Get all 14 Danny Schmidt releases available on Bandcamp and save 30%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of No One Sings For The Four Of Clubs, Midsummer Hail Storm (single), The 2020 Singles (EP), Black & Blue (single), 2020 Vision (single), A Prayer For The Sane (single), Standard Deviation, Owls, and 6 more.
1. |
A Prayer For The Sane
04:25
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A PRAYER FOR THE SANE (lyrics)
Tear the world in half
The haves from have-not halves
They built a fire between us
And hoped like hell to raise the Phoenix
Tear the world in two
The truths from the half-the-truths
The lies and the bad disguises
From the facts and Nobel prizes
These were once good lands
Of good neighbors and good friends
We used to fight like dancers
One call with different answers
These were open lands
And strangers were our future friends
But fences make for consequences
We’re prisoners of our own defenses
Now our heart’s been broken
Lost our way but found it stolen
Hidden in a storm of nothing
A hurricane of newsmen blushing
Now our eyes are bleeding
Tears of the loss of reason
A pool of our own objections
Honest men with no reflections
Here’s the choice my sister
Gentle warrior, fierce resistor
Fill the sky like blackbirds
Or sit and watch the world spin backwards
Here’s the choice my brother
Old soldier, different drummer
March hard to break the borders
Or stand guard the old world orders
Here’s the choice my child
Raise your hands and reconcile
While the king kneels down before us
It’s time for you to rise in chorus
It’s time to set our anger free
It’s time for facts to shade beliefs
It’s time to name the new north star
It’s time for flames to skewer the dark
It’s time to shake the voting booth
It’s time for us to scream the truth
Now’s it’s time my friends
Time to make us whole again
Just as the world revolves
Let’s get these broken days resolved
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2. |
2020 Vision
04:45
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2020 VISION (lyrics):
There’s a face in the distance, they’re all distant now
She’s holding her breath and she’s hiding her mouth
We’re walking on opposite sides of the lonely divide
The closer we came the further it felt
Until I crossed the road and then she crossed herself
I waved as we passed and she smiled with the bags of her eyes
Chorus:
Oh 2020, you’re fading away
Your weeks into months and your months into days
As they all blur together like tears on the page
As if the angels were writing it down
A party’s a cocktail we drink all alone
Our friends are a movie we watch on our phone
Our parents are teenagers sneaking around in the night
Our children are monkeys that are tied to our wrists
Our houses are wrecking balls tied to a list
A plan is a guess where the jester insists that he’s right
Chorus
The shelves are as empty as people are scared
Our hands are as clean as the fear in the air
Our trust is as blind as the packages left on the porch
We’re lucky if somehow we still have some work
Where all that’s required is wearing a shirt
We’re so nonessential, at last we can laugh til it hurts
Chorus
I think of my grandparents’ time in the war
That it’s never the same as the same was before
If they bomb your cathedral, forever the treasure is gone
At night I hear sirens and songs in the dark
And the roar of propellers like heaves of dry coughs
In the heart of the city, there’s a hole where John Prine still belongs
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3. |
Black & Blue
03:51
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BLACK & BLUE (lyrics)
He was black and they were blue
The colors of a bruise
The colors of another brother
Who's choking on the truth
And so tonight the street’s on fire
Cause that’s the candlelight required
That’s the holy cost of tape and chalk
That’s the crying of the choir
Tell me why, there’s another
Tell me why, in all this time
We’re still defined by color
Tell me why
Tell me when, can the humble hearts of men bend
Bend and bow
And vow to disavow
Well tell me how, then tell me when
He was black and they were white
A cost without a price
A senseless flood of black men’s blood
Now it’s time to shed some light
And so tonight the streets are red
Marking every crooked bend
One by one the march goes on
Delivering the dead
Refrain
Cause I don’t believe that victims go to heaven when they die
They're stuck here as reflections in our eyes
And of all the false confessions swearing that we’ve tried
They’re the voice of silence asking when, and the voice that answers why
He was black and they were blue
The colors of abuse
The colors of another mother
Who’s choked up on the news
And so we fight for streets of gold
Like we were promised and were told
To crown thy good with brotherhood
From soul to shining soul. Tell me why.
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4. |
Midsummer Hail Storm
04:56
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MIDSUMMER HAIL STORM (lyrics):
110 in the sunshine, 112 in the shade
The slide is a skillet of bacon and eggs
The kids are all scrambled, the dads are all fried
While the butter halves have melted away
A brother, a sister, a cousin or two
Lying dead on their towels and dreaming of school
Like homesick gorillas asleep at the zoo
Or like cannonballs that all missed the pool
Long days, slow played
Someone unbuttoned your blouse
Wet wipes and short nights
Peach juice that runs down your mouth
Ice in the wine, frozen in time
Asleep til the sun slinks back south
The neighborhood children, the dogs, and the bugs
They’re eating our burgers and drinking our blood
Is a midsummer hail storm a sign from above
Or the laughter of beer that got warm
Praying for football and pining for hoops
There’s nothing to cheer for but gin and vermouth
Baseball’s been dead since they traded Babe Ruth
And the summer’s the curse that we pay
Reprise
The translucent gringos and porcelain dolls
Slathered in sunscreen and cooked til they’re raw
Shiny white lighthouses lost in the fog
Or like snow angels burned in the sand
There’s sweat on the melons and sweat on the seeds
There’s sweat in the shade and there’s sweat on the breeze
My belly’s is a river, my butt is the sea
And the delta is fertile and green
Reprise
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Danny Schmidt Austin, Texas
Named to the Chicago Tribune's "50 Most Significant Songwriters in the Last 50 Years," Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter Danny Schmidt is considered a preeminent writer, an artist whose earthy poetry manages to somehow conjure magic from the mundane, with lyrical depth drawing comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt. ... more
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