Down The Road And Far Away by John Lyle

The opening song is ‘Just My Kind Of Girl,’ a joyful, if opaque come-on, stuffed with ironic asides and two gorgeously panned acoustics, one finger-style and the other flat-picked. It sounds as though Lyle played them both on the same guitar. The other-worldly chorus is eminently singable, if you can stifle your laughter-

‘There ain’t no doubt about it

She’s just my kind of girl

Too bad she lives so far away

She’s half asleep and far too deep

Into this crazy world

There ain’t no doubt about it

She’s just my kind of girl’

The closing track is ‘Way Past Now.’ I cried when I first heard it, and it has been a very long time since I’ve wept upon hearing a song. That is in itself a sad admission for me. Perhaps it’s my Catholic upbringing, but I could not help but interpret this composition as a direct attack on a ‘religious’ hierarchy so corrupt it would turn a blind eye to rampant abuse of its most vulnerable parishioners. This is the third verse-

‘Way past now past the trampled vows

And the pleasure that is cruel

Some old man with an empty hand

Speaks the language of a fool’

The sound of the guitars on this track creates a sonic image of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza mounting the first of many hills at sundown. I hear spurs jangle, and leather creak while morons speak. And best of all, there is the chorus, addressed to the patron saint of virgins Agnes-

‘I’m feeling helpless, Agnes

And a little reckless too

Take me down your garden path

And I will go with you’

And I went with John Lyle on his musical adventure and found a new companion for the recordings I treasure. ‘Down The Road And Far Away’ is an album of substance and joy and despair and outrageous laughter. It is laid back in its rhythms and tempos, and, with repeated listenings, I found that, time and again, it had laid me out with killer lines that hit unknown targets within. As with the best of folk blues, I can feel the heart of one musician and poet beating his own time.

Heartily recommended!

-Keithly O’Conner

Bio-

Headed for a career as an English professor in the mid 1960’s, John Lyle was ‘broadsided’ by Bob Dylan and The Beatles. His degree went out the window, and so did he, playing in a series of bands and then performing on Canadian network television and radio as a solo act. He was also signed to two record labels during this era, but realized that because of his highly sensitive nature he was not cut out for the performing life.

John returned to his home in the Vancouver area, and devoted

himself to his family, supporting them with a career that may have been more dangerous than the perfomance stage. He became a postman. John Lyle’s wonderful body of work is evidence of a life lived on the streets and in the home, filled with all the love and loss and joy and despair that are part and parcel of being alive. The songs are vital, not written to imitate a commercial trend or to fulfil a contract, but to reflect the intensity of experience and to remain sane.

Feedback -

'John's songs are amazing!' Frazee Ford (The Be Good Tanyas),

'We love John Lyle. We listen to him all the time.' The Sumner Brothers,

'There's lots of nice stuff on there!' Paul Rodgers (Bad Company; Free; Queen),

‘Magnificent!’ The late Robert Altman’s word for John Lyle’s music,

'John Lyle will take you gently to your safe place, and then sneak up on you with a song as uncompromisingly ferocious as a grizzly in a maternity ward.’ Dennis Albo, in his reality novel ‘One Bullet Left,’

'Wonderful, odd genius...I hate to think what they'd find if they opened up his head'-American comedian Heywood Banks,

'Super, passionate stuff!' Mark Smith

DOWN THE ROAD AND FAR AWAY - lyrics:

JUST MY KIND OF GIRL

I asked her what she did for fun

She said she didn’t know

She did the days seemed shorter now

Love had lost its glow

She said all her bags were packed

And waiting on the bed

And if I thought I had a chance

I’d better shake my head

She said complete removal

Was quite beyond the pale

She had to stick around a while

Until she saved the whales

She had to stick around until

She made me see the light

All my ideals are only

Clouding up my sight

Chorus-

Ain’t no doubt about it

She’s just my kind of girl

Too bad she lives so far away

She’s half asleep and far too deep

Into this crazy world

Ain’t no doubt about it

She’s just my kind of girl

She said she’d given up on hope

And all that it implied

She looked at me and said I see

Sadness in your eyes

She said when you stop arguing

With what has to be

You’ll learn the only lesson

You’ll ever learn from me

I got a funny feeling

We met somewhere before

Maybe in a focus group

The year before the war

You had a red bandanna

Wrapped around your pretty neck

I would have loved you way back then

But someone stacked the deck

OLD JOE CALLS FROM THE HILL

Old Joe calls from the hill

To the boy standing alone

Old man drunk by the still

Don’t know nothing he’s done

Momma in the kitchen

Cuts you with her tongue

Old Joe calls from the hill

To the boy standing alone

Hair yellow as straw

Eyes blue as the grass

Heart lone as the pine

But it don’t know what to ask

Somewhere from the hill

Old Joe’s plaintive moan

Drifts upon the wind

To the boy standing alone

MY LOVE IS EVERYTHING

Clean and pure as a mountain stream

Dignified as a college dean

Alive as life has ever been

My love is everything to me

Chorus-

My love is everything she can be

My love is everything to me

My love is everything

Dancing in the heart and mind

Of everybody she can find

Reaching to the heavens

Probing inner space

My live is touch and sight and sound

And always in good taste

Yet one thing can defeat her

And bring her to her knees

And force her from my memory

Like the moon removes the sea

But what care I for Father Time

He too is growing old

And at least for now, I am warm

While he is always cold

CENTERS

I’ll bet nothing can get so small

It can’t be cut in two

And I’ll bet nothing can be bigger

Than what’s inside of you

I’ll bet it all goes on forever

Not just outwardly, but in

I’ll bet we’re each of us a center

And that’s what we’ve always been

So if you’re feeling out of things

Lonely tired and blue

Remember you’re a center

And there’s centers all ‘round you

LITTLE KNIVES

I’m tired unto death from all these little knives

It’s not the big one that gets you

It’s when they come in fives

I don’t know what I want but I know I want it now

The snow lies heavy on the powerline tonight

I don’t know where I find the strength to hold you tight

Maybe it’s the same place I finally come to see

All the contradictions holding me down

Ain’t nothing but the chatter from a brain-dead clown

Ain’t nothing but the chains I’m dragging to my grave

Don’t the rain sound lovely hiding in the air

I tried to cross my heart and say it wasn’t there

Help me tie my shoe and point me to the stain

I need to be deliberate in everything I do

I’m being left behind by everyone but you

I want to go so slow I get behind my mind

If I could see through this illusion I wouldn’t say a word

I wouldn’t try to argue what we both know is absurd

I wouldn’t lift a finger in anger or in trust

THE CAMEL'S BACK

If you’re disappointed, the old man said to me

It’s ‘cause you expected what was not to be

That’s when I shot him and as he went to hell

I said remember you’re my major disappointment number twelve

Chorus-

Disappointment number twelve didn’t break the camel’s back

I’d guacamole fro a camel

If a camel had the knack, I’d climb upon its back

I’d ride into the desert ‘til the desert starts to crack

Righteous anger burns the sea, flood the land and calls to me

Kill the moon and blind the sun until the revolution’s done

I was feelin’ like a mountain climber lost inside the Alps

When she came between twin heartbeats and said she needed help

That’s when I unloaded, and as she met her fate

I said, remember you’re my major disappointment number eight

I was telling these stories to another friend of mine

When he came up with this classic line

Don’t that gavel get heavy? I said let me be the judge of that

And you’re the worst disappointment I ever had

JUST MISSED MEETING (by Garry Macpherson)

In the museum of your life I was a dinosaur’s lost tail

A relic of an ice age once delivered in your mail

In the springtime of a morning when the sun was on your mind

And the postman’s parting message was, the wind of birth is blind

There’s no undoing

All the windings in the coil around the core of all you’ve been

While you wandered through the attics and the mazes of your dream

Time and the valley of the city when the mail train left the track

I found you sleeping in the ocean with my name burned on your back

There’s no returning

All the letters that I sent you that you piled beneath your bed

To remind you of the childhood you’[d kept hidden in your head

Drowned in dissolution when the ebb tide cleared the shore

And washed away the blood stains I’d painted around your door

It left no meaning

To the words of misconception of the metaphors you bore

And though you often heard them screaming

You could never guess what for

You’d ignored their unasked questions of the gaps between our thoughts

And our search to find the answers

And insert them in the slots between our lifetimes

There’s no beginning

HIGUEY HAIRCUT

Higuey haircut’s mighty fine

Takes a bite out of my mind, my mind

Barber, help me travel light

When I take my homeward flight, tonight

Broken pavement tricks my feet

Sunshine burns the hanging meat, the meat

Sugar coffee don’t do squat

Por favor, another shot, make it hot

Tim can rollers on her head

Clank upon her marble bed, he bed

Power and water come and go

But nothing stops the passing show, the show

Hot merengue fills my ear

Time to have an otra beer

An otra beer, over here

Ay carumba, she can’t do the rhumba

She might have a bug

Chills and fever, will they ever leave her

She might have to take a drug

WAY PAST NOW

Way past now, past the burning cow

Where the salesmen never stop

Where the road rolls deep

And keening sheep sacrifice their crop

Noble steeds have lost their fee

While Agnes chews her mop

Way past now, space and time have wowed

But no one calls the cops

Chorus’

I’m felling helpless, Agnes

And a little reckless too

Take me down your garden path

And I will go with you

Way past now past the trampled vows

And the pleasure that is cruel

Some old man with an empty hand

Speaks the language of a fool

I just listen to my teardrops glisten

As they slide into the sand

I’m too tired to fall asleep

But I’ll do what I can

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