Get all 13 Dave Wright & The Midnight Ramblers releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Sun Don't Shine EP, Darkness Calling, Small Towns, Wire Strainers, Judgement Day, The Piano Has Been Drinking, Live at Jimmy The Saint, Sweet Caroline, and 5 more.
1. |
Judgement Day
03:32
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Judgement Day
18/1/2022
I hear that train,
I hear that train coming down the track,
But if I’m brave,
If I don’t flinch, if I don’t look back
I might escape,
But I feel this crushing weight
I’m so afraid,
And I fear that it’s too late.
For the Devil told me not to pray coz he wants my soul come Judgement Day,
All my good deeds swept away- watch them fade to black.
Until the time he calls for me I’ll live my life in reverie,
All my days spent wild and free burning down the track…
I hear that train,
I hear that train coming ‘ round the bend.
And I maintain,
That there’s no way to make amends.
I made my play,
Now there’s nothing I regret.
No more delays,
It’s time to clear my debts.
For the Devil told me not to pray coz he wants my soul come Judgement Day
All my good deeds swept away- watch them fade to black
Until the time he calls for me I’ll live my life in reverie
All my days spent wild and free burning down the track…
It’s not hard to decide which side of the line
I choose to live my life
I hear that train,
I hear that train bearing down so fast.
It’s time to pay,
For the sins of my dark past.
This is my fate,
And despair my only friend.
But I will stay (I will stay),
Steadfast until the end.
For the Devil told me not to pray coz he wants my soul come Judgement Day,
All my good deeds swept away- watch them fade to black.
Until the time he calls for me I’ll live my life in reverie,
All my days spent wild and free burning down the track…
I hear that train x3
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2. |
Heartbreak Town
03:47
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Heartbreak Town
26/7/2022
She got sick on the Sunday,
Probably something she ate, she said.
Put herself straight to bed,
I didn’t think much of it.
She woke me up about two AM,
With the shakes and the shits.
And the fever it would not break,
Breathed her last about six.
And all that night the snow fell down
We were trapped deep in this Heartbreak Town.
I met her when we were sixteen,
A local High School dance,
She was standing against the wall,
I never thought I had a chance.
But I plucked up the courage,
When the DJ put Hey Jealousy on.
Now thirty years later,
It’s still my favourite song.
And all that night we drove around,
Falling in love in that heartbreak…
I had to take the chance, and if I had my time again,
I’d still try to make it through
One hundred miles of treacherous roads,
Sleet and rain, ice and snow,
But she just faded so damn fast.
Now I spend my days up the hill,
Running choke chain for cedar.
And I work myself half to death,
It never gets any easier.
Late at night when I get home,
The house is cold and dark.
Sometimes I put Hey Jealousy on,
Let it rip me apart… (Hey Jealousy)
And late at night the tears fall down,
Darkness descends in this heartbreak…
And the snow it still falls down,
Trapped deep in this heartbreak,
Trapped deep in my heartbreak,
I’m all alone in this Heartbreak Town.
Hey Jealousy.
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3. |
Miracle
04:01
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Miracle (Little By Little)
Words and Music by Dave Wright 2004
©2020
I’ve lived out a lifetime here,
I’ve seen despair knock and hope disappear
I’ve fought wind and fire and rain,
I’ve even fought a war, and what for?
The years haven’t been kind yet still we survive
We’re just living one day at a time
And little by little those heartaches subside until there’s nothing left,
And you finally realise it’ll take a miracle…
I seems my luck will never change
I get on top just to get dragged down again
I’ve worked my fingers down to the bone just to repay
What they say I owe.
The years haven’t been kind yet still we survive
We’re just living one day at a time
And little by little those heartaches subside until there’s nothing left,
And you finally realise it’ll take a miracle…
It hasn’t rained here in more than a year
And these crops won’t grow on blood, sweat and tears,
The man from the bank says they’ll take my land away
Unless I can find a miracle,
A miracle way to pay,
A damn miracle.
I’ve lived out a lifetime here,
I’ve seen despair knock and hope it disappear,
And all that’s to show for forty years of toil is a broken man,
A broken man waiting on a miracle,
One day at a time,
And little by little the heartaches subside until there’s nothing left,
And you finally realise,
Little by little those heartaches subside and now there’s nothing left,
And you finally realise it will take a miracle,
You finally realise it will take a miracle,
But I finally realised I don’t believe in miracles.
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4. |
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Dear Sarah ( A Feather in the Mail)
16/3/2020
Amiens, Western Front, 1918,
My breath hung cold in the air, so tense I want to scream.
I took this letter that I wrote and stuck it through and through,
Right into that trench wall to get sent home to you.
The cry goes up “fix bayonets” and with two shaking hands,
I steel myself to scramble up into no man’s land.
All along the line I see the lads all do the same,
I jammed my tin hat on my head and whispered your name.
Sarah, Sarah, you are so far away,
I wish that you could hold me now on this my darkest day.
I was barely over that trench wall when a shell struck me down,
I woke in the infirmary a little closer to the ground
They shipped me home to Melbourne town and I wished I was dead,
For I left behind that letter, and both my bloody legs.
Sarah, Sarah, you are so far away,
I wish that you could hold me now on this my darkest day
Sarah, Oh Sarah, you left me this way,
Coz you preferred a hero’s death to a cripple home to stay.
Collective sigh, as the train arrives.
Grown men cry in the arms of thankful wives.
Absent eyes stay dry as she writes,
Her heartless goodbye.
Now every year come ANZAC day they wheel me past the Shrine
I think about the ones who fell and what I left behind
And they talk to me of courage, they speak of sacrifice,
But no one mentions finding out what you fought for was a lie.
Sarah, Sarah, you are so far away,
I wished that you could hold me then on that my darkest day
Sarah, Sarah, you left me this way,
You preferred a hero’s death to cripple home to stay.
Sarah, Sarah, I got your address today,
I started to write but all I had to say;
Is I hope you go to your grave choking on your shame
But in lieu of angry words I sent a feather,
A white feather in the mail.
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5. |
Drink To Our Love
03:58
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Drink To Our Love
2/4/2022
All through the night I hear those lonely sirens sound,
All the way from here to that dark heart of town.
You’re by my side but I wonder for how long,
Because something tells me you’ll be moving on.
I know soon you’ll be moving on.
It’s over now, the damage done,
Every card played and every race is run.
Fill up your glass my dear and let’s drink to our love,
While it burned bright and clear we knew this day would come.
Dance on the ashes of a passion once so strong,
Fill up your glass my dear and let’s drink to our love.
Like whiskey in a bottle heady and strong,
In the hands of a drunkard would never last long.
I was an ice cube and you the setting sun,
You melted me down while you had your fun.
You melted my heart while you had your fun.
It’s over now, the damage done,
Every card played and every race is run.
Fill up your glass my dear and let’s drink to our love,
While it burned bright and clear we knew this day would come.
Dance on the ashes of a passion once so strong,
Fill up your glass my dear and let’s drink to our love.
As the night descends and I wonder when this ends,
Will we look back on those days with regret?
Well you know it’s got you when all day long,
You dream of big fat lines just to hoover up.
When the buzz wears off you need another one,
Soon you’re checking that bag but it’s all gone,
Oh boy when it’s gone, it’s gone.
It’s over now, the damage done,
Every card played and every race is won.
Fill up your glass my dear and let’s drink to our love,
While it burned bright and clear we knew this day would come.
Dance on the ashes of a passion once so strong,
Fill up your glass my dear and let’s drink,
Fill up your glass my dear and let’s drink to our love.
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6. |
Small Towns
05:05
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Small Towns
28/3/2020
There weren’t much to do where I grew up
My parents worked hard but we never had much
Hit the footy club on a Saturday Night
Drink green tins- and learn how to fight.
When you got your Ps you drove out to the Lake
Listening to Chisel with Amy, Sally, or Kate
Parked in the dark with the other desperate kids,
Always telling your mates she went further than she did.
Those small towns leave such big scars now
Where everyone’s fighting to live or they’re dying to get out,
How I hated that small town.
When you left school the options were few
Work at the Abs like your dad or get a job at the Mill
When Johnno knocked up Sal one Friday night well
We all knew it weren’t love but they got hitched
And now he says it’s all right.
But he also says “We’re not like you folks up in the Big Smoke
We know how to laugh and we can take a damn joke
But when the chips are down and you can’t tell the fire from the smoke
Well you know you can rely on a country bloke…”
Those small towns leave such big scars now
Where everyone’s fighting to live or they’re dying to get out,
How I hated that hole in the ground.
They shut Stephen’s Mitre 10 and Mark Sherry’s Records and Tapes and put a Maccas and a Bunnings in their damn place
And now the Austral boasts twelve beers on tap,
Well I think I know what my old man would have to say about that
(make mine a Melbourne, son)
They say things are looking up coz the kids are coming back
We got sushi in the main drag but the coffee’s still crap
And there’s a boutique distiller next to Holt’s Gun Shack
Well this town’s moving forward
But I ain’t going back.
Those small towns leave such big scars now
Where everyone’s fighting to live or they’re dying to get out,
Toxic, Masculine, Proud.
Once the backbone of this land but now they’re dying out,
God save kids in small towns,
God save our kids in small towns.
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7. |
Wire Strainers
04:28
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Wire Strainers
20/11/2019
I hit a lonely stretch, way up past Nhill
On that Silver City HWY on the dog run to Broken Hill,
Where I met an old battler who was doing it tough,
And in the back of his ute the oldest pair of wire strainers the world ever knew.
I went on my way but I could not shake the face
Of that bloke searching the wire strand by strand for the place
Where the cattle get through, his hands battered and bruised,
But surely he knew it was all in vain.
Because it never rains,
It never rains up here
And the dust hangs in clouds,
When the water trucks come around.
It never rains.
A few weeks later I was back up the way
And I knew I could do a little something that might ease the strain
The were shiny and new and I left them with a note on his verandah that read
“If ever you need a friend… and I hope it rains”
It never rains up here
And the dust hangs in clouds
When the water trucks come around
It never rains,
It never rains up here,
And the money’s run out
The government’s ignoring the drought.
Sometime’s I would call, and sometimes I’d write
Sometimes I’d send a little something just to help him get by.
Then those three nights, he didn’t answer the phone,
And I knew he lived alone- something didn’t sit right.
Then I got the word, beaten and broke,
He culled the whole herd and turned the gun on himself.
I wished that he felt that he could have called,
I’d give it all back just to hear his voice…
But it never rains, it never rains up here
It never rains.
It never rains, it never rains up here,
And the money’s run out
The government’s ignoring the drought.
It never rains, it never rains up here
And despair clouds the town where the coroner comes around
It never rains.
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8. |
Sun Don't Shine
03:00
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Sun Don’t Shine
26/12/2019
I was miles from nowhere searching for a sign,
That all would be forgiven no matter my crimes.
Hanging my salvation on someone else’s line,
Airing my dirty laundry just hoping it would dry.
But the sun don’t shine,
The sun don’t shine,
The sun don’t shine anymore.
I had all of my frustrations just like irons in the fire,
One of them was temptation, one of them was desire.
I should be repenting, and Oh Lord, I tried,
But I was just faking coz I’m dead inside.
And the sun don’t shine,
The sun don’t shine,
The sun don’t shine anymore.
I took the road less travelled and rode it to the end,
Confiding in the Devil like he was my only friend,
Drinking and carousing like the party never ends,
But when it does- OH LORD IT DOES!
(…but not yet boys, not yet)
I was miles and miles from nowhere, hopeless and alone,
Like that stone of Bobby Dylan’s I was searching for a home.
It’s a desperate situation, such a rotten dirty lie,
That the grass is always greener, and every cloud is silver lined.
Coz the sun don’t shine,
The sun don’t shine,
The sun don’t shine on this cold, cold heart of mine.
This cold, cold heart of mine…
(Sun don’t shine)
This cold, cold heart of mine…
(Sun don’t shine)
This cold, cold heart of mine.
The sun don’t shine on this cold, cold heart of mine.
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9. |
The Stockman's Grave
05:31
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The Stockman’s Grave
10/8/2020
In a clearing by a river beneath a red gum’s shade,
A stone’s throw from the water there lies an unmarked grave
Just a simple cairn of rocks betrays the final resting place
Of what the locals came to call- The Stockman’s Grave.
They say there were two brothers, as alike as chalk and cheese,
They did everything together- their blood as thick as thieves
They built up a small empire, the richest men around
Until a woman came between them, whose cunning knew no bounds.
She turned them against each other, she ripped that bond apart,
She took one brother as a lover and she broke the other’s heart.
In a fit of desperation, in a seething, jealous rage,
He plotted and he planned and he dug- the stockman’s grave.
The night before their wedding he tried to put things straight,
He send a summons to the woman, “it is urgent, make haste.”
“Meet me in the clearing by the river, breathe not a word,
Of this to my brother, there’s things that must be heard.”
And all the money that he had, nearly four hundred quid,
He put in a bag and ‘neath the river gums he hid.
On horseback through the mist like a ghostly wraith she came,
And he stepped into the clearing beside- the stockman’s grave.
Her beauty in the moonlight, it could sink a thousand ships,
“You’re the bane of my existence, if I can’t have you he never will.”
So he gave an ultimatum “take this money and leave the town,
Or you’ll spend your wedding night alone beneath the cold damp ground.”
But quick as a viper from her cloak she drew a gun,
And squeezed off the trigger as towards her he sprung.
Startled by the shot the horse kicked him in the face,
And he staggered and dropped like a rock into- the stockman’s grave.
He lay there without moving, either dead or badly hurt,
She seized up the spade and started tossing in the dirt
Only when he was covered did he come to with a start,
And thrust his hand up through the earth and grabbed her by the arm
Pulling her down upon him he got his hands around her throat,
And with the last reserves of strength the life from her he choked,
She collapsed down upon him and he struggled but all in vain,
To move her lifeless body- he was trapped deep in- the stockman’s grave.
In the morning came the groom on his way to the church,
And cutting through the clearing found his bride dead in the dirt
Thinking he’d discovered a lover’s tryst gone bad
He filled in the grave, and loaded rocks into that bag.
Stepping to the water, overcome by grief
He embraced that river like a lover and it swallowed him with greed.
And those locals say sometimes when the wind it blows their way,
You can hear her calling him to rest in – the stockman’s grave.
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10. |
The Best Years
04:09
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The Best Years
Lyrics and music © Dave Wright 20/10/20- 29/5/21
In the dark of night as the memories go flashing by,
And you lie with what’s left of your pride,
All your deepest secrets reconciled.
They say “spare the rod and spoil the child”
Well I’ll never lay a hand on mine,
Once bitten you’ll find I’m quite shy,
Shame on me that you fooled me twice.
And I wonder will you ever find peace,
Will you ever be satisfied,
Because those doubts and regrets, the fear of what happens next,
Will take the best years of your life.
I’m not one to cause a scene,
But these lines I’m reading between,
Call Last Act when those fair ladies sing,
And now a chorus blows in from the wings.
It’s that wild mercury sound,
As the curtain comes tumbling down
So I will take my bow,
I’ll be gone before the cherry blossoms flower.
And I wonder will I ever find peace,
Will I ever be satisfied,
Because those doubts and regrets, the fear of what happens next,
Will take the best years of my life.
It’s better the devil you know,
No good comes when an ill wind blows,
And every diamond that shines grew from coal…
And I wonder will we ever find peace,
Will we ever be satisfied,
Because these doubts and regrets, the fear of what happens next,
Will take the best years of our lives.
Yeah those doubts and regrets, the fear of what happens next,
Will take the best years of our lives,
They took the best years of our lives.
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11. |
Darkness Calling
04:59
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Darkness Calling
Lyrics and Music by Dave Wright
©2020
I’ve roamed and rambled, I’ve followed footsteps,
Of the down trodden, and the broken hearted.
I’ve worked my way around this great big planet,
From its shining rivers to its dirty cities.
And all the time it calls me, the darkness calls me,
Calls me back home.
I’ve drunk with devils, and laid with harlots,
Gambled in temples, and worshipped idols.
I’ve followed orders from blood- thirsty tyrants,
I’ve marched with armies through ransacked empires.
And still it calls me, the darkness calls me,
Calls me back home.
And all I know, that when it’s time to go,
I’ll see it through, like I always do
With no shining lights, no heavenly choirs,
Just the abyss yawning, with the world in mourning,
It’s the darkness calling, the darkness calling,
Calling me back home.
In all my travels down through the ages,
There’s been one thing that brings me comfort.
That despite my best of intentions,
Mankind will find a way to resurrect things.
But still it calls you, the darkness calls you,
Calls you back home.
So all I know, that when it’s time to go,
You’ll see it through, like you always do,
With no shining lights, no heavenly choirs,
Just the abyss yawning, with the whole world burning,
I’m the darkness calling, the darkness calling,
Calling you back home
Calling you back home.
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Dave Wright & The Midnight Ramblers Melbourne, Australia
Formed in 2017, The Midnight Ramblers are Dave Wright's side project and delve deep into his vast catalogue to re- imagine some of his most popular songs into down home country and bluegrass stompers. Heavy on harmonies, with lashing of rolling banjo and soaring fiddle, Dave Wright & the Midnight Ramblers are a rollicking, boot stomping, good time 'ol country hoedown. New album Darkness Calling! ... more
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