows all the things that there could be There never was a brontosaurus Never was a you and me We built a philosophic framework Out of vaguely pre-defined ideals We wound up all our wind-up businessmen and watched them go round making deals And while you and the man on the screen in the corner engage in intellectual debate I’ll be over here just making a small fortune taking bets on the future of the democratic state ‘cause nobody know what came before us Nobody knows all the things that there could be There never was a brontosaurus There never was a human being We built the case for evolution We laid the framework from within We did not call for violent revolution We only fought the battles that we knew that we could win And when it comes to fill the lifeboats Everybody knows you got to take the children first and then the protozoa and bacteria and the charismatic megafauna mostly die of thirst ‘cause nobody knows what came before us Nobody knows all the things that there could be There never was a brontosaurus There never was a you and me
8.
Rise up the dead, rise up the dead Rise up the demons from the depths of your head Rise up the soldiers with your bellies full of lead Rise up the dead Rise up the dead &c. Rise up the children who were never fully fed Rise up ye dissidents who died for what you said Rise up the murderer who’s buried in the shed Rise up ye suicides and sing with me instead ‘Cause we are storming ‘cross the countryside and tearing down the halls Speaking to the multitudes and plastering the walls And when the armies of the living rouse their ranks around my head They will find me in the valley of the shadow of the dead Rise up the dead Rise up the widowers and rise up the unwed Rise up the prophets and the people you’ve misled Rise up the jealous lovers murdered in your beds Rise up to face the living fate from which you fled Rise up the skeletons come climbing from your graves / Rise up the cannibals and sorcerers and slaves / Rise up the alcoholics, rise up the carnivores / Rise up the senators, rise up the whores / Rise up the constables, rise up the highwaymen / Rise up the soapbox preachers, rise up the born-again / Rise up the working mothers, rise up the secretaries / Rise up the infantryman, rise up the apothecary / Oh rise up Abraham, Oh rise up Cleopatra / Rise up Napoleon, Oh rise up John the Baptist / Oh rise up Lady Macbeth, rise up Socrates / Rise up Emily Dickinson, rise up Mephistopheles We’re storming ‘cross the countryside &c. Rise up the dead Rise up the dead Rise up and slither in the skin that you have shed Eyes like the blackest night and lips a bloody red Rise up the dead
9.
The only one I love is the one I cannot be with no other girls in the neighborhood compare You see, some time before my heart gave it one last go knowing it may not end well but I, I forged on Oh my fears faded away in her arms, in her arms then she turned and walked away when I was exposed to her charm So after awhile I didn’t know where to turn so I drank all the whiskey that my bartender would serve Then it came to me like a whisper in the dark you treated me poorly girl, I should not be so fraught Oh this time in your life just wasn’t right and neither for me you’re so good at walking away but I’m so bad at saying goodbye Wouldn’t you know it only half a year later this girl came back in my life when I thought I was strong She said she was sorry, she said she’d been thinking about me she says she knows much better now and wants to try, try again Oh my dear you’re too late I moved on and so have you I’m so good at walking away now you’re so bad at saying goodbye I’m so good at walking away you’re so bad at saying goodbye So what’s a man to do folks, can you give me an answer how can a simple man fall in love once again
10.
Got a hammer and a chisel and a couple dozen friends, and we climbed up in the mountains in the middle of the night. We were drunk in the beginning, though we sobered toward the end. By the time the sun came up everybody felt alright. And when I stood back at a distance, my knees went a little weak, to see your likeness on the mountaintop up over Deadhorse Creek. There’s a crater in the canyon, where the meteorite struck. We lived just up the road a piece in a house made out of clay. When the dust had settled, we found we were in luck ‘cause our enemies were buried, or perhaps they’d run away. So we slaughtered all the cattle, and we drank wine for a week, and we washed off the detritus down in Deadhorse Creek. And the foxhounds quit their barking once the foxes went to sleep And their masters struck their matches, lit their pipes and breathed it deep And at the time nobody knew the havoc we would wreak When we settled our encampment on the shores of Deadhorse Creek The county fair rolled in today. I heard them coming down the street with a thousand head of cattle and a grand flying trapeze. And the lion tamer warned me, as he washed the lion’s feet, that the acrobats were misanthropes and the cattle carried fleas. Still, the people flocked from miles around and packed in cheek to cheek. They pumped the water for the waterslides up out of Deadhorse Creek And my uncle Jeremiah thought he’d make a buck or two, so he built a little house down there with a flashing neon sign. To all the vagabonds and minstrels who came a-passing through, he sold locally farmed berries and dandelion wine. Competition sprang up overnight. You can buy liquor and antiques in that strip mall where the highway passes over Deadhorse Creek. And the foxhounds &c. A year ago just yesterday we sat on this very wall, and you asked, “How can love compete with fortune and critical acclaim?” And I loved in the summer, but I loved you less come fall, and by the time spring rolled around again I could not recall your name. So when I read it in the papers, I could not help but weep, and my tears mixed with the water down in Deadhorse Creek. I was in the crater Monday, when I heard the foxes bay, so I laid down my plowshare and I went and roused the hounds. We chased them up the valley, and across the king’s highway, but we lost them in the hillsides as the sun was going down. So we built a little fire, and we settled down to sleep beneath the moonlight glinting off your forehead and your cheek. And at the time, nobody knew the havoc we would wreak when we settled our encampment on the shores of Deadhorse Creek.

credits

released May 19, 2016

Day Laborers & Petty Intellectuals are:

Rob Anderson – guitar, lead vocals
Kirsten Snyder Eklund – violin, cello, vocals
Mitch Etter – guitar, banjo, mandolin
Heather Gudmundson - keyboard, viola, theremin, vocals
Aubrey Jenkins – drums
Tim Thomas – bass, vocals

All songs written by Rob Anderson
and arranged by Day Laborers & Petty Intellectuals
except “Second Chances” by Tim Thomas
arranged by Day Laborers & Petty Intellectuals
Recorded at Earwig Studios and at home
between August 2015 and February 2016
Mixed by Don Farwell at Earwig Studios
Mastered by Levi Seitz at Black Belt Mastering
Photography by Tim Thomas and Daimon Eklund

www.dlpiband.com

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Day Laborers and Petty Intellectuals Seattle, Washington

Day Laborers and Petty Intellectuals is a six-piece folk-apocalypse band from Seattle, WA, featuring cello, violin, theremin, bucket drumming, and four-part harmonies, not to mention heartfelt songs about love, life, and the end of the world. DL&PI has been bringing their cacophonous blend of indie rock, folk, punk, country, and jazz to the barrooms and bedrooms of the Puget Sound since 2012. ... more

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