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Birds in Flight

from [SAMSON] by Farewell Friend

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about

“Birds in Flight,” the first song on the album, introduces us to a protean poetic voice that plays with these themes and doubt and wonder. If we are to take the album at its word, this is young Samson watching Delilah from afar, but also a young man not sure of his powers. The speaker in “Birds in Flight,” as the title suggests, is both of nature and ungrounded, agrarian and abstract, a “shaky voice” that slips self-consciously from “tiller” to “earth” to “magazine,” a contemporary or timeless figure determined not to trap the spirit in one place—or be trapped. There are many mansions in the house of Samson, and cracks in all the walls. Like so much of this lush and elusive album, the song practices what it preaches, the instruments constantly swarming and separating, flocking and unlocking, doubting and wondering and evading expectations, the drums, upright, and guitars flitting in and out like birdsong while Troyer’s voice, like a southern cross of Ryan Adams and Chris Martin, frames the fragments with the delicate craftsmanship of one who has learned what Leonard Cohen tried to teach all the poets who would be songwriters: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. It’s where the light gets in.” - Matt Armstrong

lyrics

When my shaky voice slips from the tiller to the ground will my crooked Row still bear any fruit?
I’m a trail of emotion a broken bottle in the ocean.
When I make sense of me can I introduce myself? Tell her what I mean, mean just what I say and spell it out before somebody else does?

Because there’s something in her eye gonna make me lie just a little something in her smile gonna make it true.
And if I empty my chest of the best words I’m holding maybe she’ll fill in the rest.

It’s like I found her in Time magazine where they caught and slowed her down between the pages and I’m trying to start her up again.

We then hurry out the door to the airport we’re never heard from again but the necessary words won’t escape my lips.

Because there’s something in her eye gonna make me lie just a little something in her smile gonna make it true.
And if I empty my chest of the best words I’m holding maybe she’ll fill in the rest.

It’s far more elegant to get lost in the telling and waste your time getting to the point. The story ain’t a lady to be married and settled down. She prefers the view from a distant edge of town. And all her gardens rows or won by stubbing of her toes against the stones are enemies have thrown. And all her perfect edges float like cursive birds in flight. And I know better than to dare and call her mind.

Because there’s something in her eye gonna make me lie just a little.
Something in her smile gonna make it true. And if I empty my chest of the best words I’m holding maybe she’ll fill in the rest.

So here we go.

credits

from [SAMSON], track released August 13, 2021
Tom Troyer - Songwriter
Tom Troyer - Acoustic, electric guitars,
Mark Byerly - Resonator, bass guitar.
Caleb Baer - Violins
Aaron Cummings - Drums
Recorded, mixed, mastered by Tom Troyer - Black Rabbit Audio

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Farewell Friend North Carolina

Farewell Friend is a North Carolina based folk rock band. Farewell Friend’s music is first and foremost an exploration of poetry and narrative

Tom - singer, songwriter, guitar
Evan - upright bass, moog, rickenbacker
Caleb - violin and telecaster
Zac - drums
Featuring Kevan Chandler on harmonica and Galen Clark on mandolin.

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