From the recording Beneath The Ashes

In cart Not available Out of stock

I think I was in el paso that night when this line came to me. I recorded it for what would later be known as Ashes, but the song didn't quite " do it" for me. There's an assisted living house not far from here. In the heart of a Chicago winter, we would see these elderly people pushed outside in their wheel chairs and if almost by some strange design they were hurled out there. We could see their breath, as we waited at the stoplight by the home. Heather and I would comment on it, and how cruel it all seemed but even beyond that, how sad it was.

Last Christmas eve, heather told me she had a gift for me and that I should put on something nice and that she had got a sitter. I was excited, not knowing what was in store. The sitter came and we left the house, she said she wanted to drive. I flipped her the keys and we started off down the road. I noticed my guitar was in the back seat and thought it queer that I had left it back there after an underground wonderbar show with Heather the night prior. Only a half mile into our trip, she pulled over and parked.

We were in front of the nursing home.

" aw shit" I thought,

I was pissed

We went inside and sang some songs

After we finished, I walked outside and cried

All the lonely people, where do they all come from.

Heather is the best

Lyrics

The Silent Will Soon Be Singing ( fin.)

From the mansions to the slums
Pick your pen, your sword, your gun as your defender
Through the years not much has changed
What is Ceasars, you still gotta render
Deception and deceit are still rulers of the street
If you haven’t noticed
And if there’s a God above, who wants us to love
I wish He’d show us

Yeah, I’ve been around the block
I see that freedom’s got a shotgun named Violence
From the mountaintop i see Dr. Martin Luther King
Sitting in silence
He asks “whats gone so wrong”?
While i sing a simple song
and i wonder
What happened to those wings and all the things
That kept us from going under

This world has all gone mad
Its funny and its sad
But i can hear the freedom bells a ringin’
Jesus wept and said, “ Rise again ye dead
For the silent will soon be singin”

The Mercy home on 3rd
Nobody ever spoke a word about the sadness
Michael’s sister had been slain
They thought it was a Latin King in all its madness
Down the desperate corridors
He walks into those darkened doors
Where was he going?
Not a shoulder he could weep
For all these nights he couldn’t sleep, for there was no one


The elderly all stare like statues in a chair
Late in the morning
I don’t see them talk at all,
Sometimes they stare into a wall
Until its disturbing
Their eyes so far away
While they relive a distant day when they were something
And it breaks my heart in two
It seems there’s little i can do,
So i do nothing

This world has all gone mad
Its funny and its sad
There’s no telling what it will be bringing
I can only hope and pray
That there will come a day
When the silent will soon be singing

Oppression hides in fear
Anger is always near, in times like these are
Like the times of Ancient Rome
Like the battle for the throne after J. Ceasar
Tis nobler in the mind, not to suffer all the time
Is that the lesson?
By land or by sea
To be or not to be, is that the question?

The bible says this too shall pass
The curse of the starving class
Lives through the ages
From the mountains to the caves
Among the poor, the knaves, the prophets and the sages
The willful and the weak
Will not find the strength to speak of those forgotten
We all reap what we sow
Maybe silence isn’t golden, its rotten

The world has all gone mad
Its funny and its sad...
But i can hear the freedom bells a ringin’
Jesus wept and said
Rise again ye dead
For the silent will soon be singin’