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How Red Is the Blood

by Tattletale Saints

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    How Red Is the Blood (CD and MP3 download) released by Old Oak Music (distributed by Rhythmethod and DRMNZ).

    Recorded in Nashville, TN in January 2013 at the Butcher Shoppe with producer Tim O'Brien.

    Winner of the New Zealand Music Award for Folk Album of the Year 2014.

    Tracks: Kathleen, Traces of You, Emily, Doctor Doctor, How Red Is the Blood from a Broken Heart, Fell Upon the Fields, Complicated Man, Jessica On Prairie Legs, Molly, Hank, We've Got Lakes, At Last.
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    Get all 5 Tattletale Saints releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of In the Summertime, AM Radio, Dancing Under the Dogwoods, Tattletale Saints, and How Red Is the Blood. , and , .

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1.
Kathleen 03:11
Kathleen, Kathleen If I didn’t know better I’d have guessed you’re ‘bout seventeen With that turtle blue chemise, hiked way up above your knee I’ve been looking for a girl like you, Kathleen Kathleen, Kathleen So your daddy is a banker and your mamma was a beauty queen All coddled up and sweet, “Ma jolie petite chérie” Why don't you let you hair down a while, Kathleen Kathleen, Kathleen The highway lights slip soft across your cheek Come on and follow me inside, you can rest your tired eyes Just lay back on the motel bed, Kathleen Kathleen, Kathleen If I didn’t know better I’d have guessed you’re ‘bout seventeen With that turtle blue chemise, hiked way up above your knee I ain’t never had a girl like you, Kathleen We’ll slide down through the counties, skip from town to town If they ever get a lead on us we’ll be three weeks down the line We’ll sip on Margaritas, beneath a cavalcade of stars Sittin’ on the balcony, my golden gal upon my knee I’ve waited oh so long for thee, Kathleen Kathleen, Kathleen You know it breaks my heart you won't give yourself to me But it makes no difference how hard you cry The woods are deep and the winds are wild There ain't a soul for fifty miles Your daddy can't save you now Kathleen, Kathleen If I didn’t know better I’d have guessed you’re ‘bout seventeen With that turtle blue chemise, hiked way up above your knee I bet you never met a guy like me, Kathleen
2.
The New Year’s band were playing There were streamers in the air You were sitting on the stairwell With ribbons of blue, ribbons of blue in your hair When we spoke your lips moved slowly You led me to the floor And danced like a cool wind blowing As soft as the dress, as soft as the silk dress you wore Then the lights came up so quickly Everybody started to leave I had left you for a moment Not knowing you’d be swept away from me Many nights in dreams I hold you And lay you in my bed But you were gone without a warning So dreams are the only traces of you, traces of you I have left Chorus Every time the year turns over And there are streamers in the air I hear the band a-playin’ And I see traces of you, traces of you everywhere Seeing traces of you, traces of you everywhere
3.
Emily 02:53
Oh Emily Why do you work me so hard? You work me to the bone Until I’ve nothing left to give Yet I’m a pilgrim for your love I supplicate myself to you To the wonder of your eyes Just won’t you shine them my way Nobody else seems to see That while our love is complicated¬, it’s complete Don’t hide it from yourself, don’t hide it from me Emily Oh Emily Do you remember when we were young? How I would stumble at your heels I’d take your bag and see your errands run Oh never mind of course you don’t You had a very busy calendar to keep It’s a miracle you’d time for me at all I’m just lucky I guess Chorus Sometimes when I picture love I see a slot machine in a cheap motel And I’m just feeding in the dimes I’m waiting for my number Or a chime from that liberty bell But I’ve been waiting so long And now I’ve run out of change Oh Emily I’ve been doin’ some thinkin’ I’m through with being a puzzle piece Now I see the picture I’m sorry Emily But I deserve better If you really want your laundry cleaned You should hire a maid Finally I see That a single sided love is incomplete You can hide it from yourself, but you can’t hide it from me Emily
4.
Doctor doctor, gimme that pill Put it in my mouth and hand me the bill, I’ll pay anything I’ve seen the pictures on the subway walls Newsprint blowing down the station halls Everywhere I look, everywhere I see There’s no escaping the fact that they’re talking to me Bleary eyed, breathless and dragging my feet I circle the park where my friends used to meet A vision of yesterday sails through the air My effortless beauty, my marmalade hair Away in the distance, police sirens bleat I turn up my collar and I press through the sleet He says he loves me as I am He says he’ll come home as soon as he can Bundle me up, take me out to dinner at The Ivy Oh I gotta look my best Ain’t no way I’m getting into this dress So, doctor doctor, doctor doctor Now my prerogative, you must concede Permits me to judge what it is that I need And from whom I buy it from Doctor doctor are you listening please Gimme something to cure my disease For what am I to do when my youth runs dry What can I offer to spare me my life I pass through the turnstiles and ride underground My bones ache, my lip shakes, my ship’s going down A couple of ladies offer a seat They can’t be but a few years younger than me As the wheels grind the rails and the winds rush the pane I take in the park scene again and again Chorus
5.
How red is the blood from a broken heart How rich is the colour that bleeds Is it scarlet and bright, a sailor's delight Or heavy; the darkness that snaps at its heels How steady’s the pulse from a broken heart How certain the rhythm it keeps Is it even and strong like the strike of a drum Or does it stagger and lurch with every beat How deep is the wound I inflicted on you And the cut that I gave to myself How long for to heal, for to scar, for to feel That my body has mended and returned to health How soon will my thoughts stop turning to you At the breaking of every day Before every road, every place that I go Will no longer whisper, nor cry out your name The answers we seek are elusive; shadows in a cindery night Locked up and hidden away With the heavens and the bookends of time We know how the heart and its chambers Feed the body and keep it alive But no one can say why the broken heart aches And where it will lead you and I How red is the blood from a broken heart How rich is the colour that bleeds Is it welcome and warm like the first flush of dawn Or as cold as the tears that fall down your cheek
6.
From the window at my desk I see the pools the rain has left I watch a bird with matted crest Pick butts from the milky water The BBC they got it wrong It rained the whole damn weekend long The building leaked like a waterfall Now it smells like a feral dog Monday comes, the city wakes Workers trudge the street like slaves But hot the skillet, sharp the blade You gotta earn your keep I watch a woman slip and fall She hits the road like a wrecking ball A pack of schoolgirls whoop and call While her papers scatter in the street Oh it wraps around the city like a sigh It wraps around the city, yeah it swallows her/me alive It wraps around the city like a sigh Oh the weather never got me down when it Fell upon the fields and the orchards Grazed across the hills that roll away Beat upon my roof as I lay sleeping Ran its fingers through the poplars in the lane Well ain’t it funny how you change When you’re all grown up and you’ve come of age It’s like the poles flip and you disengage And say “ah, so this is how it is” Now I have a picture on my desk A cowboy and his horse at rest Beneath a tree in the wild old west Coffee in an old tin cup So when the subways seize and the traffic jams And the grey is a weight I can barely stand I slip away with my horse-bound man And lit out on the plains Prechorus Chorus
7.
I’m a complicated man, you best keep your distance My mind it’s a patchwork of levers and pistons My thinkin’ works backward from Z down to A If there’s a dollar to turn I’m gonna find me a way There’s a glass elevator to the top of my tower From which I look down upon the proles and the powerless I hear a rhythm in the shuffle of feet I hum my melody over the beat I’ve broken the unions and scattered the factions I’ve paid politicians to loosen the sanctions Convinced you that wealth is the premier attraction And there lies the true happiness And the dollar it founders And the wild ocean heaves And the distance between us it widens With no mercy, no sign of reprieve And the water it rises And the wild ocean roars And those on the crest of the hill Better lock up their windows and doors The Haitian diplomacy wait on my orders To clear out the rubble of scavies and hoarders A shirt on their backs, a job and some shelter We’ll knock up a new kind of Pearl River Delta And when I am done with my various dealings When I’ve picked off the buds and I’ve dug up the seedlings When the red dirt it wheezes and the brittle earth weeps I lay on my pillow and slip sweetly to sleep
8.
9.
Molly 04:50
Cut me some slack boys I’m packin’ it in I gotta see that Molly again Such a long time comin’, be a rough road to ride Don’t know I’ll make it but I sure wanna try I was young, I musta been twenty Playin’ for tips at a dive in the city Strummin’ some old insignificant song She starts stompin’ and singing along She asked for a tune, I barely knew it But I told her I did and I fumbled on through it She threw down her coat, like a hero’s disguise And she danced like a flame, like a sacrifice Yeah we needn’t speak, I knew what she was sayin’ Each movement answered just what I was playin’ Every arch of her back, every sweep of my hand But the way it turned out I can’t understand Oh sweet Molly my brother’s had his turn Had five good years to treat you right No more does he deserve Oh sweet Molly, take a chance on me We’ll pick up from where we left off So get your dancing shoes My brother’s got ways that I can’t fathom He seems to get women just by lookin’ at ‘em Smellin’ like Old Spice, tobacco and cider He slid on in and pushed up beside her He spoke somethin’ into her ear And with those words my love disappeared I could feel it escapin’, my broken heart beatin’ Pickin’ up pace like an army retreating Sure enough my prediction was sound Sure as a stake driven hard through the ground They left me playin’, shaken and sore Her hand cupped in his as they walked out the door Chorus I don’t know how they lasted this long When she’s so right and he’s so wrong What she sees cripples my thinkin’ Holdin’ it together while he’s out drinkin’ We meet as a family once every year And he’s too far gone to ever appear But Molly don’t fail us and that fire in her eyes It flickers a little, but it’s still alight And each time I think about drivin’ away With Molly beside me we’ll start a new day Windows down and music loud One of these days I’ll get these words out Chorus
10.
Hank 03:08
I wanna go to Montgomery I wanna make, make a spark and see See if I can set myself alight and burn away Cos something once started here I don’t care I ain’t got no fear You live and then you die in the same place I will sing Hank Williams’ songs They must be right cos honey he ain’t wrong Jesus must have taught that boy to play Let it soak into my blood Then baby I can feel the love That taught a million people how to sing One step forward, two steps back A shift is gonna get my spirit on track Cos I write better songs when I’m away I won’t set the woods on fire I’ll get out of this world alive I ain’t lived, so I can’t die in this place Chorus
11.
We’ve got lakes, we’ve got rivers, we’ve got tributaries And depths no diver can reach But I know you feel our love’s in the shallows Stranded and dry on the beach The moon is wide, rich and resplendent And full as the breadth of our love Yet time and again, you’ve taken to tell me That what we’ve got’s just not enough Love is a cycle, winding through seasons Each love must pass through them all Though our summers are bright and springs are abundant Baby, we’ve entered our fall There’s a reason we act like we do There’s a purpose to find There’s a river that joins me to you And everything flows down in time Most of the time we bend in the wind But something’s gotta give in the end But for every branch that falls to the ground A new one will grow back again
12.
At Last 04:02
At last my love has come along My lonely days are over And life is like a song At last the skies above are blue My heart was wrapped in clover The night I looked at you I found a dream that I could speak to A dream that I could call my own I found a thrill to press my cheek to A thrill that I have never known You smiled and then the spell was cast Now here we are in Heaven Oh you are mine at last

credits

released March 13, 2014

Cy Winstanley – vocals, guitar, harmonica
Vanessa McGowan – vocals, double bass
Tim O’Brien – fiddle (tracks 6 & 8), mandolin (tracks 1 & 5), vocals (track 11)
Catherine ‘BB’ Bowness – banjo (track 6)

All songs (except At Last) written by Cy Winstanley

Producer Tim O’Brien
Engineer David Ferguson
Assistant engineer Sean Sullivan
Mastering engineer David Shipley @ FoxWood Mastering

Cover art by Henrietta Harris
Layout by Chris Winstanley
Photo by Garth Badger

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Tattletale Saints Nashville, Tennessee

Originally from Auckland, 2014 Tui Award winners Tattletale Saints now live in Music City USA, Nashville Tennessee.

With thoughtful and minimal production, their third release showcases the duos perfectly intertwined harmony vocals and Winstanley’s clever yet emotional songwriting.
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