As a songwriter and performer, it's hard to know how much raw material to reveal. As creative expression becomes more and more an all too readily available commodity, people's eyes and ears are developing a thicker "skin" and I believe it is becoming necessary for independent artists to connect to their audience with greater authenticity in order to garner the support and interest needed to sustain a career. More importantly, my highest goal as a musician is to express my experiences and life lessons through songs as a way to connect and relate to others for the greater good. As I share my gift, I find myself receiving and evolving on many levels. On that note, welcome to my soul.This is a space where I am collecting songs and writings that I've been working on since my last official release in November 2009. Occasionally, I might offer a story about a particular experience or idea that is running around in my head. But mostly I will post songs and lyrics. Most posts include lyrics, a rough recording and a picture that is somehow connected to the inspiration and/or the mood the song. Over the summer of 2010, I was fortunate enough to be offered a day of free recording at a beautiful studio up in Bellingham, WA with my good friends Phil Sottile and Chip Westerfield. "Kick" and "Petrified" were recorded there. "Lighthouse" was recorded during a live show in Boise, ID. "Carbon" is one of the takes during the "Bengalese Butterflies" sessions. I hope you enjoy what you find and I invite and encourage you to respond in any way, whether its critique, encouragment or a glimpse into the churnings of your own creative process.
01/26/2011
Finally Over
FInally Over by Havilah
This is a song about letting go. Often our lives take us to places that can be unexpectedly dark and dismal. We don't always know how we ended up there or why. In my experience, the best use of these times is to turn within and let the darkness stay, sometimes even revelling it, really feeling it and letting it take you over. There is work being done somewhere inside that you might not be consciously aware of but when the dark begins to pass, there is sure to be light shed on what was learned and gained from the experience. This song speaks mostly to that part of the experience, when the light at the end of the tunnel is finally in sight and moments of euphoria begin to become less far and few between. In order to bring that light closer, it is necessary, no matter how hard it may seem to be grateful for the experience. Without challenges there can be no evolution, without work dreams never come to fruition. Without darkness there is no light. The last verse "I want to climb inside you.." is speaking about the urge to return to dark forces only because they are familiar. It takes courage to step on a train headed to somewhere unknown remaining lighthearted and optimistic about what adventures may lay ahead.
Words and Music by Havilah Rand and Billy Masters and Chris Hawkes copywrite 2010
It's finally over
That long dark storm
I can see the change a comin
He's walkin through my door
Freedom is falling
Without Knowing where your gonna land
All these unanswered prayers
So I just held out my hand
When lightening finally strikes you
Face down on the ground
Look up to that big blue sky
So grateful for what I've already found
Chorus
I wanna climb inside you
Stay dry from all the rain
This time I think I'll stay here
Waiting on another lonesome train
Freedom is falling
Without Knowing where your gonna land
All these unanwered prayers
So I just held out my hand
01/12/2011
Kick
Kick Summer 2010 by Havilah
Words and Music by Havilah Rand copywrite 2010
Maybe I’m the dirt on the road you want to travel
Maybe I’m that scared look in your eye
Maybe I’m the flower on the bush that we sat under
And I catch all of the tears that you cry
Your crazy crazy crazy and im the voice that keeps you from runnin
your lazy lazy lazy and I’m the kick you never saw comin
we’re empty bottles floatin down a river
waiting on some distant shore
when they finally find us honey
there’ll be no message
just echoes of a love so long ago
Your crazy crazy crazy and im the voice that keeps you from runnin
your lazy lazy lazy and I’m the kick you never saw comin
maybe I’m just words you read over and over
a song you will never forget
for I love you like the wind
and I love you like the rain
and I know someday that sun gonna shine shine shine again
Petrified
Petrified by Havilah
This song uses both definitions of the word "petrified" to express the permanent imprint life experiences leave in our hearts and psyches and the fear we often have that there are parts of ourselves we can never change, for better or worse. I describe three memories from my life as the verses. The first verse describes a walk I took hundreds of times to the corner store down the street from where I lived in Bristol, CT when I was growing up. There was a man who didn't speak English who worked there. He always smiled and was friendly as I paid for my candy or whatever treats I was purchasing with the spare change my Mom had given me. I was too young to really be conscious of the fact that not all people spoke the same language or had the same colored skin. He was a mystery to me. I saw him almost every day for years but I never learned his name. The second verse describes raking piles of leaves in the fall. The smells and colors of those days are burned into my soul and my heart aches to be there again just imagining them. The third verse speaks about rastafarian drug dealers that manned the four corners of the street I lived on in the east village of Manhattan. Like the clerk at the corner store, we never actually spoke or introduced ourselves but I always felt that they watched over me, protected me. They too always greeted me with smiles and mysterious stories that took place in strange lands glittered in their eyes. The choruses refer to the fear that I will always make choices based on past experiences, that I will never escape this fear that I will never be able to feel or love the present moment the way I did then.
Words and Music by Havilah Rand copywrite 2010
Far away
there's a road we walk down every night
to the store on the corner
buy our sweets and say hello to the man
from the faraway land
he speaks in tongues and laughs as we pound the bottles down
all alone
in a pile
I gathered the whole day
more alive than I've ever felt before
this is the smell I remember take me to an orange day
and a boy from a faraway land
he speaks in tongues and laughs as we pull the curtain down
I'm petrified all these stories burned inside
I'm petrified all I see is you
in this light
East 9th St
alphabet side of the city
I wander a little too close to the other side
and the men from the faraway lands
they speak in tongues
i swear they's pull their guns
if I should ever run into danger
Petrified
I'm petrified all these stories burned inside
I'm petrified all I see is you
in this light
01/07/2011
Lighthouse
Lighthouse in Boise by Havilah
My Mom and I were taking a hike on a beautiful trail off the coast of Oregon near Cannon Beach. She pointed out a lighthouse that is owned by a company that can be hired to scatter ashes of people that have passed on. This song espresses how the hardships and many challenges of our lives often make it seem nearly impossible to go on. In the face of our greatest sadness and despair, we move on with faith that freedom is near, that the possiblity of ascending to something greater is near. As the lyric says, "its the living who are dying to be free..".
words and music by Havilah Rand copywrite 2010
verse
How many days in the desert
Before you die of thirst
How low can you go
Before you finally call it the worst
Are we almost there
Or is it another mirage
I don’t care
It keeps me walking anyways
Its almost like heaven
Imagining you here
I could open my eyes and wake up I don’t dare
I watch the boxcar
Another escape passes me by and by
Chorus
There’s a lighthouse
In the middle of the sea
They scatter the ashes of the dead
Its really the living
who are dying to be free
the push of the needle and heads bangin on the wall
just another step you finally let yourself fall
but I think its just gonna take a little love a little time
and we will fly
Chorus
verse
bygones are bygones
let them go their away
pick ourselves up by the bootstraps
and be on our way
the time is at hand and the moment is now
I don’t feel the love I just feel the pain but I keep walkin anyway
Chorus
Carbon
Lyrics and Music by Havilah Rand
Copywrite 2009
There’s a deep dark ocean
There’s a big blue sky
You can dive down under
But baby I wanted to fly
So many people on the street
So much carbon in the air
You’re the only thing that I see
When you say good bye good bye good bye
There’s a voice in my head
There’s a demon in my heart
I know you don’t wanna go there
So we let it fall apart
So many people on the street
That sun’s shinin way too bright
I want to kick down all of those doors
But baby I’m too tired to fight
(Chorus)
Like a cavern neath the stone
Fill the space up all alone
Then leave me flooded in the darkness
I didn’t mean to startle you
Now we’re howlin to the moon
Its silly and its tragic
The way we dance around
always lookin over our shoulder
always staring at the ground
When there's all this love to make
This silence just feels fake
We have fifty years or less
Before we all sink in to darkness
(Chorus)
Like a cavern neath the stone
Fill the space up all alone
Then leave me flooded in the darkness
I didn’t mean to startle you
Now we’re howlin at the moon
Inside of Me
Inside of Me by Havilah
Lyrics by Havilah Rand copywrite 2010
It's inside of me
and I can't let it out
locked up in a cage
I don't know how
to let the angels sing
to let my love show on your skin
I lose just so you can win
It's inside of me
and it tears me apart
chains of a memory
wrapped around my heart
so I'm all alone
since Medusa turned this man to stone
But you can't come round here
with your eyes a big black hole
you can't leave all of your shit and take pieces of my soul
you can't say fare thee well love I'm gonna leave
when you got pieces of my heart fallin off your sleeve
you got inside of me
It's inside of me and I won't let it go
I'll wear this painted face where ever I go
and if you find me out I'm gonna burrow in my cave
I've got nothing left to give you got your own self to save
(chorus)
Well I used to let myself get tangled up in these lies
It felt just like a drug
It left me hungry and inspired
But now I'm all filled up and I don't have an empty space
you can leave or you can stay I've already walked away
And you can't come round here
with your big black holes
you can't leave a great big pile of shit take pieces of my soul
I say fare thee well I'm gonna leave
I got all of my heart safe up my sleeve
I'm back inside of me
I'm back inside of me
