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I SMILE ALL DAY I SMILE ALL NIGHT

by James Wallace and the Naked Light

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1.
This Song 01:38
This Song I heard you wrote this song when I was only five years old. I heard you wrote this song, then you left home. Scribbled on a napkin with a trembling, shaking paw. Pa, look how I’ve grown. And I remember every word, and I learned I don’t need your hand to see. Your name’s been following me. But tonight I need you here, I don’t care what you say Yes, tonight I need you here, I don’t care what songs we play.
2.
Dancing Star (No Naked Light) Back in my work-hour, serious days my dreams were raising bass on a farm. I booked a pear-sized room beneath Frank, started catching rats with a broom I had found. Then when the city got fat off the rare fish they ate that could only be caught with a mouse, Game Warden, jailed me for poaching, swore to his soul I’d have to hang in the square. Now, I’m thankful for that diamond of light that was shining through the corner of my eight-point cell, the one I scratched at with my fingers until I saw the highway and the world that had thrown me in hell. And now somewhere in a fly is a piece of my skin that fell off while I was stuck all that time, but the rest of me is running free, now a prisoner of a greater device. FARE THEE WELL Now I’ve been in your country for a week and I’ve been to Wu Dao Kou seventeen times If you’re trying to hit the bottom, hit the bottom, don’t let them make you think your alright. If you’re looking for your love in the streets with good intentions and keep lying through your teeth just to find her alone, then from the twenty-seventh floor, the fireworks exploding will only make you feel older inside. She said, “You’ve been in my country for a year but I can speak your language better than you can mine and you’re not pretty, but you’re able to be loved as she placed her hand on my thigh. Some things are taller than a pile of fish in naked light. Some things get rougher than my rough fingernails. But still, there’s nothing louder than the sound of the bossa nova rhythms trapped inside a schoolboy’s hollow mind, when he’s been stuck in his room for a summer week dreaming about the contours of parallel lines, bending over the horizon, never intersecting, side by side. FARE THEE WELL Oh, the head lights, shining brighter than the stars, reflecting off those headlights, and all the little people in their cars: Walk it down Climb that hill. What time is it?
3.
4.
Killing the Dog I’m staring into the eye of a puppy who’s missing an eye, he’s laying on his side next to Winthrow’s grave. Do you want to die little dog, or are you just laying there? Keep nodding your head, dog, I’ll keep Nodding mine too. Over in the park a little boy is talking to a tulip that he holds, but he’ll never give away. And all the little river frogs sing along to a song about a little colored boy the band has just begun to play. If you look over in the streets there’s a car parked, all the lights are on, a door is open. It’s been open since I couldn’t drive anymore today. And now I’m staring into the eye of a puppy who’s missing an eye...
5.
6.
The Bench 04:58
The Bench Oh, I sat down like a champ ‘till the bench burned a hole in my Psoas, my feet spoke by stomping on the floor: “Walk out the door and go home.” I was young, maybe twelve. Still thought God was a clock that could kill me. Clocks were moving backwards on the walls. “Walk out the door and go home.” *Chorus* And the lies would lift me further up off the ground. They lift me up, they don’t break my fall until I’m tumbling down like a pharaoh carry me, say I’m a rock, because I am. Did the girls love you like you’ve got a disease called something longer in Latin than your name and/or your birth-given right? “Walk out the door and go home.” Eat the pills and they’ll make you feel better, then in two weeks: a threatening glance, an “I don’t need you anymore, walk out the door and go home.” *Chorus* Did you think that if you ran yourself so far latter that your mother’d cry tears, county-flags hanging mid-staff on the poles? Now you’re worried the beard makes your face look fatter you’re alone in the park listening hard to the chatter of the doves. And if someone walks past me in my three-foot comfort zone with my three-foot arm I’ll grab them pull them right back in and then I’m gonna shake them ‘till that candy-coating comes off their nose it might stain their clothes but I’ll keep on shaking until their heart’s on fire and when their heart’s on fire they’ll burn until I wave the smoke and their heart drug through the sand and the sea will be underneath a glass bottle waiting for me and all I’ll have to do is pick them up and hold them close like desperate times when there really wasn’t anything else to hold onto. *Chorus*
7.
Saved at the bottom, Powhatan County, 2001 You are saved at the bottom of the ocean, at the bottom of the ocean you are saved. You can fill your lungs with air, you might never make it there but if you make it to the bottom at the bottom, you are saved. Where in those more Prehistoric Counties, where rocks are about the size of brains and red mud still flows down white faces in the rain, where, my story began. And unfortunately, it was the most beautiful day leaves were growing, lawnmowers carving rectangular paths around sad, rectangular lives. I was there along Anderson Highway, walking, just released on a non-guilty verdict resolving an event that Chief described as an attempt at my own life. But my lawyer called it a “Misunderstanding of Location” Given there were still three weeks left until summer vacation and any boy could misjudge their arm in relation to the sharp end of a knife. And even today, if you asked what I was doing I wouldn’t have said dying I’d say my head was too far left, and the only way to center would be to fall real hard into the cold, shallow water of the James Kite and line above me and Virginia Pines send a message down to me from the middle of the sky: “Hold me when I’m old, make me warm me when I am cold and when I’m tired find a place to go inside, and sit down.” Sometimes the way the light curves along an old river bending intersecting a nice long stretch of highway ending makes you think you can see three-hundred and sixty degrees at the same time. It was there I saw the house of Blanche, that fabulous girl, who never loved me and few broken homes of the boys who used to kick me down at the benches of P. E. 
And it was probably all that nervous staring, that, a mile and a half out from Maidens Bridge landing caused me to spy upon an old side car bar half buried in the briars And It was the ugliest place I’d ever seen, only two green windows and a sign on one that said “we poison our beers, ...sometimes.” Being only seventeen, anxious and hurt and not wanting anymore trouble Just stubborn to see if nine days in jail left me with the stubble to get served. I knocked twice and then just walked inside to find a man speaking prayer with tears his eyes wipe them, then ask me, “Boy, what the hell are you doing here now?” I was quite prepared to tell him my story about being too left, and needing getting back to center when I realized his question to me had been asked one too many times. I knew because I felt my face turn red and I knew because I got a pain in my chest and I knew because I started talking real fast and real loud I said, “Have you ever found that perfect sentence to describe the way your feeling and you say it out loud for the whole class to hear it and the teacher says: ‘Boy, go over there to that principal bench, and sit down.’ And so you sit down, but you forget all the good things you thought because you’re so angry and the whole day goes by while you wonder if the stucco on the ceiling is pointing in or out. And when you stand up, your light head knocks you down and so you fall on your knees and swear you’ll drown yourself in the local, ancient river because they’ll never understand.” “Boy!” he said. “You’ve amused me! ...and it’s good to know I won’t be ending your life any sooner than it was already gonna.” “You see ten years ago today I poisoned a boy like you passing this way who now belongs to some of the meanest pack of hounds Central Virginia’s ever seen. ‘And he’s made it clear many times, they’ll be coming for me on this day before the sun sinks into the pines and right now they’re probably the distance between you and me seven hundred times. ‘So don’t think about leaving, they’ll just track you down they’re motorcycle clowns and they’ll kill you just for seeing the evil thing they’ve been dreaming up all day. ‘So why don’t we stare for a while, at these ceiling tiles and think about the stucco and listen to that faint sound of engines roaring in the distance ‘Now let’s pour you here, your last real live beer. and start swimming in that liquid but before you go down pray that you get saved at the bottom of the ocean.” Then I was awake, in a small sunlight facing the sidecar, with the ugly sound of lawnmower engines buzzing in my ears. And it was there I realized drinking, and jumping of the bridge would have to get locked up in that childhood box I kept my toys in. Because when you’re alive and you’ve got an old man’s words and one beer floating around your head sometimes it’s better, not knowing, that you’ve been poisoned. If you are saved at the bottom of the ocean.
8.
9.
Colors 04:16
Colors Colors are a lie Reflecting mirrors keep pushing that lie Do you want to know who I am? Am I an idea you had once, too much to water so you let me die? Now, I follow you around like an old swinging bell It’s a tangible hell. Brought on by my immobility. It’s a surreal feeling when you can’t even lose a feeling when you try I’m learning something new now. What’s it to you? Life is gray when you’re young but feel like you’ve wasted it way too much playing Nintendo through a sunset sunday afternoon. It’s a cold, ancient hell If only I could sing about that hell I could live in society my dreams would come alive so well. Damn this discussion What do you mean I can’t combust them? When I already know, I already felt the pieces burn in my hand? Pray for the F.M. radio. And all those little spinning, winding waves, flying over Baghdad, and eating turkey with us during wartime I’m learning something new now. I’m almost at the state line. My head is spinning and I don’t know why.

credits

released April 12, 2009

All music and Lyrics by James Wallace
Co-produced by James Wallace, Kevin Dailey, Paul Padgett
Engineered by Kevin Dailey, Miles Price, Paul Padgett, and James Wallace
Additional Horn arrangements by Kai Welch and Travis Gordon
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, recorded at The Blue Room in Nashville, TN (October, 2007- August 2008)
Track 4 recorded at 1116 Sigler St. Nashville, TN (May 2007)
Track 9 recorded secretly in an condemned trailer behind the Gaslight Theater in Opryland. (October 2007)

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James Wallace and the Naked Light Nashville, Tennessee

They say that to see in the dark, it's best to use the corners of your eyes.

I wish I had known,
I'd have seen so much coming at me.

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