The Songs
The product of an ongoing musical journey spanning over 20 years, Claudia tells a tale of the love, loss, loneliness and redemption that shapes all our lives. An anthology of twists without a plot, a map without place names and a bundle of dreams without a level head to dream them ...
Beautiful Aliens An off-beat take on our fear and fascination with the unknown, with a touch of surrealism courtesy of His Holiness.
(lyrics)
Beautiful Aliens, knocking my door.
I’d like to let them in,
but I don’t know
what they’re knocking for.
We could go out together,
fall asleep or play.
I’d like to get friendly
with the aliens one day.
Take me home with you.
I’m tired of my lonely room.
Take me home with you
for someday - I’ll open up to you.
Pope Ignorant Gentle
says it’s all wrong.
I saw him this morning, he swapped
his Rolls Royce for a guitar song. He said:
"Danny, be careful.
They’re stringing you along."
But down by the churchyard
the aliens are singing that same sweet song, goes,
Take me home with you ...
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Uncle Belly’s Leaning Shed A bluesy tribute to an imaginary hangout for drunks, musicians and other wasters. If you know where this place is, drop us a line and we’ll see you there.
(lyrics)
(Verse)
There’s a place that I know
where only the poor people go.
Every night from the door,
you’ll heard the sound of laughter
until the sunrise comes.
It’s not fashionable, it’s not chic,
When it rains the roof sometimes leaks.
The only light comes from the lamplight
hanging from the rafter.
Until the sunrise comes,
the drifters and the bums
let down their hair and put the world
to rights, almost every night.
(Chorus)
It don’t matter if you got no money
It’s not the kind of place that you need bread.
Come on, and get a taste of honey
Down at Uncle Belly’s Leaning Shed
It’s four in the morning and the city slumbers,
The office workers safely home in bed.
Come on and get a game of numbers
Down at Uncle Belly’s Leaning Shed.
(Instrumental)
If love’s your thing, bring a madam or a mister
If you’re a wino, bring a bottle of red
Prepare to share them with your brother and your sister
Down at Uncle Belly’s Leaning Shed
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Claudia Long-distance love, longing and romance à la mode, as a would-be lover waits to meet some flighty internet chick. Memorably described by Daniel’s friend Melody as "1960s beatnik cool".
(lyrics)
You take me up to the highest
for I belong to the lowest,
up to the highest tall tree.
They say an apple’s not an apple
unless you know where it came from.
I got sweet fruit growing in my tree
Claudia, My heart is calculating
the time and the distance between us.
So, don’t make me wait, Claudia,
I’m anticipating
The sweet things only you can do.
The age of information
gave us sweet communication
And your words on the wire thrilled me.
Each and every nighttime,
I’m waiting on the right time,
writing down my lifetime’s history.
Claudia, My heart is calculating ..
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Rias Lullaby The calm and peace of a sleeping child awaken hopes of redemption in the vegetable patch. Like Claudia, this song gets two treatments - the mellow acoustic one, and a livelier one with the band.
(lyrics)
They say the man
may come to free us some day now
I hope he finds me in the garden,
with the sun up at the brow.
In the presence of the holy
we should be our most serene.
I’ll be sitting, I’ll be singing,
Ria’s Lullaby.
Well, I met her as a newborn
just a spirit bright and new.
She looked at me so clearly
that I knew not what to do.
I just sat there in the silence
feeling so serene.
And then I started singing,
Ria’s Lullaby.
Well, the man
may come to see us some day now.
And he’ll find me
in the garden with the sun up at the brow.
In the presence of the holy
I will be my most serene.
I’ll be sitting, I’ll be singing,
Ria’s Lullaby.
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Hard Edged Little Kissing Love, love, good-for-nothing love... If you're not gonna **** me, how's about a kiss then?
(lyrics)
By this time tomorrow
I’ll be in a box within your mind.
And though the thought may worry you
you’ll never let it blind you.
Your life is as you’d have it.
That keeps you away
From the funny kind of loving
you found with me today, so
Come on and give me some
of your hard edged little kissing.
Make me want what I can’t have.
You know that’s what I’missing.
Worry ’bout the tomorrow
or what the future brings.
You make it like a daydream.
Your kisses they have wings.
Some day in the future when
the computers have me down
Like a bad man, unreliable
who left his house in town.
When I tend my still or I waste my time
or I’m shaving in the rain
you may stop to think of this
hard edged kiss
that you’ll never feel again, so
Come on and give me some
of your hard edged little kissing ...
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Warm Place A weary wanderer makes his peace with the world in this Celtic-flavoured homage to the healing powers of nature.
(lyrics)
Came stumbling down the mountain
To a hidden far-off field
Where the rain fell like a fountain
And the warm, soft earth did yield.
A sudden burst of sunshine
Showed my tired bare feet the way.
Let me lay down in the heather
And dream my life away.
The seeds that I’ve been planting
Are coming up for air.
They’re growing on the mountain,
They’re growing everywhere.
I missed your easy laughter
Missed your gentle kiss.
Your eyes that shine like water,
Your love so hit and miss.
Keep me in your warm place,
Protect me in your warm place,
Hold me in your warm place
’til I come back round again,
’til I come back round again.
I wasted time in longing
For this deep dark hole to fill.
The wise books have no answer
Nor the gods up on the hill.
Only you can light my darkness
Turn my night into the day
Let me lay down in the heather
And dream my life away.
Keep me in your warm place ...
Sometimes I feel like a wandering soul.
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Meeting Bill From Seattle In Ennis A finger-picked instrumental, written after a first visit to the West of Ireland. It took Bill from Seattle to explain what actually happened that night...
So Far From My Home Loneliness in the age of technology. Home is but a distant memory; a name for all our frustrated desires in this rhythmic acoustic number.
(lyrics)
In the age of the atomic clock
I hear the slave atom whisper and rock.
Her heart beats deep in the rock
In readiness.
Far above me, the satellite
Hits the world through the word box of light.
Far away from the sweet morning light
In this wilderness.
And I wish that I did not feel
So far from my home.
I wish that I did not feel
So far from my home,
Far from home.
I wanna reach down deep in the rock
Find my way through the rupture and shock.
Her heart beats deep in the rock
In tenderness.
I wanna cry out like a prisoner in the dock
Got to break the chain and the lock,
Gonna end that deep mental block,
In readiness.
But I wish that I did not feel ...
I’m gonna hold my head to the heights.
I’m gonna make my talent shine bright,
Gonna be like a beacon of light,
In this wilderness.
But I wish that I did not feel ...
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Long Ago When The Sun Was Young Folk-inspired finger picking to the beat of a life that can’t help but pass you by. Nothing left to do but keep on playing.
(lyrics)
Long ago when the sun was young,
she waltzed through a dirty smeary sky.
I saw myself like a fast young gun
There was nothing that I would not try.
And the pleasures of the world were water and wood
Consumed them as fast as anybody could.
Long ago when the sun was young
She waltzed through a dirty smeary sky.
Long ago when the world was a fair
Constructed for children like I
I washed myself where the river did run
And bathed in the heat of that sky.
The challenges of life were a race to be run
I ran them as fast as anyone can
Long ago when the world was a fair
constructed for children like I.
Long ago when time was a train
that sliced through the green and the brown
I rode her back to the clickety-clack
Of her pistons that banged up and down.
The valleys and the fields and the days and the nights
Were a blinding, maddening procession of light.
Long ago when time was a train
that sliced through the green and the brown.
She set me down in a far off land
Far from where sparrowhawks fly
Far away from the woods where the rivers did run
Far away from the heat of that sky.
But still I’m consumed and submerged in the flow
of valleys and fields wherever I go.
I still remember that sun so young
as she waltzes through a dirty smeary sky.
I still remember that sun so young
as she waltzes through a dirty smeary sky.
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Where The Dirty River Flows Conscience speaks in ebbs and flows as guitar riffs drift - and double back to wash away the sins of the world.
(lyrics)
Take your psychic airplane,
high above the city
Look down on the black veins
with their clots of steel.
Look down on the money man
thinks that he gets there faster
Poor mister commuter man
stuck behind the wheel.
Is there a deeper feeling,
hidden in the heart of it?
Suppressed in case the water level rose.
Is there a sweeter feeling,
charity no part of it?
Somewhere where the dirty river flows?
Take your psychic airplane,
high up above this country
Look down on the rivers,
flowing in the fields
Look down on the farming man,
ploughing endless furrows
Poor old agricultural
worrying over yields.
Is there a deeper feeling ...
Take your psychic airplane
high up above this planet,
Look down on the rivers
flowing into seas
Look down on the short love
that we give to the poor and the needy
Given out like wire
to the down at heel.
Is there a deeper feeling ...
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
Tomorrow Never Comes If I die tomorrow, what will be left of me? A philosophical ballad mulls over the nature of passage, and what cocktails they’ll be serving on the other side.
(lyrics)
Count the hours, count the days
Look back through a looking glass, through a haze.
Seems to me, all that we
strive to be, endlessly
Is here, reflected in the rays
Of our sun. The clock still runs.
Oh - so ambitious ...
Still making news, can’t refuse
The required sum. If our moment comes
who will count our colours, bear our news?
For maybe, tomorrow never comes.
Maybe tomorrow never comes.
© Daniel McBrearty, All rights reserved
