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East / West

by Dao Strom

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1.
Cataclysm 08:00
I don’t know if I can fake it anymore / I’ve lied long enough for you / & if you think you know me / just because you’ve read the words / I wrote / well, here’s another song for you Is every word is a cataclysm / & does it hurt to say / what fills your heart / with lonely rhythm / in the aftermath of Rebirth ? I wanted to be your vessel / I wanted to fill your need / but the past is an unwieldy burden / & I fell out of line again ‘cuz every word was a cataclysm / & does it hurt to say / what fills your heart / with lonely rhythm / in the aftermath of Decay ? If I dress it up in ribbons / if I groom and make it glisten / will that make it easier for you / will you finally stop & listen to every word that's a cataclysm / & how it hurts to say / what fills your heart / with lonely rhythm / in the aftermath of the Shame
2.
All my life I have been waiting / for the rain / to come and sate me / for I am just / a child of the dust / you ate / that enslaved you / Forgive us thus / our unbound lust / that holds you in our brethren / for we knew not / what your wings would cost / the day we sought / to cut them
3.
Didn’t you once believe in art? Didn’t you once have a beating heart? when you told me the story about a poet and her friends who went to see a king but he wouldn’t let them in except for her fine eyes She told him of the troubles throughout their country She told him of her worries for all their people She told him this in rhyme and in the rhythms of her song She told him this in rhyme and with the poetry of her tongue & that’s when he began to see (( )) Mother you once watched a monk light himself on fire in 1963 when you thought fire might say more than a gun or all the bombs over Viet Nam but his ashes contradicted him he was burning himself for peace It was that kind of world So you took me away to an ivory tower In the hills where gold lay I grew into a princess and I never learned to speak in my rightful language I only learned to choke on all the beautiful English That burns my throat today (( )) Didn’t you once believe in art? Didn’t you promise to fight with your words? Well, fight with words we did stumbling over our own tongues Mother, you were the child that I failed to love And I’m sorry if I did ‘Cause now you praise the warfare and the flags of our follies & I am just an innocent who knows nothing of History I only know the stories about the old poets who once you dreamed of following bringing the world to reason As I still dream today
4.
Lullaby* 05:27
Night after night the bombs fall sweeping girl stops her broom (to listen) to the gods falling apart & heaven throwing our prayers back at us Does a mother wake feeling the walls shake & when she hears her child cry she says I will sing you a lullaby But this was not the song I had in mind this lullaby of the artillery fire this lullaby of the artillery fire ((we were meant to be a gentle people)) ((& you ask what is the greater evil?))
5.
Origin Tale 09:11
Mountain mother / mourning all her rivers / that flow with the blood / of soldiers / the children who remain / pick up the pieces / they plant the seeds Dragon father / you always were so restless / so you took half of the children / and you led them south to the seashore / where you taught them freedom Mother she is crying / but her tears fall as drops of ink / so Mother she cries / a newspaper / and her sorrow is only documentary newsreels tell me / what to feel / because I don’t know / what is real / t.v. communicates our rage / but a death count is all / that speaks our sadness Sister searches high & low / for her Brother she once knew / in the north / and Brother he writes / long letters home / “is a flag not but a piece of cloth?” tell me / what you saw that night / when the bomb’s fire mingled / with the starlight / thought I was witnessing the end / of my Time / but then I learned that the guilty / survive // we survive ((we will suffer no more)) ((we will not carry your war))
6.
< —break the silence— > <tell them what went wrong at the breaking of our new dawn> <we once were kin breathed of the same skin — <oh my sisters have they forgotten me ?> <i was the Torus you were the Ram’s nest> <we kissed & the whole thing shuddered to Life> <i took your wing you caught my tailspin but still I fell> <Mother you tempted me said you cannot change your destiny— oh but surely by now I have proven you wrong> <Break the silence, Tell them what was the real Reason that we Left>
7.
8.
sometimes i feel like a motherless child sometimes i feel like i'm almost done but such a long way from home
9.
Hell's Gate 06:45
These hills of gold are all I have to offer you / my men, my men / & gold you may find here / & toil you will, my dears / but richer will be / the ones who vanish their greed / to find within the trees / the secrets my daughters keep / & the ages do bleed / & their patient eyes weep long have they scratched my skin / and teased my bones / they dressed in / feathers and skins / they marked the stones / they climbed quiet as mice / to heights humans don't belong / to heights humans don't belong & then came Fraser's men and the lady / whose search would never end / for the men lost at sea / to the dark northern degrees My veins they named a portal to hell / my blood was turbulent / & for the canyons walls they scaled / I claimed the souls of some of them & on my belly they did lay / a powder soft and grey / they set this afire / with a kiss / with a kiss, with a kiss / & the hole this love did create / grew into a cave / that the men could climb deep inside / to extract the substance I hide these hills of gold are all I have / to offer you / my men, my men / & gold you may find here / & toil you will my dears / but only a few will know / the damage they hold
10.
Motherbear 06:13
11.
Two Rivers 07:21
Two rivers meet where the water is warm Two rivers meet where the water is warm Blackberries stain my childish hands Blackberries stain my childish hands it must’ve been the Fall in Washington Mother says it was in Washington where we saw two rivers cross one from the valley one from up on the rocks one streamed cold, one streamed hot in a blackberry forest I saw the two rivers join into one Father killed a snake with his bare hands Father killed a snake with his bare hands Blackberries on my tongue under the sun Blackberries on my tongue under the sun it must’ve been the sun on the hill in Montana the grass under my hands & my mother & my father I remember when, I remember when the blackberries stained my hands & the water that I washed in then was Cold on one hand was Hot on the other was Cold on one hand was Hot on the other you were angry, you were angry but the memory is only blackberries my father the fire, my mother the earth my father the water, my mother the earth my father the shadow, my mother the earth ((if I could sing this to the boy in Washington he might understand better the mountain))

about

ABOUT THE ALBUM :

I was living in a little house surrounded by trees, on the side of a hill above the Gastineau Channel in Juneau, Alaska, when I first began writing songs, in 2008, about Vietnam. Maybe it was the long winter nights, or maybe it was the three-decades or so worth of incubation time my own thoughts and emotions had already had about my origins, that made the first song, “Origin Tale,” emerge as a 9-minute lyric-heavy experience, with no repeated choruses, challenging all sensible concepts of song structure I’d thus far known. Up until that point, I’d been writing fairly traditional “folk” songs (I thought), but these new songs seemed to be asking for more space, more atmosphere. It would take the next 5-7 years of exploring, experimenting, recording, collaborating, learning and growing, releasing some songs and putting others aside, before the whole project finally cohered: two sets of songs, roaming two “geographies” both mythic and real: East, West. Within that time, I moved from Alaska to Oregon, with detours back to Texas where I’d lived before Alaska. In Portland, Oregon, I found my way to Dylan Magierek at Type Foundry Studio, who played an integral part in helping me get these songs into the light. One of the most valuable things any music collaborator has ever done for me: he lent me a good quality microphone and encouraged me to explore recording vocals on my own at home. I found a new voice—the voice these songs needed—in that part of the process, and a little more confidence in my own musical vision. The last song I wrote for the album was “On an Open Field,” an instrumental guitar piece I added vocal sound bites to (snatched from a 1966 broadcast of Pete Seeger on Rainbow Quest talking with a legendary Vietnamese folk singer of that era, Pham Duy). For me, the time spent wrestling with these songs, and with the material in the memoir that accompanies the album, is testament to the untellability—ultimately—of whatever it means to try to write about “Vietnam”— which is on one hand just the name of a place, but also carries many other connotations and repercussions. I am just one more voice in the mix, struggling to express something about a history I know only via memory, absence, and aftermath.

........................................................................................................

EAST/WEST is an album that accompanies a book, WE WERE MEANT TO BE A GENTLE PEOPLE. A memoir in text + image + song.

In this experimental memoir, author/musician Dao Strom navigates the space between shores, mother and father, two cultures.

More about the book at: www.daostrom.com/wwmgp-book
Available for purchase at: www.printedmatter.org/catalog/53973/

Artist website: daostrom.com

........................................................................................................

credits

released September 22, 2015

all songs by dao strom
except 'hell's gate' by dao strom and darwin smith
and 'sometimes I feel like a motherless child' (traditional)

Dao Strom - vocals, harmonies, acoustic and electric guitars, piano, keys, bells
Nial Nutter - electric guitar on tracks 1, 3, 5, 8, 10; vocals on track 8
Amanda Lawrence - viola, violin on tracks 4, 5
Zane Carter Cook - drums on track 3, 10
William Joersz - bass on tracks 10, 11
Lincoln Meeker - drums on track 11
Dylan Magierek - cymbals on track 11
Hershel Yatovitz - electric guitar, synth strings, ambience, initial recording on track 11
Darwin Smith - percussion, bass, initial recording on track 9
Celia Straub, Cassandra Winney - choral voices on track 5

songs recorded at Type Foundry Studio by Dylan Magierek and at home by Dao Strom
mixing: Dylan Magierek / Mix Foundry Studio
mastering: Timothy Stollenwerk / Stereophonic Mastering

This project was funded in part by a Project Grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC.org) and an Individual Arts Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission (oregonartscommission.org).

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Dao Strom Portland, Oregon

/// songs. poems. song-poems.
poetry+art. spaces in-between. /// / // /

(sometimes sea)
(sometimes her)

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