Tracks 1, 5, 9, 11 & 12 were recorded during the 

 sessions, Nov. 2003, in the basement of the old place (now demolished):
Dan McCarthy (singing, playing)
Ted Stevens (yodeling: 5)
Pat Oakes (drums: 1,12)
Tim Kasher (accordion: 5,11)
Reneé Ledesma Hoover (singing: 5)
Bill Hoover (guitar: 9)
Alex McManus (tipple: 11)
Mark Maziarz (harmonica: 9)
& everyone who showed up for Thanksgiving (singing, stomping: 12)
Ted engineered and ran the tape machine.

Tracks 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 & 13 were recorded during the 

It’s Got Nothing to Do with the Drinking 

sessions, Nov. 2005 through Feb. 2006, in the living room of the new place:
Dan McCarthy (singing, playing)
Ryan Fox (bass guitar: 8; drums: 3,6,13; electric guitar: 7,8)
Steve Bartolomei (electric guitar: 3,6)
Adrianne Verhoeven (singing: 8)
Orenda Fink (singing: 2)
Mark ‘Leather Lungs’ Maziarz (harmonica: 13)
Ted’s tape machine again.

Ian Aeillo mixed everything at Presto! in Lincoln, Nebr., with added bells/whistles.

Thanks also to A.J. Mogis and Jake Bellows for aid in mixing.

Mastered by Doug Van Sloun at Studio B in Omaha, Nebr.

McCarthy Trenching

I’m calling in my favors, boys.
It’s last call for all the beers that you owe me.
I think you know where to meet me.
Let’s go where all of the bartenders know me.
Go on and bring your brothers.
Why not invite my ex-girlfriends down.
Only losers are weepers:
You can tell them I won’t be seeing them around.
I am not long for this world.

Pat can have my guitar.
Bill, I’m only way to bring back your bass.
And I’ve got someone’s accordion —
You know, the one with the snakeskin case.
I’ve made my final arrangements;
My sister knows how to dispose of my stuff.
Tonight set fire to my basement,
And if I’m lucky the flames won’t wake me up.
I am not long for this world.

I think I know where I’m headed,
So I could use all the help I can get.
I’m pretty sure that the sins I’ve committed
Are worse than the ones I haven’t got around to yet,
So I been thinking about penance.
I think I’ll go up and settle my tab.
It’s been an awful, short sentence.
The crimes at the time didn’t seem so bad.
I am not long for this world.

So meet me, yeah meet me at the Holy Ghost Saloon.
If you plan to see me, you better get there soon.

I Am Not Long for This World

Terry, won’t you tell me what is your real name?
I’d like for it to be Teresa, just like my favorite saint.
I doubt you grew up Catholic, or no longer are at least,
But the way you ask your questions, you oughta been a priest.

I never read the headlines, but always read the bylines.
Because it’s not what you know, it’s who told you so.

Maureen, you might blush if I tell a dirty joke,
But I bet you like martinis and an after-dinner smoke.
I know your mother’s letters made men second-guess
If those with most conviction were endowed with righteousness.

Amanda, I know you’re picky and probably a little prude,
But I don’t want to sleep with you, I just want to try your food.
So won’t you make us supper and pour a cup of wine?
I’ve heard about your husband, and I don’t want to meet him this time.

Headlines

Trisha works the triple-X place out on the interstate.
She was trained to be a teacher, but she needed to get paid.
She tells me, “Never fall for love, boy, and you’ll never be betrayed.
Mine’s a hard life, but I’ve chosen to keep going.”

She asks me, “Is it better in your dreams?
That surely ain’t the way it is with me.
No, my visions are dimmer than my reality.
Mine’s a hard life, but I’ve chosen to keep going.

“And I’ve got a little boy at home.
I keep praying to No One that when he’s grown
He’s gonna be honest unlike any of the bastards I have known.
Mine’s a hard life, but I’ve chosen to keep going.

“Go on and show me the bright side, and I can tell you why it’s a lie.
There ain’t one thing in Odessa, Missouri gonna go my way before I die.

“They all say I should sing another tune.
But tell me what’s a girl like me to do:
I don’t suffer fools gladly and consider lovers fools.
Mine’s a hard life, but I’ve chosen to keep going.”

Ours was not much of a romance.
It had not been much of a lap dance.
But before she’d let me get up from the table,
Trisha made sure that I had paid her
For all her advice.

Driving from Cleveland to Boston, thought of turning left at Buffalo
And going to see a girl who was living up in Toronto
And who I knew when I was a kid.
Lord knows what all we did.

I believe she was my one chance to marry young,
To have some dark-haired daughters and some guitar-picking sons,
And try and realize my plan to raise a real fine bluegrass band.

I had an awful long way to go, and I had been travelin’ alone.
What if I’d showed up and said, “Why don’t you come on to the show?”
Things might be different now.
But what if she’d said no?

I believe she was my one chance to marry young,
To have a fiddlin’ daughter and a banjo-pickin’ son,
And try and realize my plan to raise a real fine bluegrass band.

I never picked up the telephone.
I never saw the shores of Lake Ontario.
I never dialed that area code.
I never saw the shores of Lake Ontario.

I believe she was my one chance to marry young,
To have a dobro daughter and a mandolin-pickin’ son,
And try and realize my plan to raise a real fine bluegrass band.

Seems I’m always on my way back home. What’s that they say makes a house a home?
I got nothing waiting for me there except my big old piano.
It’s not a matter of things gone wrong, only things left undone.

Ask not for whom the bells ring. They shall never ring for me.

Wedding Song

I come to the bar to be alone.
I think of this tavern as a second home.
Away from my kids and wife,
I imagine a better life.
I come to the bar to be alone.

My old friends sometimes ask me where I’ve gone
And wonder why I won’t join them for a little fun.
But I can’t stand the cocktail crowd.
My old haunts, they just haunt me now.
I come to the bar to be alone.

I need an hour of solace for my own.
When this old world tries to get me down,
I order a glass of beer.
I find cold comfort here.
I come to the bar to be alone.

Sometimes the other barflies try to strike up a conversation.
They can’t understand what keeps me coming back.
It’s not the women or the booze:
It’s the solitude.
I come to the bar to be alone.

Cold Comfort

We are the poorest players in the Sport of Kings.
Not being able to eat will make a man mean.
Lately I can’t seem to keep myself from questioning,
Is it worth the run through the mud just for one moment in the sun?

On these reclaimed floodplains and county fairgrounds,
As the ambulance driver keeps chasing us around,
For these poor old men who drive their pickups into town,
Is it worth us tearing up our guts just for them to have a little fun?
I hate the fat men who own the ponies
And their fat hands that hold the cash.
Fattened billfolds hold more than money.
They possess the papers and the deeds: the victories of ancestry.

But our blood is older than this country,
And yours at least is far more pure.
Together we may create beauty.
Together we may achieve something that will endure.

We were born and bred to run.
We were raised and trained to run.
We are paid and persuaded to run.
Plus the drugs they push on us to thin our blood and make us run.

The Victories of Ancestry

The special is sweet. The barkeep keeps it week.
There’s only bad music and sports on TV.
I used to yearn for something the opposite of these:
Something pure and good and quiet.
I’m not gonna find it, not here.

The prices are high. So are half the drunks,
Trying to see how cheap you can get on a hundred bucks.
I’m a long way from home, one among strangers.
Places like this can be downright dangerous for a man like me.

I left my ring in my room, concealed from view
Among a dozen little bottles of booze.
She and I could drink a few, never mind the cost.
Money you never spend will be money you have lost in the end.

I didn’t catch your name. That’s very nice.
Forgive me for my habit of having to ask twice.
I see you don’t wear a ring, a pretty girl like yourself.
Ain’t it a shame when a pretty thing just sits on the shelf?

Hotel Lobby Bar

I believe everything I read,
And I read indiscriminately.
I’ve been watching so much TV,
I’ve got a laugh track in my dreams.
Don’t know why I’m so listless, but I’ve got myself convinced
It’s got nothing to do with the drinking.

No, I don’t think you’re funny: I’m just hung over and laughing
About something that happened yesterday.
I don’t find you too attractive, but that’s all right.
I don’t like my friends to be that way.
Don’t know why I’m so careless….

Did I ever tell you about the time
I dived downstairs twice in one night?
Or about the occasion when I got a concussion
Walking home in broad daylight?
Don’t know why I’m so reckless….

Dissolution

Michaela, I’m sorry. I spent up all your money
On a hooker in Memphis. She bore a strong resemblance
To your sister, and I remember everything that she wore:
Just hot pants, and high boots, and not much more.
But if you forgive me, I swear that I’ll remember
Everything about you.

Michaela, I’m sorry. I wrecked your old jalopy.
I was running from a hooker who said I owed her money,
And I guess I got going a little too fast.
I was drunk and got confused between the brake and the gas.
But if you forgive me, I swear that I will buy you something
Clean and new.

Michaela, I’m sorry, but I got thrown in prison
On account of the hooker was really a policeman,
And the judge was mean. He threw the book at me.
Now I’m out on parole, but I can’t leave Tennessee.
But if you forgive me, I swear that I will ever be
Kind and true.

Michaela, now I realize you probably found some other guy,
And I ain’t got a leg to stand on.
But I came down here to buy a ring, and thought I’d have a final fling,
It just took a little longer than I’d planned on.

So now, Junior, tell your mama I’m really very sorry
About Memphis and the hooker, about her old jalopy.
But I’ll buy her that ring. I’ll make my amends
If she can find it in her heart to send
Some money. Michaela, I spent up all your money.

Michaela

I’m going to make myself hard to find.
I’m going to retreat from this town with just a worried mind.

I’m going to make myself deaf to your cries.
You keep making promises and I just spit out lies.

I’ve made so many mistakes.
Not least of these was each time I convinced you to stay.

I’ve inflicted coarseness and pain.
It’s not your fault; I’m the one to blame.

There are problems I cannot solve.
You keep needing sugar; I’ve got cupboards full of salt.

I admit that I am running away.
I can no longer recognize the beauty in your face,
So I’m giving up and running away.

Running Away Blues

One of the daytime boys bit the dust.
It was before his time, but he’d hurried it up.
They say no one’s gonna miss him much.
The Wood will be a wake tonight.

Now one of the barstools sits empty.
There’s nobody taking shots of Wild Turkey.
Happy Hour’s getting started early.

When they found him, they couldn’t tell
If he went the long way around, or took a shortcut to Hell.
It’s all probably just as well.

But the barkeep won’t romanticize.
He wants the newspaper man to get the facts right.
He says, “Look me in the eyes.
He was a bastard. He was bitter,
A bad drunk, a worse tipper.”
To make his life into a love song would be the worst kind of lie.

The Wood Will Be a Wake Tonight

She was a good girl before she met me,
And I thought I’d introduce her to corruption.
But love is a bargain, and she drove a hard one.
Before long, she’d beat me into submission.
But I kept on drinking and it started to rankle
When she’d talk to me about ambition.
I wasn’t willing to give up on the bottle,
And that turned out to be one of her conditions.
Now that she’s kicked me out…

I can’t wait to get back to my old ways.
I’m gonna get me a gallon of hundred-proof whiskey
And get drunk for three days.
I’m gonna take all the girls from the bar home with me
And see which one of them stays.
God, ain’t it great to be free.

One night I came home about four in the morning,
And she was waiting up with the lights on.
So I grabbed my guitar and I started picking something.
I guess I didn’t play the right song.
Then I made the mistake when she started crying
Of trying to ask her what’s wrong.
She said, “Goddam you, you better get packing.
That’s the last time you’ll ask me that question.”
Now that she’s kicked me out…

My Old Ways

Sorrow requires memory. Just ask that old lady.
She’s either angry or she’s happy, but never for more than a minute.
There’s a moment, and she’s in it: that’s all.

That lady is my grandma, but she does not know it.
That lady might love me, but she don’t know to show it.
Still, it ain’t as if she’d thrown it away.

I’ve known the loneliness passed on from my grandma.
It haunted her awfully, but now she has forgotten,
Like she pared away the rotten parts.

Credits

McCarthy Trenching

1. I Am Not Long for This World

2. Headlines

3. XXX

4. Wedding Song

5. Cold Comfort

6. The Victories of Ancestry

7. Hotel Lobby Bar

8. Dissolution

9. Michaela

10. Running Away Blues

11. The Wood Will Be a Wake Tonight

12. My Old Ways

13. It's Not Always Pretty