WordWulf

Hello World,

Sorry it’s been so long since I communicated to you. I lost my brother, Jack (first bass player in my first band) to COVID, December 19, 2019. I struggled for three years trying to save him from Leukemia and the state of Colorado. We lost. I got horribly ill after that, diagnosed with congenital heart disease, kidney disease, sepsis, and cancer. Had a kidney removed and fighting to get my strength back.
The good news is, while convalescing, I’ve been sorting through hundreds of rehearsal tapes. I’ve discovered a mountain of work that fell through the cracks over the years. As soon as I get my feet back firmly on the ground and that weak and wimpy old man sound out of my voice, we have a ton of material to work on.

Death in Small Houses

Little child, don’t hide your tears away
Bits and pieces
bits and pieces
bits and pieces
Run away, just as fast as you can
You’d better run, run away
if you think that you can
You’d better run

Sleeping like an angel
floating down from heaven
If daddy’s been out drinking
all sleep will turn to screaming
And the sparks will fly
when he slaps your face
Fire lights inside your head
Momma cries as babies fall
until he goes away again
Bits and pieces
bits and pieces
bits and pieces
Run away, just as fast as you can
You’d better run, run away
if you think that you can
You’d better run

Daddy, Daddy, hold me,
oh, Momma, Momma
I’ll love you forever
forever is near
The baby is quiet
gone to the rainbow
Hunger is over
fountain of pain
I’ll never tell but I will remember
A hundred miles inside me
there’s a slow fire burning
gone burning forever
I’m bits and pieces
bits and pieces
I’m bits and pieces
bits and pieces
Say death in small houses
Say death in small houses
Say death

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Inquiries: wordwulf@link
© 2021 artwork, music and words
conceived by and property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner 2021 ©

Thank-you for the plays and requests. To those who have asked where to purchase our songs, we have uploaded a couple dozen them to Reverb Nation. They are on sale there for .99 each. You can also email me personally at wordwulf@link I’d be glad to send you your favorite. Welcome to all new subscribers. We appreciate the positive emails and spreading the word about what we do!

Tom, Tommy, Zedidiah, Kathy, WordWulf
wordwulf@link

Check out our songs and other creative endeavors at link.
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This is a piece I have been working on for many years. I was involved in a music project with my youngest brother, The Boone Dalton Band. My nine-year-old son, Tommy, came into the studio and handed me a chord progression he had worked out. My brother and I messed around with it a bit and I wrote the lyrics then set it aside. Boone Dalton was a high-octane rock and roll band, not interested in performing love ballads. A couple of weeks ago, Tommy, a father now with two sons and a baby girl of his own, suggested we dust it off and give it a shot. We're still working on it. The timelessness of the process is a bit scary to me but wonderful for the same reasons. Music is the circle that never ends. Listening to that young man wrap fingers around chords he put together when he was a boy brings a tear to my eye and makes me want to break something.

~Dream Don't~

Walking through the realm of time
living on these dreams of mine
all alone in a world of changing
can’t believe I need arranging
Saw my face through windblown shadow
looking at your eyes a man knows
you are the woman

Felt my heart melt into you
do you love me, love me, do you
If I’m sleeping, Lord don’t take me
felt your breathing; please don’t wake me
Oh you’re real, what’s happened to me
I’ve learned to feel, what are you to me
you are the woman

You are the woman, you are the woman
dream don’t, dream don’t
dream don’t, dream don’t
you are the woman

Touch me if you feel my tears
I’m older than your heart and years
Can’t believe the tiny hand
reminding me that I’m a man
I don’t deserve, I’ll take your love
I’ve never cried, you make me love
you are the woman

Now I’m living in your eyes
loving ‘til it makes me cry
You’ve saved me from the sea of time
brought me back just one more time
Love what is, where did you go
was that a whisper, I love you so
you are the woman

you are the woman, you are the woman
dream don’t, dream don’t
dream don’t, dream don’t
you are the woman
you are the woman, you are the woman
dream don’t, dream don’t
dream don’t, dream don’t
you are the woman

link
Inquiries: wordwulf@link
© 2019 artwork, music and words
conceived by and property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner 2019 ©

Thank-you for the plays and requests. To those who have asked where to purchase our songs, we have uploaded a couple dozen them to link
They are on sale there for .99 each. You can also email me personally at wordwulf@link I’d be glad to send you your favorite. Welcome to all new subscribers. We appreciate the positive emails and spreading the word about what we do!

Tom, Tommy, Zedidiah, Kathy, WordWulf
wordwulf@link

Check out our songs and other creative endeavors at link.
link
link
link
Facebook
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Instagram
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I‘ve been a player and singer in rock bands for three decades. I wrote songs for bands before I did any other kind of writing. My son learned to play guitar about the same time he learned to walk. I don’t do bars anymore and I wonder what keeps me singin’ until something happens like the other night. My son, Tommy, a young man with two sons and a daughter of his own, has a studio in his house. I went over to lay down some tracks on a CD he’s helping me with.

Matt, a guitar man with whom I played in bands for twenty-five years, came over to trade some riffs with Tommy. There was obvious conflict between them and I, completely out of character, stood back and watched. I wondered how it would work out, the gray beard and the young lion armed with axes and bracing the wall. Matt was half stewed when he showed up and continued to chug beer after beer. He toodled around with some old guitar band music, throwing howling laments across the room. Tommy stayed in the groove of what he describes as his own cutting-edge original sound and hurled his fair share back. Troy, my son-in-law and drummer, would just about get a beat picked out on his traditional/electric drum kit then those guitar men would switch tracks and carry that music train away.

I got tired and began to pack my PA system and harmonicas. I know all about guitar players and the misty shades of dawn. Matt was ‘sitting on a stool’, pretty much all the way drunk now. He was finger pickin’, doodling around on his Les Paul. He began to pick a rhythm, almost country and, to my surprise, Tommy joined in on bass guitar. Troy began the process of uniting the guitars through the awesome mystery (to me anyway) of percussion. I watched them for fifteen minutes as the power of the piece grew. Tears came to my eyes and goose flesh claimed the surface of my skin. The three of them had given themselves over to ‘the danse’. I backed into a far corner, lest I interrupt with a shout of silence.

I waited fifteen more minutes to see if Matt would give voice to the music. I heard somewhere that he had started singing and didn’t want to step on his toes. He gave me that ol’ six-pack smile of his and shrugged his shoulders. Hands shaking, I took pen and paper from my war bag. I powered up the PA, clicked my mic on, and stepped into the danse. I scribbled down the first few lines I could pick from the air then allowed my voice to bleed into the haunting spaces between the instruments. “I been up that road (I stopped, felt it my bones, that it was time to wait), “And I been down so very damned long” (pause again); “I been almost right” (oh yes, the longer pause); “And I been, I been so wrong.”

Matt gave me that look I have seen in the forever of my music. The switch-up was coming, they were heading for the bridge. I turned around and faced the wall. What do I do? I don’t know what to put in here, the chorus, what? Panic, they’re rolling, these musicians of beat, chord, and note. I am the word man. I’m supposed to know what’s next. Then I did what I have done thousands of times over the years. I closed my eyes and crawled out of my brain. The energy of the moment was mine. All I had to do was reach up into that space just beyond my fingertips and pull it down to me. A tear created its own path down my cheek as I fell to one knee. The chorus, crushed forever inside me, burst forth and passion issued from my lips: “Sometimes I feel... I feel like cryin’. Sometimes I feel... I feel like singin’.”

The instruments overrode me and, in their insistency, I understood, the next few moments were theirs and theirs alone in this danse, this making of love, to the moment, the air. She owned us, this mistress and her urgent flow of energy, surging and swirling between and around us. And they came down. Yes, like warring angels, they sped to a cushion of peace. What now, Mister Word Man, what now? My other knee found the floor and I surrendered my all to a breathless pause. “Like I can’t stand” (wait... wait..). The musical spiders are weaving their magick silken chord voices... “I’m a man.” And so it went... a new musical child was born.

My bar room days are over. I miss those old players and riders. I might never see my buddy Travelin’ Matt again but we wrote some kick ass songs, me ‘n him, and sometimes I feel. For that night and maybe one or two to come, I am determined to write and sing for the rest of my unnatural life. Here’s the rest of the song.

I’ve been here before
and I’ve been in other places
I just got started
then I lost too many faces
Sometimes I feel
I feel like cryin'
Sometimes I feel
I feel like singin'
like I can't stand
I'm a man

There’s a ride I missed
a few I shouldn’t have taken
Yeah, my heart has sung
It’s been on the wrong side of breakin’
Sometimes I feel
I feel like singin'
like I can't stand
I'm a man

I’ve been fallin’ down
I’ve picked myself up again
The best part of me
ain’t no third party sin
Sometimes I feel
I feel like singin'
like I can't stand
I'm a man

I look in your eyes
I am lost to all the rest
There's a fire there
You’re the worst; you are the best
Sometimes I feel
I feel like singin'
like I can't stand
I'm a man

link
Inquiries: wordwulf@link
© 2019 artwork, music and words
conceived by and property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner 2019 ©

Thank-you for the plays and requests. To those who have asked where to purchase our songs, we have uploaded a couple dozen them to link
They are on sale there for .99 each. You can also email me personally at wordwulf@link I’d be glad to send you your favorite. Welcome to all new subscribers. We appreciate the positive emails and spreading the word about what we do!

Tom, Tommy, Zedidiah, Kathy, WordWulf
wordwulf@link

Check out our songs and other creative endeavors at link.
link
link
link
Facebook
Facebook
Instagram
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Friday the thirteenth, full moon, what a momentous late summer night to ride my Hawg, pegged flat out, in the soft moonlight,
This one’s for all the great whiskey men I’ve known over the years. Especially my father and Danny Boy, a man who swore I sang better ‘n Elvis. Danny could swing a mop and tell a story better than most men I ever knew. He was a tiny man with a gigantic capacity for loyalty and whiskey. A good man, in my opinion, a better man than me.

Whiskey Man

Have ye ever seen it empty
drink it from the bottom
They fill it up and up ye go
laughing in the barroom
Have ye ever known a pretty girl
who isn’t mad for dancing
whose passion grows and up ye go
whiskey man romancing
This one’s for the whiskey man
set ‘em up and knock ‘em down
Another for the whiskey man
ready for another round

Sometimes he rides a bicycle
and leaves it at the bar
The police locked him up a lot
he used to drive a car
When he called the operator
said, “Honey, please trace this call
The lights are out, the gig is up
but I sure had a ball,” yeah
This one’s for the whiskey man
set ‘em up and knock ‘em down
Another for the whiskey man
ready for another round we go

He always gives me a listen
never starts no trouble
It sure gives me a lift-me-up
to buy that man a double
He’s grateful as a puppy
a friend who has no friends
whose toothless smile says, “Up we go”
empty glasses end to end, yeah
This one’s for the whiskey man
set ‘em up and knock ‘em down
Another for the whiskey man
ready for another round we go again

I found the whiskey man one day
his head down on the bar
I’d never had to hold him up
that boiler maker star
Laid him in a wooden box
so when all the ladies passed
they could have a look-me-see
and kiss his whiskey ass, yeah
This one’s for the whiskey man
set ‘em up and knock ‘em down
Another for the whiskey man
ready for another round we go again and again and again

Whiskey Man was published by Rebel Dawn 2005

link
Inquiries: wordwulf@link
© 2019 artwork, music and words
conceived by and property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner 2019 ©

Thank-you for the plays and requests. To those who have asked where to purchase our songs, we have uploaded a couple dozen them to link
They are on sale there for .99 each. You can also email me personally at wordwulf@link I’d be glad to send you your favorite. Welcome to all new subscribers. We appreciate the positive emails and spreading the word about what we do!

Tom, Tommy, Zedidiah, Kathy, WordWulf
wordwulf@link

Check out our songs and other creative endeavors at link.
link
link
link
Facebook
Facebook
Instagram
link
link

I wrote the lyrics to this song in 1991. Tommy, then sixteen, put together the guitar work. That’s Eden, Tommy’s daughter, my granddaughter, in the picture. Life is a perfect circle.

Rain come down

Rain come down
Rain come down-down
Every stranger’s face I see
fits into my memory
Children’s smiles especially
take me where I want to be

When there’s too much pain around
I love to hear that tiny sound
music where my heart is bound
making puddles on the ground
Rain come down
Rain come down-down
It’s so easy then to cry
It’s not tears, but rain, I lie
So in the rain I say goodbye
It’s been raining all my life, yeah

Love’s a part of you and me
the best of what we hope to be
the light we live our lives to see
to set the brokenhearted free
the laughter and the harmony
children’s smiles especially
running in the rain with me
chasing rainbows - memory
Rain come down
rain come down-down
Rain come down
rain come down-down

link
Inquiries: wordwulf@link
© 2019 artwork, music and words
conceived by and property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner 2019 ©

Thank-you for the plays and requests. To those who have asked where to purchase our songs, we have uploaded a couple dozen them to link
They are on sale there for .99 each. Welcome to all new subscribers. We appreciate the positive emails and spreading the word about what we do!

Tom, Tommy, Zedidiah, Kathy, WordWulf
wordwulf@link

Check out our songs and other creative endeavors at link.
link
link
link
Facebook
Facebook
Instagram
link
link