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Nonesuch River

by Chico States

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1.
Rollin' through Sonora, Rosa, with you in my head to lay atop the Spanish moss, my cheek on your breast again the boy you fell in love with, he ain't 'round no more he's dead on the edge of some dry riverbed And the stray dogs on the highway, they all know what I'd like to count sundowns and daybreaks, walking towards the fading light The little girl behind me tells her mother she sees the moon cut from dry paper in the sky lo' pollos, and dogs in the dark brown dirt her baby brother kicks my seat and cries Her collar stiff against her neck, Rosa tied her coat Chico laid his denim down, a blanket on the stone Chico dreamt of her warm brown kiss while Mississippi fog drifted south Rosa pulled her collar tight, November snow fallin' down The train rolls through the ghosts and shotgun shacks while Bozo Texino smiles on Me and Johnny, well, we watch it pass While you're sprawled in the sunlight on the lawn
2.
I don't know much for truth but I burned a red candle to the ground I forgot about it 'til the morning light I dreamt about you even though we've never shared more than a few words my bestfriend fell in love with you and you didn't even know Frenchmen Street on the second day of the year I held your hand and we ran into the trainyard and made a promise no one could ever keep Hazel eyes looking up at me as you climbed the ladder in the middle of the night you could have fallen down to the snowbanks three stories below
3.
Rosario 04:42
I'm off to be baptized today in the valley where the grapefruit trees sway pour the water on my head and say You're gonna die young, Juan and you'll do Rosario wrong Every Tuesday afternoon I feel the earth beneath me move The 4:45 southbound drifting snow, rattling away They lay together there, in the tall grass and laughed at the things they thought about "Do you know how lucky we are, to love each other as we do?" You're gonna die young, Juan and you'll do Rosario wrong
4.
There is something reverent 'tween the hunter and his quarry Coulda told you that from the caves at Lascaux When you're huddled down with your old ex-girlfriend and I'm out here spinnin' my wheels in the snow Drivin' seven hours west in the wrong direction, I guess to find your favorite waitress who doesn't care about you And I lost my daughter to God And I lost my wife to the Devil, too No one can help you but Jesus now, but he will if you ask him to.
5.
Panagiota 06:24
Panagiota stood beneath the icons her grandmother had saved when they were fleeing Crete, and all her grandmother feared were the earthquakes again and when the strung electric lines 'cross his view of the Aegean he fasted for ten days, moved to the country, dropped some acid cut with Ritalin And I found an old rope down in the cellar it was coiled and brown by the lobster traps and that strong old birch tree that hung out my window in the Nor'easter it snapped The sweet annie grows tall by the abandoned narrow gauge railroad tracks The night they walked across, she kept it to herself but worried about getting back she took a candle out of her coat pocket and lit it down in the creosote it flickered and it danced in the cold north wind at their backs and the black night islands smoked The mainsail stretched out wide in a broad reach as the twilight danced away and the moonshine filled my outstretched hands and stole my thoughts away it's November now and I don't hear coyotes crying on the dirt road all the orange leaves fall down and turn to foxes that I see run past on my way home and now when I sit down by the trestle and the moon light house and the sea in my right pocket I've a candle and a lighter, in my left an icon of me "hey, that's no way to say goodbye", she said I'm not that guy I don't believe tenderness is weak but I just can't seem to cry
6.
And it's you in the meadows at Châteaubriant, stinging nettle in your hand, daisies in your hair and it's you sitting cross-legged in my room looking at me from down on the jute asking me to dare but I can't look back or hold your hand or write my name in the sand but I can look at you across the canal's edge and offer you an easy laugh She said I would wake up with a shotgun barrel in my face if I decided to give up the chase and sleep out in the fields like a thousand gypsy boys who came this way before me, to carry the Virgin to the sea, with nothing left to steal And Elston Gunn and Manitas de Plata together in a cafe in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer He pours himself a glass and says "the next time we cross paths, I'll offer you an easy laugh"
7.
Well, I dreamed you got a package from me 40 miles wide and a centimeter deep I slipped and fell and broke all my teeth on the icy pavement You opened it up and looked at me but my toothless grin was all I could see but I knew in my heart that the box was empty and I don't know what the hell that meant But in the Nonesuch River with you it all starts to come unglued waiting around is more than all that I can do in the Nonesuch River with you Well, I swore to myself that this was the year I wouldn't get sick or cry a single tear but I guess I broke that promise because I've been coughing up a lung As far as tears go you got different kinds, different kinds of noses and different eyes As for me I ain't got too many left inside, that ship has already sunk in the Nonesuch River with you crawling up from the blues asking myself if I ever had a clue crossing the Nonesuch River with you Well the Colorado's muddy past a certain point and the Mississippi's filled with girls and boys The Tijuana River's run nearly dry, it ain't hardly there The Piscataqua's got a big green bridge Snake's got the ashes of Damien The sunset looking west o'er the Hudson, it's almost too much to bear But the Nonesuch River with you you know it don't run true but it runs to the ocean, wide and blue The Nonesuch River with you
8.
The things that I see through the wisps of your hair in the morning in front of me pages will turn; cities will burn and fall like ashes to the sea and I saw the ice plant and the old railroad tie on the February night that he died and I swore I heard the last words she said in the train whistle past Oceanside The things that I see through the wisps of my hair looking down at you on your porch white light looking right through me in your bedroom now, Easter morn

about

recorded in the Winter and early Spring of 2020 in a barn in Cumberland County, Maine

Sarah Johnson's vocals were recorded in San Francisco, CA

All proceeds from this album to be donated to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund

credits

released June 27, 2020

All instruments played by Joseph Barresi
tracks 2, 3, 4, 6, vocals: Sarah Johnson

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all rights reserved

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about

Chico States Maine

Alta Californian romanticist hippie honky-tonk

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