1. |
Twilight on Tunnel Road
04:27
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“Twilight on Tunnel Road”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
She was walking just to clear her head one night—
the sun was setting in the west.
She felt something in her soul was just not right.
She kept on walking on a quest.
She was walking and she…she was breathing and she…
looked at the sky, it was aflame.
Took her shoes off and walked barefoot through the grass.
The air it tasted like champagne.
Felt the wind run its fingers through her hair.
She wasn’t felling any pain.
She was walking and she…she was breathing and she…
realized she’d never be the same.
Walking out in twilight on Tunnel Road—
she don’t know it, but she’s walking into dreamtime
in the night.
Walking out in twilight on Tunnel Road—
She can’t see it, but she’s walking toward the light.
She smells something that smells just like gingerbread.
She tastes nutmeg on her tongue.
It reminds her of the Christmasses she’s fled,
the innocence when she was young.
She was running and she…she was thinking and she…
never realized her name.
She was walking and she…she was breathing and she…
she knew that darkness was her name.
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2. |
Lonnie and Chloe
04:40
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“Lonnie and Chloe”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
Lonnie and Chloe were lovers.
They grew up far from town.
Harvesting corn or milking cows
they never let each other down.
They taught themselves the guitar, playing in the barn.
They formed a band and always jammed
and liked to raise the roof on the farm.
Pre-Chorus: Playing guitars in the railroad tunnel
in the woods so wild—
that drenching reverb always made them smile.
Riding their bicycles downtown, circling round the Boar’s Nest
where all the Dads sat watching the Packers
nursing a beer and a bump with the best.
Fishing under the willows, beers cooling in the stream,
the dragonflies, then fireflies
made it seem like something in a dream.
Pre-Chorus
Chorus: Chloe’s kicking higher swinging from the old oak tree.
Lonnie nibbles grass—says it’s all right.
Chloe’s kicking higher—says it’s so she can see.
Lonnie tunes his Gretsch so they can play all through the night.
Talking about this I just don’t think that you should know
exactly what Lonnie and Chloe were doing on the day of the show.
They set the stage up downtown, blocked off all Main Street.
They never knew all the things they’d do,
but Chloe winked and said let’s be indiscreet.
Pre-Chorus & Chorus
credits
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3. |
Lonnie Interlude
00:43
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4. |
Lonnie's Red Guitar
04:10
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“Lonnie’s Red Guitar”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
He don’t ever smile—just does his thing.
Smells just like oil—the sweet, sweet smell of gasoline.
When he’s working on cars, he loves the engine’s purr.
And when he’s playing guitar, he travels up beyond the stars.
He don’t ever say the secrets he knows.
He goes walking out at noontime where the river flows.
And they whisper all about him, and they think that they know,
and they go, “Say hey, Lonnie, how’d you learn to play that guitar?”
Chorus: Go, Lonnie, go! Play that red guitar.
Go, Lonnie, go! Burning like a shooting star.
He’s at home with the night—the moon tangled in the trees.
Like an owl in flight, he rides the wind on silent wings.
Dreams of liquid chords—his soul’s vibrating strings.
Flesh is so hot-wired, his fingertips tap sacred springs.
When he’s playing lead his mind’s all aglow—
sees the flickers of the future flash in stereo,
and they’re cheering all around him and they think that they know,
and they go….
Chorus
When he’s sleeping his guitar’s by his side.
His six-string dreams are always amplified.
With his fingers on the fretboard, she seems like his bride…
and they go…
Chorus
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5. |
Shelter for Your Soul
04:17
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Shelter for Your Soul
***Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
We don’t say words that we don’t know.
I can’t believe that you must go.
I understand you’re hurting now but you have got to realize
we never signed up for this show.
Chorus:
I’m hoping you can find your way to someplace whole—
find a little shelter for your soul.
We were so young when we first met.
Your eyes could light the world on fire.
You were so wild even then I knew that someday you’d be gone,
and that just stoked up our desire.
Chorus
Bridge:
I can’t take you there I know.
I was hoping baby that you wouldn’t go.
Now I lie awake through the night
remembering all our days together—I see you in the pale blue light.
Now I’m sitting by the fire,
feeling low as a flat tire.
I wonder if you’re working now or if you’re shacked up with some guy
a lonely rose among the briars.
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6. |
Wake Up Chloe
03:21
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“Wake Up Chloe”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
Chloe gets off quitting time.
Starts up her truck feeling fine.
She drives off, windows wide.
She loves to hear the guitar slide.
She turns off on a gravel road,
drives through the hollows counting crows.
She pulls into the Wyler farm,
grabs her guitar, heads to the barn.
Wake up Chloe can’t you see?
You have got it all—who you want to be.
Wake up Chloe don’t you know?
the world is yours right now.
Where you gonna go?
Chloe’s got a tattoo on her thigh.
It’s of a Strat and says “Fly High!”
Cuts her hair short, wears torn jeans.
She is exactly who she seems.
Chloe’s going places—man, anyone can see—and nothing,
I said nothing gonna get in her way. Man, she just plays that guitar all day
and she plays it deep into the night, and you know she says it gives her
second sight?
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7. |
L&C Eternally
03:20
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“L & C Eternally”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
She wakes on a Sunday and she don’t know
if she wants to be a person dreaming.
She don’t want it and she don’t go
down to where all the folks are meeting.
She goes down to Lonnie’s farm,
wakes him with a soft punch on his arm
She smiles at him—is she in love?
He puts on the coffee and rubs his eyes,
tells her she’s a pain while he cooks the bacon.
She says cut the crap while she serves the eggs—
says they could be already out there fishing.
He smothers her toast with strawberry jam,
feeds her a morsel quick as he can.
He smiles at her—is he in love?
They don’t take it all the way.
They don’t think about it anyway.
When they’re walking in the woods,
they know they’re living like they should.
Lonnie and Chloe are sitting in a tree—
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
That’s the jump-rope song they sang
playing in the schoolyard before the bell rang.
“L & C Eternally”—
that’s what Lonnie carved upon a tree,
and Chloe said, “Now we’re in Love!”
credits
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8. |
Take a Minute
03:35
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Take a Minute
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
You say this world is over. No more sweet tea and clover.
I don’t know the reason why I’m so in love with you.
Some days you’re just so distant, so angry on the instant.
Still I know the reason why you’re always feeling blue.
Chorus:
Take a minute, try and look around you. See the world we know.
Take a minute from your picture show.
You say you can’t go the distance, put up too much resistance,
even though I’m telling you that I’ll be there for you.
No, I don’t even want to hear it. No time to check out though we fear it.
The sea’s about to swallow up this human world we know.
Chorus
You’re watching all your screens. Never get outside.
Stand among the trees.
You’re always stuck inside like a person who’s confined
never walking in the breeze.
You say the clock is ticking—watch as the whole world is sickening.
I just say that you have got to think beyond us two.
So roll up your sleeves and pitch in—no use just always bitching.
You have got to use your life and stand up for what’s true.
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9. |
The Edge of Town
04:18
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“The Edge of Town”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
When you’re feeling so low,
getting so you’re feeling so run down,
you’re heading for the edge of town.
When your mind starts slipping,
when your head is tripping round,
you listen for a certain sound.
You go walking late at night, look at the distant lights
that flicker in the midnight sky.
You don’t see no one. That’s because you are going
deep beyond the edge of town.
Now the night wind’s shifting,
looking at the cornfields stretching wide
like an army in the night.
You see corn troops moving,
marching through the midnight fields alive,
heading to the edge of town.
And the pine trees sifting…the messages drifting down
from the moon into your eyes.
Now the oak trees wonder why you stare up at the sky
so rootless and alone.
Noctilucent clouds are
drifting past the moon and I
wonder why you’re looking down.
Armies of corn are marching
down the hillsides toward the town
sleeping silent in the night.
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10. |
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11. |
Sugar River Sunrise
03:26
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“Sugar River Sunrise”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
By the Sugar River sometime after dawn
they were walking westward humming some old song.
Where they go’s a secret—never tell no one—
a grove of rotting elm trees, treasure in the sun.
Can they fill their baskets now with mushrooms every day?
Only they both know the way.
Can you hold happiness like a mushroom in your hand?
Make a wish and close your eyes.
Some days they would gift them. Some days they would sell.
Morels bound for the market worth their weight in gold.
When they fill their basket, Chloe skips ahead.
Lonnie ambles after singing some new song.
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12. |
Clockwork Clouds
03:49
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“Clockwork Clouds”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
Nothing I say gives you a clue.
You just want me singing the blues.
But I don’t know how to choose—
too many things jostling my mind like leaves in the wind.
And this corn looks so fine, but I’m losing my mind,
living out here in the countryside
with these cows and this corn—
never forlorn—some say it’s paradise
and I guess that’s maybe true but….
CHORUS: Take me through the skies
above the world we know,
looking at these clockwork clouds from so far below.
Take me past the stars, somewhere far away.
Looking at these clockwork clouds for so many days.
Tell me again, why am I here?
Looking at clouds in the stratosphere.
I don’t feel so alone cause I’ve got this here phone,
the Packers on the tele, a sixpack on ice.
When I’m walking the fields calculating the yields,
the clouds are floating by like cottony shields.
There’s manure and milk, soybeans and corn silk,
Bears fans down in Janesville but I don’t mix with that ilk, so….
CHORUS
Wisconsin’s my home so I’m never alone.
There’s cows and curds and cheese and birds
and whitetails in the woods.
And there’s wolves and black bears,
our meatpackers shares,
the green of spring and gold of fall really tell it all.
We harvest ginseng roots, trim Christmas tree shoots,
grow fine leaf tobacco for your big cheroots.
Red tail on the wing, it just makes you sing.
Turkey vultures circling like angels in the sky.
And there’s cows and there’s corn, whitefish livers and porn,
Northwoods hair salons where no one lives but the trees.
And there’s trout streams and hills, Lake Superior’s thrills—
ice fishing in winter, sitting on a bucket in the wind.
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13. |
Let Me Go
04:54
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“Let Me Go”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
Nothing I say to you makes it untrue.
Let me go—I can’t say how much I love you.
Taking it all away, I can’t bear the day.
In the night I just see your face staring at me.
Let me go.
Seeing I don’t know why, why you must try
to go far away now, climb mountains so high.
Every single day, I’m making my way.
I can’t deal with you gone and I’m not okay.
Let me go.
I don’t say you should not go—closing off the future before you can know.
I just can’t get loose from your strings,
they’re wrapped around my heart entangling all things.
I remember how we used to play, how we used to dance, how we used to run,
dissolving in the moonlight as if we were one.
And all those days, all those times, all those nights we held to each other,
held so tight as if we might lose the one thing we love.
And I think that I can’t go on now,
without you I’m lost, I just don’t know how.
Now the light has gone out of my life,
nothing ahead but torment and strife.
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14. |
Oak and Ivy
04:05
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“Oak and Ivy”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
He don’t go there. He don’t wander where the spirits tell him no.
It’s in a valley full of mist where people do not go.
And in the forest grapevines twine slowly up the trees
and choke the oaks by blanketing their green, green canopies.
Oak and ivy, oak and ivy now… (It’s what the poets always wrote.)
Only ivy twists love around…
like you’re doing to me sometimes.
Chloe goes there. Chloe knows the way to the secret forest.
Something draws her, something calls today, so she cuts the vines away.
Now the oaks bask in the light, and she sleeps in shade till dusk.
Then she wanders through the night, a wood spirit in the trees.
Sometimes people don’t seem to see me, suffocating in our mass delusion.
We all think the world was made for us.
When I’m walking in the forest, far from peoples’ muffled chorus,
then I can feel my destiny.
When I see her walking out at night, when the moon is all aglow,
her eyes are burning with delight, and I know that she will go….
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15. |
Wind and Whispers
04:18
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“Wind and Whispers”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
Chloe tells me that she must go,
leaving all her people and she don’t know
where she will go or even what she figures she’ll do.
She just says she needs to leave this place,
roam the world a bit to find a better space
for her to grow and find out who she’s meant to be.
She won’t say it.
She won’t tell you now.
She won’t go there.
She won’t tell you how…
…and then she sings it….
Lonnie…. Lonnie….
the wind is calling and I can’t refuse its call.
Lonnie…. Lonnie….
Can’t you hear the wind and whispers at all?
Wind and whispers, I don’t know why
Chloe always listens to the midnight sky,
and she goes walking out where no one else will go.
Frogs are singing and owls glide,
dragonflies are feasting while the whitetails hide,
and the river flows—and, flowing, it knows.
Sometimes midnights she greets the moon,
her nightgown feels like mothwings in the murmuring June,
and she goes wandering while the wind blows through trees.
She goes barefoot through the dewy grass,
toes like lips quenching her thirst so vast
while listening to the soft tongues of leaves.
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16. |
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Walking Rivers in the Rain
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
Moonlight takes you—takes you far away where we don’t go.
Starlight makes you—makes you so alive I just don’t know.
You won’t say…why you’re so entranced.
You just want all the pleasures and the pain….
Walking rivers in the rain.
When I see you floating far away I wonder why.
When I touch you, I fall into your eyes blue as the sky.
Can’t you see? Can’t you read my mind?
It’s just like the tunnel always swallowing the train.
Walking rivers in the rain.
Bridge:
Sometimes when you’re close beside me,
Something rumbles deep inside me.
In the night I feel you breathing though you’re always gone.
Morning comes and you show up at my door and ask me why…
The things that seem so certain always turn out to be just lies?
Your bloodroot smile, your mayapple morning glow,
your soul like the haunting call of distant cranes….
Walking rivers in the rain.
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17. |
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18. |
Letter to Chloe
06:07
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“Letter to Chloe”
Words & Music by Timothy Walsh
Chloe writes a letter to him now.
She traces words in ink and says the words out loud.
She licks the envelope, seals it with her tears.
She doesn’t know what she fears.
Lonnie reads the letter in his room.
He reads it twenty times and sees beyond the words.
Her reaches into Chloe’s soul—
knows that she’s scared, that she’s maybe lost control.
When the catalpas bloom in June,
She says she’ll blossom like the moon.
Chloe sends some pictures of herself.
She’s on the road climbing mountains to the sky.
She says she needs nothing else.
She doesn’t know the answers or need the reason why.
Lonnie takes the letter now—
he don’t even know what he’s doing everything is going wrong.
Lonnie writes a letter of his own.
He spells out his words so fair,
finds the chords to match the melody that’s flowing gently through his mind.
Lonnie sends the letter and his song….
He plays it all night long.
Chloe reads the letter, plays his song.
She knows he’s hurting, that she’s maybe done him wrong.
She climbs a mountain peak, hums herself to sleep,
and in the morning she goes on.
Dear Chloe,
This is just to say I miss you.
I think about us back in the day. So here’s a song for you.
Play it when you want or need or when you’re sad….
And I’ll sing it now, thinking of the luster of your eyes.
I’ll sing it now—sing it until the end of time.
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Penelope's Thrill Madison, Wisconsin
Penelope's Thrill is a lucky accident. Lured out of musical retirement by son Andrew, Timothy Walsh dusted off his guitars,
including his favorite vintage Guilds and Gretsches, and picked up where he left off 25 years ago playing in garage bands in New Jersey and Boston.
Tim founded Penelope's Thrill as the vehicle for his songs, often pulling in other musicians for particular tracks.
... more
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