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Song Of The Summer, 2017

by Dad's Typewriter

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about

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5zFJOhsKks

I wrote and produced this song this past Fall. I did it very quickly; inspired by a short documentary about The Tallest Man On Earth that, I believe, was shown on Swedish television when he first began to make waves on the music world. At the very end of the film, he and his wife performed their version of Damien Jurado's song "Working Titles". It inspired me as much as anything else I'd ever seen and heard. I immediately wrote the words for Song of the Summer to that tune.

In the weeks after I finished what became the bare bones of this song, my friend Alyssa came up from New Jersey to spontaneously write and play two violin parts. My friend Casey plays the trumpet on here as well. I added some harmonica at some point. Those are the sounds you're hearing.

The video was taken in Queens, at the Rockaways in Jamaica Bay, by Alexandra Tsubota. She crafted and styled these moving images into the most beautiful sequence that, to me, perfectly completes the feeling and tone of the music.

I'm incredibly grateful to these three women for making this recording and video not just a reality, but a description of how we're feeling as we collectively watch humanity do backflips over fences, as if we couldn't just duck through the split rail, out of danger and unharmed...

lyrics

Lyrics

You arrest what my canopy calls me
Like a forest of 40 hour work-weeks
There's nothing I am that is larger
Than a boulder taken 'part through the ages
By the wind and the rain of east Texas
There's something; I can't but feel help less
At the government's treatment of angels
Like they're demons released from the pavement

I can't stomach much more of this bullshit
And the rivers are flowing, but backward
Towards the mountains, up into a storm cloud
My home nation does nothing to be proud of
When the president looks like an asshole
And his actions confirm he's an asshole
And his words make me feel like a child
All confused at a father's deception

No, not so
All heart; no soul
My arms reach low
Pull the heavens from the soil

So we dance to the music within us
I can't help that I know how to sing it
Makes me feel like there's purpose in rainfall
So I clap for the man at the train stop
Who is rapping about rapping at train-stops
Like some literature self-referential
Though I think that the skies are but empty
I will sing like the heavens are many
One for each of us casual sinners
Taking posture through nuclear winters
Can't believe that the end is upon us
Can't believe that we never got famous
Oh no
All heart, no soul
My arms reach low
Pull the heavens from the soil

So be wary of trudging through darkness
When the stars are encased by pollution
I will capture my love of the sonnets
Like it's clear that I never have read them
And I'll touch my toes
And I'll twist, lift, and curl
All heart
All soul

credits

released February 28, 2018
Michael McGuire - Guitar, Vocal, Harmonica
Alyssa Violet* - Violins
Casey Bentley - Trumpet

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Dad's Typewriter New York, New York

Dad's Typewriter is the name of a band that is only a few people, none of whom will ever again release an album with the name Dad's Typewriter. Trust me. Otherwise, all of the everything on these two releases is just really good music shoddily recorded in bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens. ... more

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