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October's Road

by Balto

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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 12 Balto releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Wrong End, Spanish Wine, No Hard Feeling (4-Track), From Them to Us, From Us To You (A Cover Tape), Magnet / Mind, Black Snake, Mojave Blues/Still Don't Know, Bullshit Dream, Songs for Viktor, and 4 more. , and , .

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  • Physical Copy of October's Road
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    The Record the way it was meant to be - played from start to finish and stamped with the train tickets straight from that strange trip through Siberia. Full-Color, Fold-Out Jacket with Photography by Andrew Sheron and Tamás György.

    Includes unlimited streaming of October's Road via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
The Railyard 05:17
Oh my sweet little darling dear When these words reach your ears I’ll be long gone from here All alone in a railyard, the shrill whistle blows Oh where I’m a-going really god only knows I’ll call her Eliza, the girl with no name All wrapped up in silence, in secrets, in pain In north country winter, both tied to the road Smiled and said nothing, I bared her my soul And I know that I loved her, but I couldn’t say why And all of that silence might well have been lies She cried out “I love you, but I’ll never be free. There ‘aint no use guessing, just forget about me.” It’s lonesome out here on the road Where the last points of fire that light the night sky Burn down to their embers and flicker and die My fingers go numb in the cold Where the last little spark that’s disrupting the dark Is that last bit of feeling that’s left in my heart My footsteps were haunted for many long weeks I couldn’t find shelter in those dull dusty streets So I found me a railcar with no windows, no doors Poured out all my love on the cold rusty floor And in the gray morning I was long gone, away In a far eastern country where the language is strange Where the seabirds they circle no ocean nearby Like lost souls they’re crying, lamenting their plight The sun rises and sets in the same goddamn place Shadows circle my body and laugh in my face Though I set out to find me a whole brand new life I don’t want to forget her, I don’t want to die
2.
Oh darlin' just for you I'll be a good man I'll come through Sing you simple words that you can understand Sing it loud and clear and true Oh I love you darlin' feel it my bones Gotta tell it like it is And though this world is wide – It seems I'm lost at sea You know I'm rowing east Oh darlin' though it seems I went away I've been rollin' rollin' rollin' back to you For I don't have a home of wood or brick or stone No country, state, no name All I know is that my place is where you are I'm gonna make it, you know it can't be far! It seems that you believe That our love was lost the moment I appeared You know this aint no phase – heard that voice and saw your face again I can never leave Oh I know that you are scared of everything What's more you're scared of me Everything I do is strange, its cruel, its real I don't mean you any harm Oh darlin' if the weight's too much to bear Pass a little on to me I don't got much but everything I have is yours Don't be shy – come on by –¬¬ it ain't mine anymore
3.
The Tin Man 03:53
The Tin Man’s sitting in the waiting room With his brand new plastic heart He don’t know where to start Can’t really tell it’s a false alarm Cuz he can’t feel much of anything No he’s hollow to the core And what he pours inside don’t satisfy Just spills out on the floor The doc comes in 20 minutes late And he pours himself a drink He says, “boy I aint no shrink But you better watch what it is you think!” “Cuz that thing that ticks inside of you has got a mind of its own it’ll drive you mad for what you never had make you burn like black coal.” And he came up strong with too much love For her cold hands to hold You better hold him down until the end of the show And when they danced he broke her back With the weight of the world You better hold him down till the end of the show In the park by the tenement With his head laid in his hands The Tin Man has got a plan He’s met a girl and she makes him sad But all he knows he knows from films And he follows the actor’s lead He’s jammed a rose between his teeth And scrubbed his armor clean Now he’s running up and down the avenue His joints are creaking in the rain He made a date but she never came Of course, he has gone insane And he shouts her name into the night He startles the passers by And on the road not far ahead She hears and she takes a fright [Chorus] The police report had a note in it And it made the captain blush He thought it all was a little much He didn’t they called that love It seems the Tin Man screamed some profanities From the top of a city bus But when he caught a sight of his girl inside He slipped and died for all of us
4.
desperate, Fingers prints on black and white her hands tied skinny wrists to the train line trembling, Holding fears she can't express her eyes close tiny fist in my hands, though and she turns away, turns away spilling tears on the subway if birds could bend the iron rails of cages, prisons, lies and turn back time, unclip their wings, regain that will to fly as endless night returns to white, someday they'll take the sky cut all the lines, rise up on high, like waking back to life. sleepless, Frequent eyes pried wide and powdered for daybreak steels herself for the heartbreak hopeless, Highness empty all your trust as the doors close the howling wind through the tunnels then she'll glance back sees her train on the wrong track scares her to death scares her to death scares me to death scares me to death i'm a strange caveman for a girl in a cave scares me to death scares me to death scares her to death scares her to death
5.
Elizabeth the bumblebee keeps flying round and stinging me Left poison in my fingers long ago And lonesome in the summer night she tried to get me one more time Left stinger in my body before she died And every night that buzzing fills my ears till morning light And how I’ve saved that bitter pain as if it was today Elizabeth you’re just like me come back to life come set me free We’ll drink the nectar, spark like fireflies And teach me every flower known to this foreign land you call your home I’ll give you shelter if it gets too cold But oh, I know your paper wings were frozen long ago And fallen here, my swollen hands and eyes all filled with tears I had another dream last night, a bumblebee came flying by Black and yellow shape caught on the breeze And as I turned expecting you to whisper, “how I looked for you!” I only saw an ordinary fly For the world’s gone gray and all that’s left are flies around decay And all I see: Are golden fields that’ll never be And love you spent and lost on me Your final words still stingin’ me Wring honey from my heart so bittersweet
6.
Been coming for a long, long time Oh did you say this life could never be It was never really up to me Decided by a god I cannot know And when you poured every little fluid ounce of trust The overflowing cup was only just Your cardboard cutout substitute for love And tragically I’m holding on But the game is lost and the crowd is gone I’m losing my mind I’m losing my mind, oh Been coming for a long, long time And in my head a girl is sitting there She picks a patch of wall and stares She tells her love, she’s doomed to die alone But then she’ll rise and straighten crooked spine And remember love and remember life She buys a ticket that train will take her home And I’m standing on the platform here But all mirages disappear I’m losing my mind I’m losing my mind, oh Been coming for a long, long time
7.
Don Quixote 04:33
Handfulls of sleeping pills washed down with a bottle of wine Couldn’t stop my mind, couldn’t hold my attention From Noticing the cracks, the holes in my logic And the permanence of the things that I have done I notice as I’m riding on a subway late at night In the flickering light, that I have always loved imaginary princesses – it’s a simple, brutal truth That while riding high, I am Don Quixote I am a bull in a china shop while stick-limbed, skinny, frail I destroy all the pretty things while my body wastes away And for my crimes they packed me up and shipped my soul away So my fragile arms couldn’t cause you any harm or any pain A letter comes down from the sky she writes a lot of nothing but I lose my mind and spend a whole week thinking of all the things I never did – that last and final promise that I couldn’t keep – couldn’t make it across the border Every time I touch the phone the urge takes hold my fingers And my words turn cruel, I’ll make her say she loves me Forgetting at the other end a pair of trembling fingers dials frantically – my imaginary girlfriend I am a bull in a china shop while stick-limbed, skinny, frail I destroy all the pretty things while my body wastes away And for my crimes they packed me up and shipped my soul away So my fragile arms couldn’t cause you any harm or any pain So forgive me for the things I’ve done and all I never did And I’ll try to do the same for you, I know you’re just a kid
8.
the seatbelt sign blinks, the day is stretched out somewhere far away all my hope turned to doubt i sat awake in the piercing sunlight, with my eyes screaming out for the quiet of night Got cuts on my fingers, got blood on my hands And the wounds can’t be stitched closed with fraying loose ends And the echoes of past love now emptied of form Get louder and louder as I drift out from shore How am I gonna show from across this ocean that I can’t let you go Cuz as the months fall away, aint see nothing gonna change How am I gonna know if you’re alive and breathing anymore Cuz all the lines are getting cold and I’ve got to show for… Oh if you had seen me Collapse to the floor and known why and what for You'd finally hear me Come running with help, wipe the blood from my mouth Where it spilled And maybe you'll notice That fear of your loss has kept closing me off And at last I tore myself open A river poured out after decades of drought SO COME ON I'm willing and able My feet or a plane, oh a bus or a train I can run If only a moment To hold your cold hands tell you life aint that bad Because it aint — life aint that bad.
9.
The Lover 05:54
Hey there lover don’t you feel so bad There aint no one gonna take what you once had Oh you won so many battles but you lost the war Now it’s time to pack and leave for brighter shores So you tore up half your letters Marked the rest “return to sender” Tore every last picture off the wall Hey there lover I know she's done you wrong But what she gave you first won’t do you any harm Well she faded into silence Left you standing in the aisle When morning came you dropped that dried bouquet But you know she really loved you Though now there’s nothing to hold on to You know certain things can never be undone So hold your head up high, lover Drink that wine and toast your lover Even if she’s gone and far away Oh can you remember – what you had From the first of November – and what was said That passed away By the very first of May I met a lover yesterday on bended knee He aint waiting for no one to set him free See he grew his beard and watched the autumn fade to gray Sittin by the kitchen window, he’s drawn the shade And the faces laugh around him “You’re a fool you lonely bastard, don’t you want to be a happy man like me” But he smiles, his eyes a-shining “My friend you miss the silver lining There’s only one truth I’ve come to know”
10.
At a bus stop in a border town This lovelorn refugee Slowly smokes a cigarette And trembles, ill at ease She should have been here hours ago I watch the eastward road But the sun tracks fast across the sky And still nobody shows And then I’m torn away at last The doors slam hard and fast Watch the empty houses Press my nose against the glass I guess I’ll go home then It’s time to go home again I’ll try to go home again At a wooden house on Fleet Street I took my final vows Put a pen to paper then Described what I had found But words all lose their meaning when You’re lost alone in love And whatever mail I sent that day Got lost and wasn’t enough So I read a guide to San Francisco In a boat out far from shore Thought of all the love I’d make If I ever got back to port Now Coney Island’s emptied out That cold November shore Between the freak-show carousels Dance the ballerina ghosts I dance the ghost dance for my love I paint my forehead blue Raise my hands towards paradise But my directions get confused And I know I marked myself a man With war paint on my cheeks But there’s no strength left in my hands Can hardly even speak

about

Balto came into being when Daniel Sheron abandoned his life in Moscow, Russia and went alone into Siberia. Against an ever shifting backdrop of railways and desolate wastes, he wrote a cycle of songs to tell the story of what had happened in that strange country, why he had exiled himself, and why he thought it mattered. In train cars and crumbling cities he encountered PEOPLE, and they inhabited the songs he was writing and the notes he was taking. In the fall, Daniel brought Balto back to America and called his friends to record an album in one day. On December 15, 2010, six people entered a basement in Brooklyn, New York and emerged that night with an album that no one had expected. October's Road.

Album Download Includes 14-page, full-color digital lyric booklet and 2 never-before-heard Demo songs.

credits

released February 16, 2011

Daniel Sheron - Vocal, Guitar, Harmonica
Andrew Sheron - Mandolin, Vocal
Charlie Freundlich - Double Bass
John Glouchevitch - Banjo, Vocal
Philippe Bronchtein - Piano, Accordion, Vocal
Jake Nussbaum - Drums, Percussion

All songs Written by Daniel Sheron
Produced by Andrew Sheron
Recorded by Ken Rich, Andrew Sheron, and Daniel Sheron
Mixed by Jeremy Backofen
Mastered by Richard Morris

Recorded December 15th, 2010 at Grand Street Recording in New York
All Songs copyright (c) 2011 by Daniel Sheron
Album Artwork by Andrew Sheron, Tamás György, and David Banys

Interlude on track 7 performed by Molio Sheron, "Don't light the fire"
words by D.M. Rathaus, music by A. Spiro

Cello and Vocal on tracks 1, 2, and 7 by Ava Kerr
Trumpet on tracks 6 and 10 by Koby Williamson

Heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who has touched this project and been in my life, but especially to my parents who have given me everything I will ever have, to my brothers and their families, to my friends who I love dearly, and to Liza.

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Balto Los Angeles, California

Card Carrying Cultists of the Great American Song, The Great American Groove, and the Great American Highway

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