Get all 5 Jon Airdrie and the Enablers releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of What was left, Other Stories, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - P1ATE, The End of Summer, and The Guest.
1. |
The End of Summer
06:14
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Sit. Listening to the little birds chirping
Watch the swifts
Careering ahead
Feel the sun’s heat even early in the morning
Emerald trees breezing
With the air from the south
But summer’s nearly gone
And the grey skies will soon be returning
With the cold
Summer’s nearly gone
Chance of adventuring,
Trysts in warm woodland
They have escaped us
Walk through fields and forest to the little beach
Collect sticks
For an unnecessary fire
With some wine, I bought from the village shop soon after it opened
Drunk slowly
Between word’s and finger’s touch
We shall eat breakfast outside on the tiny table
And the landscape and each person
Are our friends
We will laugh. We will bumble through strong sunshine
Like the crows
Flap in the space above the field
And a couple are kissing on an old seat
Leafy with love
The unworn world still lives
I have my new dress, and green and blue its colour
I am unselfconscious
My speech overflows
Summer’s nearly gone.
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2. |
The Green
03:48
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Walked the oval of road, round to the green
In heat and in cold and all in between
The children, hand-held-high, tight-roping the wall
None had it in mind we’d age at all
There on the green
There on the green
There we were walking to, playing on the green
We walked through brick and trees to the green
But few can remember the pavement that we’d been
We went early morning within summer sun’s glare
And then – and now also – dusk would find us walking there
I don’t remember that one walk to the green
But I sat on the bank and the scene was a dream
Knowing that for the first time a father I’d be
Just remember thinking everything would change utterly
Walk the oval of road and onto the green
And while we were there your mother would clean
And Hoover and prepare a bland dish for tea
The children ate on folding table in front of the tv
Your father put stickers on jars citing calories
Of the content of each. While we played on the green
And neither them there now, nor the children, not you nor me
We’ve all gone away - that’s the way things turn out to be
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3. |
Fusion of Two Souls
05:10
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4. |
Dressed in Black
05:18
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Hear the old songs near that ancient place
I can taste our very air
Comfortable in the room we were sitting in
But are you wearing black sitting there?
Both the love and the guilt – feelings mainly done
They’ve lost the present’s glare
Even recounting them may have distanced them
But are you wearing black waiting there?
And the sanctioned loss I’ve told few of
But when I do I relate it straight and fair
For me it’s a difficult tale to tell
But are you wearing black lying there?
I’m back in that room. My God, I’m back in that room
Wearing the clothes I used to wear
I gaze, wistfully, at the window and see
You, wearing black, leaning there
I hold your trust like an icon I stole
From a country church in County Clare
I’ve carried it with me through all the years
But are you wearing black, back praying there?
Your language perched upon my tongue
It was something I started to share
But I notice you silent at the window now
And wearing black, silhouetted there
And you upon the slice of beach
Running, throwing, laughing, without a care
And then you tearfully singing with a broken wing
Wearing black while pacing there
Yes, you upon the slice of sand
And in the fields, blissfully unaware
That it wouldn’t be long before we’d be away from this place
I see you wearing black, wandering there
You were happy to let me in
I remember you warm and fragile and bare
Are you dressed head to toe in mourning clothes now
Dressed in black, head to toe, standing there?
The plucked steel stings, the long space between
Each note played solid, without flair
Returns me in peace to a time of ease
But are you dressed in black, listening there?
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5. |
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I am walking
Up the high street
Planning to spend
My seven pounds fifty
On a necessary
Luxury –
A new fountain pen.
Oh, the words I’ll write, the ideas I’ll express
Mainly from the heart, though the rational I’ll address:
Supporting or negating some argument.
And when we go to the hills it will be you
Who will warm me and cook my food
After I’ve scraped and I’ve washed every root
And we will savour even a basic vegetable
(So it is and what will be?
I have my mind, I'll think freely.
Back to you I'll always come,
Sad as times but never numb)
I am walking
Up he high street
I see you smiling
Walking towards me
Your thin dress
Your offer
Of sanctuary and more
Oh, the bleating heart, here it found some rest
Not a mind this time to weigh up what was best
Take the healing. Take what is simple. Sing out the peace
I am walking
Up the high street
I have my dreams
I have my talent
I have my love and
There is nothing
Too complex
Oh, the pain of things, before and pain to come
Never thinking then of a man I would become
I have my love. I have my books in my backpack.
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6. |
Calling Out
04:22
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I’m calling out to you, my pretty one
Will you take the strain, or am I just projecting?
Calling out to you, my brightest star
Can you lift the heart or are all these just my dreams?
We tarried winter through
Ate the winter cabbages
Woke up at dawn
Bedded at dusk
Consumed very little
Drank the stream’s water
Censored our words
Conserved our energy
Now the summer’s here
The ground is rich
No need to conserve
We can touch. We can even dance
So why the lack of words,
The absence of embrace,
The swift and silent cropping
Of the old asparagus?
Light canopies the land
There is a warm wind
Across the meadow
All creatures are leaping
And every burden
Of the winter
Has vanished
But my heart is sinking.
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7. |
Crack of Light
02:46
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May the crack of light awake you
Striking through the curtain’s slit
With a landscape that is waiting for you
To be conscious of it
So still, so still. Small birds sing
Glissando through the air
Little to do. Listen to breath.
May this morning find you there
There’s been pain in the past
Doubtless there’s pain to come
But may you find a morning like this
And share it with someone
May you walk tall through towering trees
Down the path towards the sea
Keep stopping to admire something
To watch, to listen out of curiosity
So still; so still. Waves glide in
You watch each break without a care
May you find a place like this
And may some morning find you there
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8. |
Patrick K
03:24
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You speak kindly and your words are warm
From courtesy you never waver
But that’s the total of the lexicon
For I am not your flavour
I think one time you might have thought of me
As a potential saviour
My priestly face could offer advice
But I am not your flavour
I’ve never been one to sense the chemistry
Never open to a woman’s quaver
But whatever dullness is my wont
It’s clear I am not your flavour
Oh, you were bruised, your fingers bent
I came to you as a first aider
You thanked me, oh, so graciously
But I was not your flavour
Your daddy wants the best for you
After all, you’ve been an A grader
My clothes, my age, my job, my class
Means I am not your flavour
You ask me to do whatever you wish
And I’d drop anything to provide a favour
But that’s me, putting off the certainty
That I am not your flavour
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9. |
Same Old Road
03:18
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I’d driven this way so many times
And this time as I drove
I was listening to the old songs
While on familiar roads
Why am I returning? Why continually come back
As if there’s something here to find
As if I left something behind
As if I saw then and now I’m blind
To the brightest light
To the deepest black?
There’s a junction I remember
From about 1985
And something of my mood as I reach it
Remains plausibly alive
While yesterday is dead to me, as is the day before
The days from then they still revolve
Needing reliving, something still to solve
Some substance of the heart that won’t dissolve
And I drive
This road once more.
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10. |
My Heart is Elsewhere
04:47
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My heart is elsewhere. Here the long hill rises up
My heart is elsewhere. Down the hill and to the sea
And the silence is clutching at the moonlight
My heart is elsewhere. Holding one tiny hand
And in the other the lake washed in sunlight
There is ease with this simple mind-reading
Lay you down; ease you through to the morning
Let your bright eyes close so that they might shine again
In the morning. And a great morning awaits you
Oh fall to sleep, fall to sleep, and happy wake again
My heart is elsewhere. I am striding the long beach
With the sun, gold on the wave tops. But my heart is elsewhere
With scarce clouds enhancing the sky’s beady watchfulness
My heart is elsewhere. For to read and be read
Is completeness. And there was completion
In that hopeless finding.
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11. |
Get Up!
05:16
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Those who were linked are leaving
So, I suppose, I must leave too
They have places where they are needed
They have plenty of things to do
So, I make my lists and iron
The clothes that I might take
When you’ve grown with disappointment
Your heart is fashioned never to break
Get up you man!
And start to sing
I’m not quite certain where I’m going
And I won’t notice when I arrive
I’ve taken note of dry sand and the flooded beach
But I’ve never really spotted a turning tide
I try not reach out for others
Then leave harm in my wake
For when you’re used to disappointment
Your heart is fashioned never to break
I see some to their terminal
Others, I wave off down the road
I smile and wish them all the best:
I enter a goodbye mode
There’s sorrow in my stomach
Though my well-wishing is not fake
For when you’re used to disappointment
Your heart is fashioned never to break
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12. |
Hill Houses
06:47
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The door is still there but there’s no one in
Water filled milk cartons hold down damp tarpaulin
To save some wide stone walls, but much of it moved.
And in a paint-peeled outbuilding there’s one of a pair of shoes
And some manuscript paper, a child’s plastic plane
A map of Dyfed not quite sheltered from the rain
There’s a harmonium soft to the touch, a tin full of nails
Fragile as faith here in the damp hills of Wales
A three legged dresser in a room where the plaster falls
And curled photos in a suitcase open in the hall
Bright-coloured wallpaper, carefully applied
Home for the fungus now, a breeding place for flies
By the crumbling fireplace, a bed with dried straw beneath
A clatter of stairs chase to the hole in roof
A Japanese motorbike rests on an outside wall
An upturned table on the barnyard floor
Flecks of curtains but no one’s eyes look out
With the table cloth sets up a meal for the no one about
Vital papers and notes await in the drawers
For the eager eyes of the no-one who explores
A steel framed bench sits under a tree
Shapeless of spine; frame twisting free
Not from the heaviness of touch of the weary bent arms
Of the no-one who takes rest here from the work of the farm
Cars, a van from around 1982
Stand beside the steamlet’s side, two by two;
On the table, books relating to theology
A kettle waiting for no-one’s time for tea
I put down my ledger and my pen
Outside the sun is setting earlier again
I’ve a strong wish to talk about time moving on
I look around, all those I might talk to have gone
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Jon Airdrie and the Enablers Newport, UK
The Enablers is a band/project having the central notion of bringing a core number of people together to fashion a collection of songs, and then to record these songs, capturing the mood of the time - the mood both of the compositions themselves and of the band for the project's duration. To date, there have been eight Enablers. ... more
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