Briar Rabbit & The Company You Keep

by Briar Rabbit

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  • Compact Disc

    High Quality, hand-folded packaging.

    1. Numbers
    2. The Company You Keep
    3. Putch
    4. All My Words
    5. Note to Self: Make New Mistakes
    6. Tread Lightly
    7. Float

    Buy Now  $8 USD

    ships out within 6 days
    edition of 1000 

  • Digital Album

    Immediate download of 7-track album in your choice of high-quality MP3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.

    Buy Now  $5 USD

1.
04:31
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2.
03:54
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3.
03:57
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4.
04:44
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5.
03:36
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6.
05:36
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7.
04:08
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about

A self-analytical collection of songs that chronicle leaving one place for another

credits

released 02 February 2011
Briar Rabbit is Phillip-Michael Scales: Vocals, Guitar, & Mandolin.

Additional Instrumentation:
Lead Guitar by Devon Clarke Geyer.
Drums by Stephen Boegehold (Except Track 1 by Adam Hand.)
Bass by Benjamin Sturley (Except Track 1 by Anne Hoffman.)
Female vocals by Kate Smeal.
String arrangements (for Track 4,) Keys, Violins, and Backing vocals by Nicki Singleton.
Viola by David Peacock.
Cello by Calin Peters.

All songs Written, Produced, and Arranged by Phillip-Michael

Portrait by Gillian Fry.

Layout by Eric Croskey

Recorded and Mixed by Jamie Carter at Carter Co Recording, Chicago, IL
Additional Recording by Brian Arnold and Anne Hoffman at Moontower, Cambridge, MA

Mastered by Carl Saff

Thank you: Gammy, Family, Friends, B., Henry Gafney, Five of Hearts, Nicki Singleton, Christine Kick, Mornin’ Old Sport, The Anymen, Paula Delillo, House Phone, This is How Rumors Get Started, Verb The Adjective Noun, Passion Pit, Gym Class Heroes, Kai Hecker, Chanelle Johnson, Ragged Claws, Kevin Kern, Michael Mullowney, SPEAK, and you.

All Songs written by Phillip-Michael Scales © 2010

www.BriarRabbit.net

Contact: PhillipMichael@BriarRabbit.net

tags

tags: folk indie pop rock thought-pop Chicago

license

all rights reserved

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Track Name: Numbers
The numbers on the bottom can’t keep up
In a race they used to win against the top
Watch from the sidelines at the pump
Now that the price of gas is more than the cost of love Time stumbles on and I am waiting on
A bus that’s gonna come and take me home

Consistency was something that I chased
But every friend comes with an expiration date
It’s just a matter of how long it takes
Before it goes bad and you gotta throw it away
And move on, what are you waiting on?
A bus ain’t gonna come
Lingering’s for sunsets so it’s best to just be done

Love keeps you warm and it leaves you cold
Back and forth and sometimes bought and sold
For every heart, there is a hole
But that’s not how we’d like our story told

All your endeavors aren’t enough
Without the motor skills or spine to back em up
Someone whispered “Tap out, it’s too rough”
But I got sick at the though of giving up
A nomadic soul is an alright goal
Always jumping post to post
Until youre just a haunted house with an apathetic ghost
Track Name: The Company You Keep
Been thinking about all the places that I’ve called “home”
Just another town I was hanging around till I make it on my own
But each time felt more like a try out like I was under a microscope
Tried to settle in tried to settle down then I settled

Keep thinking about all the people that I’ve called “home”
Just another crowd I was hanging around till I make it on my own
Each time it doesn’t work out lose a little more hope
Try to settle in, try to settle down but can’t settle

They say you’re only as good as the company you keep
but lately I’ve been keeping to myself
I never understood what it meant anyhow

There’s a ghost upstairs, he stamps, he shouts, he screams until the morning
But it’s the melody that he always sings that keeps me from sleeping
And there’s a girl somewhere I guess you could say that she got away though I disagree
Cause her beauty was a welcome mat, she said “wipe your feet and hang your hat”
But I couldn’t stay for long

These days, my minds more like a maze
filled with thoughts that stalk me like minotaurs they try to eat me whole
So say you’ll be my ball of twine and I swear I’ll be fine
Knowing you can lead me home
Track Name: Putch
Your room hangs like the moon
against the dark apartments
Some nights you feel just as far
then I get inside of my mind
and can't find a way out
I think of when I knew you

So I take walks with my sorrow
and hope they find someone new
to stand by and never let down
But we just end up lurking around
like the memories that painted this town
I wish i never knew you

Guess I'll wait for the day I can turn out that light
when your place and your face just turn back into night
And I can stop wondering if there's a man in the moon
next to you

Sunrise and to my surprise
some pride replaces the blue
By strange coincidence I run into you
We speak and I'm searchin your eyes
but just cant figure it out
Its like I never knew you

I guess I never knew you.
Track Name: All My Words
All my words are premature
Thoughts, half-formed, fall out of my mouth
It just gets worse when you are around me (watching me)
Digging a hole, dirtying up your pretty dress
But you promise me you were already a mess

My whole day is a series of distractions
To keep my brain from places you say it shouldn’t be
And I’m not sure what it is about me that wants to believe
That you’re wrong and I am what you really need
Cause that’s just some cinematic dream

Sometimes we’re actors playing ourselves
In a movie that only makes sense without the sound
And I’m all nerves cause any given second
Someone will yell “cut” turn and thank me for my time

You are a battleground for
a civil war where no one wins
Between a lonely body and
a heart whose only wish is to be alone

Keep it casual or be a casualty
Track Name: Note to Self: Make New Mistakes
You play the boyscout trying to put fires out
but you always end up in flames
Whenever you try to save the day
But you still try and save the day
Sometimes a house has to burn before anyone learns
Sometimes the best teacher is pain
and you just have to look away

They break your heart behind your back
They shove it in your face
and you let them have their way
why do you let them have their way?
Stick it out till you hate the town
and you wake up on the road
But you've lost all control
You're spinning circles in the night and you can't let go

Dad says "Make new mistakes, Boy.
Don't you know that a heart can swallow you whole?"
Dad says "Don't do what I did.
Please yourself fore you go off pleasing the world"

I've got secrets darker than my skin
I know where they start but I don't know where they end
The kind you wouldn't even tell your very best friend

Now the night time makes you second guess
until your coffee's cold
Giving form to all the fears
that ignorance hid all those years ago
Track Name: Tread Lightly
You're beautiful and skittish
Unconventional and kind
You're scared of your own shadow
You love to take your time
and I don't have a lot of it
but you can have all mine

Teach me to tread lightly so I don't lose what I've found
Cause I've heard the horror stories
of how you split when you freak out
and I know this sounds selfish
but please just bare with me
'cause for the first time in a long time
What I want is what I need

On my day off I bought daises
across the street from where you live
I had my finger on your buzzer
but just couldn't take the risk
so I settled for some coffee
and thought of you the whole goddamn time
Left the daises on the counter
for someone else to find

Mornin' layin in your bed like I got nowhere to be
Talking about everything we saw when we were sleep
And aside from all my work dreams
there was one I couldn't say
Where my pulse matched the rhythm
of your footsteps running away

Oh I've been warned but it's never stopped me before
I love like a clumsy kid whose limbs are too big
I break the pretty things on accident
Track Name: Float
My mouth tastes like cigarettes
That I never smoked
Memories are gently tangled
With the words you never spoke
The details come to focus
Frustration melts
Nothing hurts like knowing
That I brought this on myself
When I saw you sipping coffee
you looked as delicate as steam
Oh how I watched you float

I held you like a balloon
Filled with all of my breath
You were so content to linger
Just unable to connect
So you loved me like a phantom
It was the best you could do
Cause when there’s no skin to puncture
Everything feels twice removed
Sinking in your silence
I could not will my tongue to move
So watched you float

That final night you laid with me
Close
Oh my dandelion, I made my wish and blew on you
Then you were gone, I watched
you float