Prehensile Tales

May 15, 2020

​

1. Raining Hard in Heaven

2. Here in My Autumn

3. Elegant Vampires

4. Why Don't We Run

5. Lifeboat

     I – Nearer Now to Heaven

     II – Fitful Dreams

     III – Dull the Sword of Damocles

     IV – Never More Than Human

     V – What Happens When You Die

6. Soon But Not Today

 

Produced by John Boegehold

Mixed and mastered by Rich Mouser at The Mouse House,

Los Angeles, CA. Drums recorded at The Mouse House.

 

John Boegehold - synths, mellotron, guitars, mandolins,  autoharp, vocals

Ted Leonard - vocals, lead & rhythm guitars

Jimmy Keegan - drums, percussion, vocals

Dave Meros - basses,vocals

 

with:

Rini – violin (2,3,6)

Susan Craig Winsburg – flutes & piccolo (2,5,6)

John Fumo – trumpet & flugelhorn (4,5,6)

Michelle Packman – cello (4,5)

Jeff Miguel – baritone & tenor sax  (5)

Daniel Fernandez – backing vocals (3)

Rich Mouser – additional guitars & pedal steel

​

Cover art “An Evolutionary Broadcast” by Mirek

Graphic design and layout by Thomas Ewerhard 

Band photos by Kristina Bakrevsky

​

Thanks to Thomas Waber, Stefan Franke & everyone at InsideOut Music; Thomas Mathieson & everyone at Reservoir Media Management, Stan Ausmus, Greg Walker.

Raining Hard in Heaven
John Boegehold
 

With promises bent and broken

The jester’s at center stage again

And chewing the scenery in his one-man play

The critics have spoken

A playwright with poison in his pen

His audience captive come the judgement day

God, it’s raining hard in heaven

 

A broker of dismal wisdom

Envisions a sad solution

Parsing a language we don’t understand

Send us a savior

We can’t wait for evolution

There’s no resolution in the jester’s plan

God, it’s raining hard in heaven

 

You thought he had the answers

Didn’t you?

You thought he knew it all

Pride before the fall

And now there’s nothing left to say

Until you understand

What really matters

In spite of all you planned

Now the rain is here

There’s nothing left to say

You know he just can’t stay

You know the way

The path is clear

 

So now the show is over

He crossed a bridge too far

Lessons left a scar

Producers queue up to be paid

All holding out their hands

They’ll wait forever

The play’s been roundly panned

End of his career

There’s nothing left to say

You know he just can’t stay

You know the way, the path is clear

-----
© 2020 Brainforest Music (BMI).
All rights administered worldwide by Reservoir 416 (BMI)
 

Here in My Autumn
John Boegehold

Here in my autumn

Haunted by spring

 

I arrived in the land of the living

Threads torn yet still entwined

From journeys long and unforgiving

In hopes that I might find

The love lost behind me

Her voice still in my ear

A chill wind reminds me

I stand alone to face the seasons

 

Shadows cast in the summer of giants

Ever dark I surely fell

No light to find from religion or science

Just stories left to tell

Now as I remember

In April she appeared

As my soul surrendered

I prayed that love would live forever

 

Still she’s awake in my every dream

But I’m a ghost in her eyes

I’ll catch the current and drift down stream

Before my heart’s crystallized

-----
© 2020 Brainforest Music (BMI).
All rights administered worldwide by Reservoir 416 (BMI).
 

 
Elegant Vampires
John Boegehold
 

You can black out every window

You can padlock all the doors

You might think that I’m mistaken

But the choice will not be yours

Charming snakes with soothing voices

Will disarm you to the core

They will sense your every weakness

It’s the chance they’re waiting for

 

These strangers come and go

Dressed all in dead men’s clothes

They’ll steal your broken heart but slowly

This night the moon won’t glow

Like blood the darkness flows

The end is near but you don’t know it

 

No reflection in the mirror

Nor a footprint in the dust

Every soul a walking shadow

That your heart should never trust

Resurrected men now monsters

From medieval tomes appear

Seeking out memento mori

As they wander through the years

 

Ten grains of sand slip through the hourglass

Cold hands caress your mortal soul

Still you feel warm like you are loved at last

But your lot’s been cast

A nightmare born of faith beyond control

 

So you say you don’t believe me

But the truth is that I know

There’s a land beyond forgiveness

Where the chosen victims go

Huddled souls in windy hollows

Wander headlong through the haze

Some will lead the rest will follow

All are lost within the maze

-----
© 2020 Brainforest Music (BMI).
All rights administered worldwide by Reservoir 416 (BMI).


Why Don't We Run
John Boegehold

 

There grows a desert rose

Abloom in fleeting glory

The heavens glow

As rivers flow forever changed

This night the western winds blow

Each heart an open window

Life's broken pieces rearranged

 

Remember we are one together after all

Still rising faster than we fall

 

Let's race the blue moon cross the big sky

No time to waste or wonder why

Why don’t we run

No sleep just keep moving keep moving

Chase the morning sun

Let's race the blue moon cross the big sky

Why don’t we run

 

The mountain’s ours to climb

Though steep and miles away

It’s on we go

In hopes we're one day meant to find

When standing quest completed

By all the stars we’re greeted

With poet's words in perfect rhyme

-----
© 2020 Brainforest Music (BMI)
All rights administered worldwide by Reservoir 416 (BMI).
 

Lifeboat
John Boegehold

​

I – Nearer Now to Heaven

​

II – Fitful Dreams

 

Fitful dreams of drowning in my sleep   

Thrashing in the darkness of the deep         

Gasping never knowing if I’d breathe again    

Sirens from the surface as the ship began to shake

I was cast into this nightmare wide awake

 

Everyone on the lifeboat

The ship is going down

The captain left the bridge and now he’s nowhere to be found

Pray for every soul again we’ll walk on solid ground

Everyone on the lifeboat

The ship is going down

 

Listing hard the first mate took the helm

Ever unprepared and overwhelmed

Destined by Three Fates to fail “we’re doomed” he cried    

Nearer now to heaven I’m man of mortal sin

I’m afraid that God will never let me in

 

III – Dull the Sword of Damocles

 

A promise of adventure so I went to sea

To reinvent my destiny

I disavowed my demons

But they followed me

 

On a voyage to the dark side

Some are willing some are shanghaied

Every ripple hides a riptide

Unforeseen

Fate’s a cruel machine

Time’s the enemy

As I wait

 

God dull the sword of Damocles

They will hunt me down lord help me please

I am on my knees and praying

There’s a hole in my heart that is shaped like you

Hold it up to the to the light you can see right through

I was only trying to hide 

I wasn’t straying

 

Living in the past where the rent was cheap

My goals were shallow but my gene pool deep

Guess I missed the news one morning

I was fast asleep

 

What had started as a cold war

Heated quickly with an uproar

Soldiers settling an old score

Mercilessly

Hellish harmony

Will they come for me

As I wait

​

IV – Never More Than Human

 

Maybe there is no tomorrow

God is testing my belief

Endless seas impending sorrow

Death may be my last relief

Now I drift a lowly crewman

I was destined by my birth

To be never more than human

I was bound unto this earth

 

Save me

 

I was young in need of answers

Asked my father for advice

Life he said is taking chances

If you don’t boy best think twice

Ebbing waves embracing violence

Heartened by my hopes of land

Rowing like a ghost in silence

Praying soon my oars touch sand

 

Save me

​

V – What Happens When You Die

 

Maybe no one’s left to rescue me

Overhead the storm clouds won’t recede

Trying to believe but I just can’t pretend

 

Twilight at end the northern lights dance cross the sky

I don’t want to know what happens when you die

 

Will I be forgotten evermore

Will I walk on heaven’s golden shore

Angels offer comfort as a calm descends

 

Twilight at end the northern lights dance cross the sky

I don’t want to know what happens when you die

​

-----

© 2020 Brainforest Music (BMI)

All rights administered worldwide by Reservoir 416 (BMI).
 

Soon But Not Today
John Boegehold

 

No one knows where the old man goes

No one seems to care

But we pretend and send him on his way

Carried far as the four winds blow

Clouds above and the waves below

He’ll be back again but not today

Soon but not today

 

Soon but not today OK

A drink or two before I quit

A few hits off this cigarette

Tomorrow I’ll stop

A bullet barely dodged

The tests came back I’m still alive

I beat bad choices and survived

Before the final curtain dropped

 

Maybe I should contemplate

The things in life that I regret

I believe that heaven waits

But I don’t want to see it yet

 

My checkered past will follow me

Forever like a face tattoo

I wish I’d known back then before

My best years slipped away

Not unexpected

Lightning struck

A second time I swear

Another sign another scare

A mounting cosmic debt to pay

 

Here we’ve made our home

Here we’d always been

But then she said

We don’t belong together

And I should let her go

Because her heart’s already gone

And it was time that we move on

Alone here at the end

It seems that once again

We’re strangers

 

Once upon a time we had something

But something changed

Once upon a time we had something

Now everything’s strange

 

If these four walls could speak

The tales of us they’d tell

Of boundless days

And love ablaze in splendor

But now the flame’s grown cold

I drag my suitcase cross the floor

Turn out the lights and lock the door

Alone here at the end

It seems that once again

We’re strangers

 

All together we are waging different wars

What’s it for out the door

There is nothing left for you to know so it’s up we go

Nothing’s more than it was ever meant to be

Meant to be few will see

There’s a darkness shining out of me shining out of me

-----
© 2020 Brainforest Music (BMI).
All rights administered worldwide by Reservoir 416 (BMI).