From the recording High Tea for Poets/Father Time (2CD-Pak)
Jeff Cannon: All vocals, piano, acoustic guitar, bass
Jim Hoke: Pedal steel guitars
Max Frank: Cello
Ariel Detwiler: Cello score
John Mettam: Drums and percussion
Recorded 2012-13, Brooklyn Recording, Brooklyn, NY; Jeff Cannon; Jim Hoke, Nashville, TN; Primary Sound, Bloomington, IN.
JDC: A song about the disappearing American Dream, about inequality and the increasingly wide gap between the haves and have nots, who must often make difficult sacrifices to stay afloat.
Lyrics
Holding On
Every Monday the race for the world light begins,
Up on Stone’s Way they’re revved up and wired to win,
But we’re not the players,
We’re not even playing along, not along,
We hold the trains, the brave sons and daughters,
As if we’re in waiting, as if we’re not giving our lives,
Whole lives holding on.
Everyone has some, I work for someone,
Stitching his riding grays,
Once I was like you, A blind one who rode true,
But I never found the way,
Now I see traces, The hope on your faces,
Worn like a bridal veil,
Come lay ‘till riding hour.
Oh, but something’s not right in the main,
Ride it out now child, like the last from our side,
Hold your reins, holding on, now brothers,
And sisters, I think you’re the way riding on.
Every Monday the race for the world light begins,
Every Monday we get up and choose once again,
Big-game ambition will take you away from your love,
Yes from love,
But if you choose love, you’ll stitch like a madman,
Down in the deep end, where love slips away from inside,
The hole’s inside.
Yeah they’ll humble you, tumble you,
Crumble and scatter you wide,
We’re all watching water fall through
Holes inside Walden Pond.
And holding on.