Future Promise

AWake

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1 Future Promise 0:00

2 Awake Awake 0:00

3 Mouth the Words 0:00

4 Wait For Heaven 0:00

5 My Woman's A Nation 0:00

6 Brotherless 0:00

7 75 Out 0:00

8 Earthlight 0:00

9 Oh These Hours 0:00

10 Troubled About My Soul 0:00

11 These Days 0:00

F
u
t
u
r
e

P
r
o
m
i
s
e

Future Promise
Settle it up right now

Summer again already
We weren't even waiting
Summer again already
Roll up your sleeves
Show me your brawn and beauty

Take this promise apart
Let's get carried away
Un-stop your heart

Calling it so you know right now
Calling out till you know me now

Future promise
Settle it up right now

It's always been summer
Even when we weren't looking
Can we finally learn?
Roll up our sleeves
See how we're thirsty and yearning

Take this promise apart
Let's get carried away
Un-stop your heart

Calling it so you know right now
Calling out till you know me now

Can't hear what you're trying to say (trying to say)
You're breaking up I'm breaking away
Are we breaking up?
Are we making up?

A
w
a
k
e

A
w
a
k
e

Summer will circle it's coming undone
August and after you won't feel the sun
I see you see me from up on the heights
You tell me everything's gonna to be right
We wind it in circles the questions entwine
What you would give me I'd give it in kind
The trees are still ringing I'm ringing your phone
All of these boys have to go it alone

You're lost I'm lost we're all the same
You say I say we say his name
Alight a light a life is made
He's here he's gone don't let it fade
The salt dissolves your eyes are clear
My hands your hands a single sphere
Awake awake the light has come
An ache an ache the past is numb

We scatter your ashes on out at the break
Gather up all that you left in your wake
It's hard to just live in the air and the sea
With nowhere to land you got nowhere to be
It's like you ain't left but what's left is right here
How come what's so far away is so near
You told me to tell you to wait for your call
Been waiting on you ever since we were small

(chorus)

Fly west
Change skies
Out on the western isles
Slow heal
Try wait
Cry seven hundred miles
Clear seer (steer clear)
Slow learn
A thousand join this choir

(chorus)

M
o
u
t
h

t
h
e

W
o
r
d
s




River bends
Taste the silt and make amends
Mouth the words you couldn't say
You'll be cured of all the things you forgot to pray

First reverse
Change your course cast the curse
There your eyes tumble low
Now you rise out your bed under Chiron's glow

Your sail is full
The harbor's past you feel the pull
It's 10 below you hardly speak
Tombolo the islands swim out past the creek

Do you feel it all?
Can you see it all?
Are you free at all?
Gonna feel it all

Strike a spark
Wrap your arms around the dark
Stars align Saturn turns
Redesign everything you ever learned

Keep it pinned
To your back and feel the wind
Mind the hurt I couldn't stay
Fever burns all the things you didn't say

Do you feel it all?
Can you see it all?
Are you free at all?
Gonna feel it all

Mouth the words you couldn't say
You'll be cured of all the things you forgot to pray

W
a
i
t

F
o
r

H
e
a
v
e
n


Bright morning your blinds are drawn
You think about her off and on
Brick by brick you're still woebegone
Your tower never reached Babylon

You settle up and you settle down
This ain't a bend you can see around
You walk on water and almost drowned
Now watch yourself with that thorny crown

Out it in the distance it's plain as song
You wait for heaven you wait too long

Imma plant nothing this season
Bone tired no reason
No one said this ground was laid even
Some forests ain't got no trees in

A city's never completed
Every garden can be reseeded
Don't worry if you're feeling mistreated
This time it won't be repeated

(chorus)

I know how hard you tried
But heaven's on the inside

Generations keep on repeating
We're all trying to find a house to believe in
A hand's there to lift every ceiling
A ladder back to this feeling

(chorus)


M
y

W
o
m
a
n
'
s

A

N
a
t
i
o
n



Here take my hand
So this wedding band will ring
If we ladder up our voices
The crowd will all rejoice and sing
You know my hiding places
I see your many faces too
Time can't erase
Even trace of you

My woman's a nation
My civilization

You know it means the most
To see you on your native coast so free
The ocean meets the land
We run into the sand and sea
All the things that could've been
This wild sea you're swimming in with me
Someone turned the hourglass
The world is moving way too fast to see

My woman's a nation
My civilization

This Baltimore morning
I'm on the wrong coast
I'm always touring
I miss you the most
Just follow the sounds
Look up at the stars
Apollo's a healer
His story is ours
In Cleveland this evening
I want to be home
The room's full of people
I'm still sleeping alone
This Japanese maple
Is blocking the moon
Now Artemis' twin
Is coming home soon

My idol my altar
My sister my maker
My heiress my daughter
My circuit my breaker
My keep it together
My measure of hours
My mirror my seer
My magical power
My back in the day when you
Whispered "come stay" and we
Kissed until morning I
Never turned over we
Fell into photographs
Double exposure
Now twenty years later
A home and two labors
A garden of plenty
A love that won't waver

B
r
o
t
h
e
r
l
e
s
s


Trouble made your troubled mind
Trouble catches you every time
Suddenly you're gone too soon
Poems fill your empty room

You ain't sure, it's a working cure
Astral salt from far offshore
Burning bush, signal hill
Rainbow sign but a silent will

Book of change, book of acts
Your story's full of blurry facts
What you felt we can only guess
There are mountains hidden in hiddenness

Second sight, second son
Who'll watch over me now that you're gone
Citywide, hazel green
Brotherless from here on in

7
5

O
u
t

It's 75 out and you can't see past your window
You know you're alive but still the world is moving slo-mo
You open a book and find a phrase that you can borrow
It's something you took but you'll forget you did tomorrow

The coffee is dark but it's a start so you go outside
Still don't feel a spark that's something your poor heart's never tried
You hear a sound out in the background for a minute
There's a world all around you don't forget that you are in it

You can't find your way around this city anymore so
You only walk halfway and take a taxi to my front door
I let you inside for the last time but you don't know yet
We talk by the bedside in the darkness share a cigarette

I make up my bed but inside your head we're still sleeping
Nothing is said you get up instead and you feel like weeping
That look you give me makes me feel like I'm your mother
How can we live like this when you see me as the other


You tell it backwards like it started with this ending
Like we're method actors and we're only just pretending
There's salt in your wound but someday soon you'll have a new chance
Someone attuned or maybe immune to this kind of romance

You stare at the ground but you want to lay down so you stare at the ceiling
Nothing profound you're just surrounded by this feeling

E
a
r
t
h
l
i
g
h
t

First we start by watching
The waxing of the moon
It's an ancient observation
We dance around the room
There's a certain expectation
You find is wearing thin
But you know it's just a moment
We're all here living in
Living in

Your first birth constellation
If those stars could see you now
Would they circle round your orbit
Bright seven's Starry Plough
It was always hard to reach you
A hand I couldn't lend
Has the season come unhinged now
Like the meaning of a friend
Of a friend

The old Moon is in the new Moon's arms

Now you're ghosting past me
Like you're already gone
Cause the hills are calling to you
You can't name the path you're on
You're wandering the stacks now
In the library of desire
The wild silk is growing
Higher and higher
And higher

There's a sound like slowing thunder
A gurney rolling through
Your deathbed's getting made now
No matter what you do
The night is full of wonder
Sparks above the clay
Fireworks surround you
Saltpeter where you lay
Where you lay

The old Moon is in the new Moon's arms

O
h

T
h
e
s
e

H
o
u
r
s




Sunup prayer to light the morning
Feels just like the house we were born in
All those years that moved like light speed
Sturdy seeds became such tall trees

It hurts that you're gone
I'll befriend the unknown
I know your kingdom was quiet
But you were never alone
It hurts that you're gone
I'll befriend the unknown
Now my kingdom is quiet
But I know I'm never alone

Searchlight arms forever reaching
Shadowboxing always teaching
You did poses, Moses, without number
Asked the questions brothers wonder

Hand on the water
Wind on the sea
Blue walls are parted
Who's watching me
Set my boat out on the ocean
Part the water with these oars
Row toward the life
I somehow always thought was yours

Oh these hours are breaking nightly
Count the days are quiet my nights free

T
r
o
u
b
l
e
d





A
b
o
u
t

M
y

S
o
u
l

Wonder about my brother
I wonder where he's gone
Somewhere in the kingdom
He won't be worried long

I am troubled troubled troubled all about my soul
Just as soon as my feet strike Zion
I won't be troubled no more

Father he got worried
Worried all about his soul
Just as soon as his feet strike Zion
He won't be worried no more

Sister she got worried
Worried all about her soul
Just as soon as her feet strike Zion
She won't be worried no more

I am troubled troubled troubled all about my soul
Just as soon as my feet strike Zion
I won't be troubled no more

Wonder about my mother
I wonder where she's gone
Somewhere in the kingdom
She won't be worried long

I am troubled troubled troubled all about my soul
Just as soon as my feet strike Zion
I won't be troubled no more

T
h
e
s
e

D
a
y
s

It's coming on quickly like December
The ice is cracking 'neath my feet
Winter's fruit is bittersweet
These feelings from further back than I can remember

I don't know where to begin
It's coming in clear
How to hold it all dear
Wish I could call and tell you everything
These days

We were heading west to find a life with promise
I'd lean in and you'd pull me through
I felt like I could be anything next to you
I had no idea what I was doing, honest

We drove through the fog quiet and steady
Everything so mythic
Just look at that blue Pacific
It was like California knew us already
In those days

Your shadow was ten feet tall
So many things you kept from me
The silence and the secrecy
Sometimes I wondered if you saw me at all

Now I'm reeling on this sudden morning
It's like we've been here before
Except I can't feel you anymore
Woke up and you were gone without a warning
One day

You said we learned to talk without talking
And you were right, we still do
Can't you hear me talking?
Cause I'm out here talking to you
These days

You're looking younger in every photograph
Like the opposite of a Polaroid
You fade back black into the void
You disappeared before the second half

You closed your eyes and the stars came out
You always said you'd die trying
I never thought you'd try dying
It's hard to know what we can live without
These days

V
i
d
e
o
s

D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
s

A
b
o
u
t

1

F
u
t
u
r
e

P
r
o
m
i
s
e

Future Promise
Settle it up right now

Summer again already
We weren't even waiting
Summer again already
Roll up your sleeves
Show me your brawn and beauty

Take this promise apart
Let's get carried away
Un-stop your heart

Calling it so you know right now
Calling out till you know me now

Future promise
Settle it up right now

It's always been summer
Even when we weren't looking
Can we finally learn?
Roll up our sleeves
See how we're thirsty and yearning

Take this promise apart
Let's get carried away
Un-stop your heart

Calling it so you know right now
Calling out till you know me now

Can't hear what you're trying to say (trying to say)
You're breaking up I'm breaking away
Are we breaking up?
Are we making up?
2

A
w
a
k
e

A
w
a
k
e

Summer will circle it's coming undone
August and after you won't feel the sun
I see you see me from up on the heights
You tell me everything's gonna to be right
We wind it in circles the questions entwine
What you would give me I'd give it in kind
The trees are still ringing I'm ringing your phone
All of these boys have to go it alone

You're lost I'm lost we're all the same
You say I say we say his name
Alight a light a life is made
He's here he's gone don't let it fade
The salt dissolves your eyes are clear
My hands your hands a single sphere
Awake awake the light has come
An ache an ache the past is numb

We scatter your ashes on out at the break
Gather up all that you left in your wake
It's hard to just live in the air and the sea
With nowhere to land you got nowhere to be
It's like you ain't left but what's left is right here
How come what's so far away is so near
You told me to tell you to wait for your call
Been waiting on you ever since we were small

(chorus)

Fly west
Change skies
Out on the western isles
Slow heal
Try wait
Cry seven hundred miles
Clear seer (steer clear)
Slow learn
A thousand join this choir

(chorus)

3

M
o
u
t
h

t
h
e

W
o
r
d
s




River bends
Taste the silt and make amends
Mouth the words you couldn't say
You'll be cured of all the things you forgot to pray

First reverse
Change your course cast the curse
There your eyes tumble low
Now you rise out your bed under Chiron's glow

Your sail is full
The harbor's past you feel the pull
It's 10 below you hardly speak
Tombolo the islands swim out past the creek

Do you feel it all?
Can you see it all?
Are you free at all?
Gonna feel it all

Strike a spark
Wrap your arms around the dark
Stars align Saturn turns
Redesign everything you ever learned

Keep it pinned
To your back and feel the wind
Mind the hurt I couldn't stay
Fever burns all the things you didn't say

Do you feel it all?
Can you see it all?
Are you free at all?
Gonna feel it all

Mouth the words you couldn't say
You'll be cured of all the things you forgot to pray
4

W
a
i
t

F
o
r

H
e
a
v
e
n


Bright morning your blinds are drawn
You think about her off and on
Brick by brick you're still woebegone
Your tower never reached Babylon

You settle up and you settle down
This ain't a bend you can see around
You walk on water and almost drowned
Now watch yourself with that thorny crown

Out it in the distance it's plain as song
You wait for heaven you wait too long

Imma plant nothing this season
Bone tired no reason
No one said this ground was laid even
Some forests ain't got no trees in

A city's never completed
Every garden can be reseeded
Don't worry if you're feeling mistreated
This time it won't be repeated

(chorus)

I know how hard you tried
But heaven's on the inside

Generations keep on repeating
We're all trying to find a house to believe in
A hand's there to lift every ceiling
A ladder back to this feeling

(chorus)


5

M
y

W
o
m
a
n
'
s

A

N
a
t
i
o
n



Here take my hand
So this wedding band will ring
If we ladder up our voices
The crowd will all rejoice and sing
You know my hiding places
I see your many faces too
Time can't erase
Even trace of you

My woman's a nation
My civilization

You know it means the most
To see you on your native coast so free
The ocean meets the land
We run into the sand and sea
All the things that could've been
This wild sea you're swimming in with me
Someone turned the hourglass
The world is moving way too fast to see

My woman's a nation
My civilization

This Baltimore morning
I'm on the wrong coast
I'm always touring
I miss you the most
Just follow the sounds
Look up at the stars
Apollo's a healer
His story is ours
In Cleveland this evening
I want to be home
The room's full of people
I'm still sleeping alone
This Japanese maple
Is blocking the moon
Now Artemis' twin
Is coming home soon

My idol my altar
My sister my maker
My heiress my daughter
My circuit my breaker
My keep it together
My measure of hours
My mirror my seer
My magical power
My back in the day when you
Whispered "come stay" and we
Kissed until morning I
Never turned over we
Fell into photographs
Double exposure
Now twenty years later
A home and two labors
A garden of plenty
A love that won't waver
6

B
r
o
t
h
e
r
l
e
s
s


Trouble made your troubled mind
Trouble catches you every time
Suddenly you're gone too soon
Poems fill your empty room

You ain't sure, it's a working cure
Astral salt from far offshore
Burning bush, signal hill
Rainbow sign but a silent will

Book of change, book of acts
Your story's full of blurry facts
What you felt we can only guess
There are mountains hidden in hiddenness

Second sight, second son
Who'll watch over me now that you're gone
Citywide, hazel green
Brotherless from here on in
7

7
5

O
u
t

It's 75 out and you can't see past your window
You know you're alive but still the world is moving slo-mo
You open a book and find a phrase that you can borrow
It's something you took but you'll forget you did tomorrow

The coffee is dark but it's a start so you go outside
Still don't feel a spark that's something your poor heart's never tried
You hear a sound out in the background for a minute
There's a world all around you don't forget that you are in it

You can't find your way around this city anymore so
You only walk halfway and take a taxi to my front door
I let you inside for the last time but you don't know yet
We talk by the bedside in the darkness share a cigarette

I make up my bed but inside your head we're still sleeping
Nothing is said you get up instead and you feel like weeping
That look you give me makes me feel like I'm your mother
How can we live like this when you see me as the other


You tell it backwards like it started with this ending
Like we're method actors and we're only just pretending
There's salt in your wound but someday soon you'll have a new chance
Someone attuned or maybe immune to this kind of romance

You stare at the ground but you want to lay down so you stare at the ceiling
Nothing profound you're just surrounded by this feeling
8

E
a
r
t
h
l
i
g
h
t

First we start by watching
The waxing of the moon
It's an ancient observation
We dance around the room
There's a certain expectation
You find is wearing thin
But you know it's just a moment
We're all here living in
Living in

Your first birth constellation
If those stars could see you now
Would they circle round your orbit
Bright seven's Starry Plough
It was always hard to reach you
A hand I couldn't lend
Has the season come unhinged now
Like the meaning of a friend
Of a friend

The old Moon is in the new Moon's arms

Now you're ghosting past me
Like you're already gone
Cause the hills are calling to you
You can't name the path you're on
You're wandering the stacks now
In the library of desire
The wild silk is growing
Higher and higher
And higher

There's a sound like slowing thunder
A gurney rolling through
Your deathbed's getting made now
No matter what you do
The night is full of wonder
Sparks above the clay
Fireworks surround you
Saltpeter where you lay
Where you lay

The old Moon is in the new Moon's arms
9

O
h

T
h
e
s
e

H
o
u
r
s




Sunup prayer to light the morning
Feels just like the house we were born in
All those years that moved like light speed
Sturdy seeds became such tall trees

It hurts that you're gone
I'll befriend the unknown
I know your kingdom was quiet
But you were never alone
It hurts that you're gone
I'll befriend the unknown
Now my kingdom is quiet
But I know I'm never alone

Searchlight arms forever reaching
Shadowboxing always teaching
You did poses, Moses, without number
Asked the questions brothers wonder

Hand on the water
Wind on the sea
Blue walls are parted
Who's watching me
Set my boat out on the ocean
Part the water with these oars
Row toward the life
I somehow always thought was yours

Oh these hours are breaking nightly
Count the days are quiet my nights free
10

T
r
o
u
b
l
e
d





A
b
o
u
t

M
y

S
o
u
l

Wonder about my brother
I wonder where he's gone
Somewhere in the kingdom
He won't be worried long

I am troubled troubled troubled all about my soul
Just as soon as my feet strike Zion
I won't be troubled no more

Father he got worried
Worried all about his soul
Just as soon as his feet strike Zion
He won't be worried no more

Sister she got worried
Worried all about her soul
Just as soon as her feet strike Zion
She won't be worried no more

I am troubled troubled troubled all about my soul
Just as soon as my feet strike Zion
I won't be troubled no more

Wonder about my mother
I wonder where she's gone
Somewhere in the kingdom
She won't be worried long

I am troubled troubled troubled all about my soul
Just as soon as my feet strike Zion
I won't be troubled no more
11

T
h
e
s
e

D
a
y
s

It's coming on quickly like December
The ice is cracking 'neath my feet
Winter's fruit is bittersweet
These feelings from further back than I can remember

I don't know where to begin
It's coming in clear
How to hold it all dear
Wish I could call and tell you everything
These days

We were heading west to find a life with promise
I'd lean in and you'd pull me through
I felt like I could be anything next to you
I had no idea what I was doing, honest

We drove through the fog quiet and steady
Everything so mythic
Just look at that blue Pacific
It was like California knew us already
In those days

Your shadow was ten feet tall
So many things you kept from me
The silence and the secrecy
Sometimes I wondered if you saw me at all

Now I'm reeling on this sudden morning
It's like we've been here before
Except I can't feel you anymore
Woke up and you were gone without a warning
One day

You said we learned to talk without talking
And you were right, we still do
Can't you hear me talking?
Cause I'm out here talking to you
These days

You're looking younger in every photograph
Like the opposite of a Polaroid
You fade back black into the void
You disappeared before the second half

You closed your eyes and the stars came out
You always said you'd die trying
I never thought you'd try dying
It's hard to know what we can live without
These days
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AWake

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AWake

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AWake

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About
"Awake, awake, the light has come," sings Jayme Stone in the title track of his new album; one of stargazing tales that sing from a white-hot core of love and loss. On AWake Stone breaks new ground: from folk musician and composer to experimental pop singer and producer. A unique tonal palette blends with deft storytelling and disarmingly honest lyrics to create a sonic world both eminently engaging and full of nuance and surprise.

The songs on AWake mark a new creative start for Stone, who is best-known for his banjo playing and world-wise roots albums like Africa to Appalachia, Lomax Project, and Folklife. Now we hear Stone singing, playing guitar and OP 1 (a micro-synth, sampler and sequencer). He captures and sculpts sounds—felted piano, bass clarinet, analog synths and sequencers—until they're hazy and unrecognizable.

AWake features Felicity Williams (Bahamas), Jason Burger (Big Thief), Daniela Gesundheit (Feist), Jason Linder (David Bowie), Alec Spielgelman (Cuddle Magic) and more. It was co-produced by Stone and David Travers-Smith, his longtime collaborator who has recorded, mixed, mastered and co-produced all of Stone's records.

"For years I knew I had these songs in me," shares Stone. "Like I had a premonition that some future me was driving backwards in time, full of songs, and at some point, we'd meet." In July 2018, Stone had earmarked six weeks off the road to start writing a new record. On day one, his brother Michael, a well-known teacher of yoga and Buddhism, died suddenly and unexpectedly. In the yawning ache of being brotherless, the songs became oracles—new ways to reckon with who his brother was, and who he himself was becoming. Stone sings: "What you felt, we can only guess / There are mountains hidden in hiddenness." At times, Stone felt himself to be the keeper of his brother's shadow, having known him so long in all his complexity. The song "Brotherless" samples his brother's voice and quotes zen poet Dōgen's "Mountain and Water Sutra."

AWake consults the stars and planets for direction. In the song "Earthlight," the sun reflects off the earth and onto the moon, capturing the mysterious ways in which the planets and constellations pull invisibly on our lives. And we feel it: the song wanders breathlessly with a sense of wonder, weaving intricate guitar melodies with unexpected offbeats and offset line-breaks, programmed drums interlaced with a drum kit, glitchy bass clarinet and vocal samples. In the glowing lostness that permeates these songs, we zoom through space as we listen: witnessing the invisible tug of forces we can't control on our bodies and our lives.

"Mouth the Words," conjures the tumult and tenderness of Saturn return, that time in our lives when we reckon with the past to renew our lives for the future. "Strike a spark / Wrap your arms around the dark / Stars align Saturn turns / Redesign everything you ever learned," sings Stone, full of forgiveness and hope. In the sun-drenched, Afro-pop sparkle of "Future Promise," a couple rolls up their sleeves to re-make a relationship in danger of sinking. Voices crackle through cell phone static, two people trying to hear and to be heard.

"My Woman's a Nation," is a song about long-term love, a touring musician's love letter home—"My idol my altar / My sister my maker / My heiress my daughter / My circuit my breaker." Sounds and styles cross-pollinate: the warm glow of a Prophet synth, surround sound back-up vocals and a bridge that draws from spoken word. "Wait for Heaven" features bursts of pitched up vocals and kaleidoscopic hooks in the song's upper atmosphere.

AWake was recorded at Figure 8 in Brooklyn, a space that feels more akin to a community center or Japanese monastery than a studio. Entering from the street, musicians take off their shoes and walk through the kitchen with farmer's market produce on the counter. The studio, made of reclaimed wine barrels, cork and felt, is drenched in sunlight. The studio's owner, Shahzad Ismaily (who also guests on the album) has a dizzying collection of rare synthesizers and one of world's few Klavins Una Corda keyboards (which anchors several songs on the album).

Stone has made a rare thing: a piece of work that asks us to both travel on his melodic and emotional journey and allows us to have our own.

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Thank you!

Music:
Jayme Stone
jaymestone.com
jayme@jaymestone.com

Publicity:
Ever Kipp
tinyhuman.com
ever@tinyhuman.com