Banjo Music for Funerals (EP)

by Curtis Eller

Banjo Music for Funerals (EP) cover art
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1.
05:01
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2.
03:28
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3.
05:22
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"I’m up on the roof every morning like clockwork
And I watch ‘em rise up through the trees
It’s the last flight of the Pigeon Club…
You oughta come out this year"

credits

released 23 October 2002
Curtis Eller: Banjo & Lead Vocal
Tim Kiah: Upright Bass & Harmony Vocal
Michael Plunkett: Drums
Liisa Yonker: Harmony Vocal

Recorded & Engineered by Roger Scheepers
Cover Art by Jamie B. Wolcott

tags

tags: alternative americana alaska american antifolk banjo circus curtis eller folk rock funeral pigeon rattlesnake steampunk Durham

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about

Curtis Eller is one of the most eccentric and individual performers in today’s acoustic music scene. The wild-eyed ... more vaudevillian’s banjo-driven songs describe a dreamlike vision of American history where all points in time have collapsed into one. Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln can rub shoulders with Buster Keaton and Joe Louis against a backdrop of circus disasters and sweatshop fires. less

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Track Name: Last Flight of the Pigeon Club
Last Flight of the Pigeon Club
In the key of F

Well, the boys ain’t been down to the clubhouse
In so long you would think it’s a crime
It’s just me and those birds every morning
I feel like I’m wastin’ my time

And this coffee takes a decade to boil
And this ladder’s like Hell on my knees
But I’m up on the roof every morning like clockwork
And I watch ‘em rise up through the trees

CHORUS
It’s the last flight of the Pigeon Club…
You oughta come out this year

But these birds are just shadows of the birds back in my day
It’s years and those records still stand
They flew 10,000 miles and back to Hoboken
When they took to the air they would fly from my hand

But if these ones don’t come back I won’t miss them
I just know this is killin’ my health
And if they find someplace better to die than New Jersey
I’d probably go there myself

CHORUS
Oh it’s the last flight of the Pigeon Club…
You oughta come out this year

CHORUS
Yes it’s the last flight of the Pigeon Club…
You…ought come out…this year
Track Name: Dry Lightning
Dry Lightning
In the key of F#m

Well, it’s the first week in August
When they leave their skins behind
This time of year all the rattlesnakes are strikin’ blind
But that horse reared back, he got one good kick
He’s staggerin’ against his own weight
If you put up a fight your blood start to circulate

And it move through those veins
Like a gas through a hose
Don’t you know that just ain’t the same horse that he knows
With his eyes rolled back in his head
And his leg swelled up like a root
Get a bead on that old horse before you shoot

Down by the ocotillo…where the yuccas grow tall
Deep in the shadows it’s cool and it’s dry
That’s where the poison always crawls

YODELAYEEHOO…ETC.

Tie him up to a split rail…wait for the sun to go down
There ain’t no point in us getting’ up early
This time tomorrow he’ll be gone

And there’s a…
Slow wind in the dessert
And these cloud always look the same
It’s only dry lightning

Don’t you know there’s never no rain
Don’t you know there’s never no rain
Don’t you know there’s never no rain
Track Name: Alaska
Alaska
In the key of Dm

Everybody doubled up like moles
All the birds sat right down on the ground
And the sun was shining down on everybody’s head but mine
Lord, I bet that sun is shining down

Just like clockwork I wash my face on Sundays
And my eyes are bigger thatn hubcaps in my face
But the skull & the shinbones of folks I never seen before
Is the only thing that’s left down in this place

CHORUS
O lord, the sun went down and it never came up again
I feel like this coal mine’s up in Alaska
Yea, I feel like this coal mine’s up in Alaska

In the morning nothing much was left
Just the hollow bones of all them crows
And the mine shaft shut its fist
And then the blue sky blinked out
And all my blood gets filtered through this coal

Doris, I swear I love you
but the earth just opened and swallowed me up
And I’m tapping on a rusty pipe all day
But the blood that rusted up my heart
Is black as any river water
And I wonder if you hear anything I say

BRIDGE
But that rust flows through my veins
And it’s more than coal that left this stain
And my eyes are open but I can’t see a thing
And the air I’m breathing is as thin as a string

CHORUS
O lord, the sun went down and it never came up again
I feel like this coal mine’s up in Alaska
Yea, I feel like this coal mine’s up in Alaska