Tag Archives: Rock and Roll

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day six – “Mountain”

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3 DAYS until the Release of MOUNTAIN. Wanted to apologize for the delay in breaking some of the songs down. It’s been crazy last few days with things going on and we are trying to catch up. Putting together the kickstarter rewards to ship, working with our PR folks in Nashville, radio interviews, licensing projects. But hey, it’s Sunday and we are slowing catching up.

Today I’ll break down the title song from the album “Mountain”.
One of the first things you have to do when you find out you have cancer is come to grips with it, and come to terms with death. For the first two weeks after I got a diagnosis that I may live 6 months I woke up each morning and cried. Each morning you wake up, and realize it’s not a dream and that you may be dead soon. It’s very humbling for me to even write this, and I’m not embarrassed to say that I woke up to cry and speak to God, and to pace the floor and try to understand things for hours each morning. After that shock passes, and you “man up” and say, hey, I might die, the first thing you do is prepare. There are people every day that get hit by a car, or have a heart attack and go into the afterlife with no preparation. Cancer is like an bill notice that you get in the mail, it’s a warning that death is seeking you. So you say ok, nothing I can do to stop it, so how do I prepare? I spent a day thinking about any ill will or issues I had with anyone, and I called and apologized. That apology goes like this “I don’t know what happened, or why it happened, but I need to let you know that I take 100% of the blame, and I’m seeking your forgiveness”. I did that with my dad. I asked him to come over, and I told him exactly that, and I told him I had cancer and may die. Not going too far into that, but man you can see things clearer in the position I was in, and how petty things can get. I cleaned up any relationship I had and got any negativity out of my life. I know a lot of our fans may not believe in God, and I respect that decision, and I’m not trying to convert anyone, but I can’t not be who I am in explaining this. It’s very easy at times in your life to question if there is a God, or God’s role, but I can tell you- bluntly, that if you look death in the face it’s very easy to find some clarity in your faith. If you want to pass out of this world with the mindset that there’s no afterlife, that’s on you my friend, but I am not willing to take that risk. Also will say, for whatever reason I’m compelled to tell you, that I’m a sinner. I sin every day, I make mistakes every day, I slide closer and farther away from God due to decisions I make all the time. I’m not your role model, but I know someone who can be. I believe in grace and forgiveness, in Jesus and his message, and as much as a failure as I am in some aspect of my faith, the one thing I refuse to do is coward down and not say what I believe.
I wrote the song “Mountain” just as a prayer of a very flawed human, who seeks God’s help, who’s trying to “get right”. It’s about being humble, and small, and giving God the glory. I write plenty of songs about old west hangings, other worldly things, and the human condition, but this is not one of them. This is my Johnny Cash influence, or U2 or Ben Harper who don’t cower when the question is asked “yea, but what do you believe?”. The main riff was somewhat lifted from my favorite band Led Zeppelin, “In My Time of Dying”, a gospel song which they lifted from the early delta greats. Production with our friend Greg Pearce who helped us work the break down section after the 2nd chorus, which to this day gives me chills. I always loved what mountains represented to our ancestors. It was the highest place, and place they believed to be closest to God. “Go child go, high up on a mountain”, simply means get yourself closer to God. I wrote this from a very honest place, and hope it resonates with some of you as well. And yes tomorrow we may return to a song with someone getting hung or shot, but for today…. this is MOUNTAIN-

MOUNTAIN
If I am a blind man, Lord help me see you
If I am a thief, Lord help me change my ways
If I’ve been a liar, lord save me from the fires
If I’ve been a saint, remind me that I AIN’T

And say go child, go
stand on a mountain
go child go
for all the world to see
I said go child,
high upon a mountain
go child
far above the seas

If I’ve been greedy, lord make me HUMBLE
If I’ve gotten lost, help me find my way
If I’ve not forgiven, lord please forgive me
Remind me that a master, no better than a slave

And go child, go
stand on a mountain
go child go
for all the world to see
I said go child,
high up on a mountain-go child -far above the seas

If I start to backslide, Lord please correct me
If I start to tremble, Lord make me still
Meet me at the Jordan, walk me through the valley
Lead me to the place, way high above the hills

And go child, go
stand on a mountain
go child go
for all the world to see
I said go child,
high up on a mountain
go child

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day five – “Friend of Mine”

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FIVE days now until the release of MOUNTAIN. We have some very cool announcements coming, and more good news. We have surpassed expectations and could not be happier about things happening in the Cold Stares world. So much of our success and these good things are because of YOU, our fans being relentless in spreading the word. Press release on Sleeping With Lions coming shortly today. In the mean time I’ll break down one of our favorites from the album “Friend of Mine”….

This one comes from my love of the poetry of delta blues. Son House, Skip James, story songs about real people. Lots of hidden stuff in this song, but it’s mainly about our character who has seen nothing but bad luck. In the end, he knows things are going to go south and when he stands before God he’s thinking “Hope I’m gonna find you’re a friend of mine”. I always loved the line in the first verse “I ain’t gonna lie I ain’t gonna pay rent”, which I borrowed theme wise from Thorogood’s version of “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”, where the landlord says “that don’t confront me, as long as I got my rent by Friday”. Our character is down on his luck and already decided he’s not paying the rent. The following line “Devils in the meadow and the dogs been sent”, means I see the trouble coming, and about all I’m going to do is let the dog out to go handle it.
Verse two things have caught up with the character and the police are at the door. Probably a number of things they could be there for, and perhaps none of them our character has done, but he knows his string of bad luck continues. Doesn’t say how the incident proceeds, but we know that he’s got bullets beside the bed and we find in verse three that he’s now on death row and heading to the gallows.
The line in the chorus “I’ve been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old” is a reference to the Levees we hear about in the delta blues songs. Lower Mississippi was notorious for flooding, and a lot of early delta songwriters referenced the Levee as kind of the last defense against the flood. I always loved Son House’s “Levee Camp Blues”, which also is where our song “John” was inspired from. Anyways, “standing on the levee since I was 6 years old”, simple interprets into- I’ve been waiting around since I was 6 years old for something bad to happen. Fairly hopeless, and maybe that’s the environment that our character grew up in, or around, but he’s felt damned from very early on. This is one of our songs that I would consider “Southern Gothic”. It certainly lends itself to the southern gothic novels, and for characters that I’ve grown up around all my life. Hope you enjoy-

13 blackbirds sitting on a fence
17 dollars that my good girl spent
I ain’t gonna lie, I ain’t gonna pay rent
Devils in the meadow and the dogs been sent

Oh Lord bless my soul
Been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old
Oh Lord when it comes time
Hope I’m gonna find your a friend of mine

16 bullets on the side of the bed
Telephone ringing right beside my head
Knocking on the door it’s the county law
Trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong

Oh Lord bless my soul
Been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old
Oh Lord when it comes time
Hope I’m gonna find your a friend of mine

15 years I’ve been waiting on the line
Preacher said “boy its about that time”
Hangman waiting at the gallows edge
Gonna try to tie a rope up around my neck

Oh Lord bless my soul
Been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old
Oh Lord when it comes time
Hope I’m gonna find your a friend of mine

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day three – “Killing Machine”

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7 Days till the release of “Mountain” now. ARE YOU READY?
I know we are. Watching “Sleeping With Lions” stream 15,000 plays last night alone has us on cloud nine. Thanks to each and every one of you for continuing to demand your friends add it to their music libraries!
Today I’m going to break down- “Killing Machine”.

This is my (ct) current favorite song on the record. I like the cinematic visual of the song, the meanings and references. I’m hesitant on a few of these songs to continue to describe them too accurately, because I know that they can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. But for now, I’ll tell you what the song means to me.
I had finished up the last season of “Hell on Wheels” (which is great if you haven’t take the time to watch), and was thinking about some of the characters. Thinking about who we are as people, and the things that add up to make us into that specific human who can take another’s life. Someone who has had his wife and family murdered and sets out on revenge during the civil war. My father, and step father sent to vietnam to fight and kill other humans for reasons they didn’t understand. My wifes’ grandfather sent to Germany to fight and destroy evil. Indian warriors fighting to save their land. All these situations that have brought men to the point where they would take another humans life. It’s heavy to me. First verse in my head is an obituary of a civil war soldier when our nation killed it’s own, brother against brother. The second verse the plight of the Native American post civil war. The last verse the great world wars. There are some hidden references and meanings in some of the lines, and I will leave that to the listener to decipher. The song is a character study on why these men became men that could kill and the heaviness and scarring that killing left upon them.
I would love to see the song make it to a television show in 2019, it’s certainly visual to me. Thanks for reading…. See you tomorrow with a break down of “Gone Not Dead”.

“Killing Machine”
Another man dead I didn’t want to kill
Another soul lost that I didn’t will
Another man’s pain that I didn’t feel
Another dead soldier laid on a hill

Killing machine, oh Killing Machine
you bought yourself a Killing Machine

Run for the hills navajo let’s go
Run through the streams and the valleys below
Run through the dreams of our fathers before
Passed in the night with blood on the door

Killing machine, oh Killing Machine
you bought yourself a Killing Machine

Pitch them down from the 2nd floor
Pitch them down to the dirt below
Kiss their mothers with lips so cold
Foreign soldiers never do grow old, do they?

Killing machine, oh Killing Machine
you bought yourself a Killing Machine

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day two – “Wade in the Darkness”

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EIGHT Days till the release of our new album “Mountain”. Today I’m going to break down “Wade in the Darkness” from the album.

After the good fortune of landing Sleeping With Lions on Animal Kingdom, I had started to really focus on cinematic themes. I had always written visually, and anything that I write I “see” in my head before and during the writing process. That keeps any lyrics from showing up in the songs that are generic or not connected personally to me. For about a week I re-emersed myself into a few of the shows I had watched that really impacted my writing in the last ten years. Carnivale and Deadwood from HBO, Heat, Sexy Beast, Unforgiven, some classic westerns. One theme that I kept coming back to was how we suffer things or go through things in our past that we try to leave behind, and disconnect from. Could be almost anything, and not always super negative, but sometimes when it’s something that was very emotional for us as humans we don’t really want to visit that place in our minds and relive through something with that kind of weight.
“Wade in the Darkness” is about entering those areas in our mind where those memories lie, and how those things in our past affect our future and our decisions. I wanted the song to stand on it’s own with drums, to have an eerie slide guitar in it, and be somewhat of a dark Daniel Lanois feel. We had pitched it to “The Walking Dead”, and were very close to a license with it but didn’t happen. I have a feeling it still might land in something this year. One of my favorite off the album for the feel. In my mind, visually the narrator was walking down a flight of steps into the darkness to deal with what he had left behind. I hope you enjoy it when you hear the song.

Wade in the Darkness
They say there are some things we never leave too far behind
Traces of faces, places in the back of our mind

Wade in the darkness, away from the light, and pray that we just make it out alive

Banded together, the fears that burn in your chest
Haunted by dreams that never seem to let you rest

Wade in the darkness, away from the light, pray that we can make it out alive

I hear you calling, I still hear you calling….
through the echo’s of this rain, that never stops falling,
that never stops falling

Wade in the darkness, away from the light, and pray that somehow we make it out alive
Wade in the darkness, away from the light, and pray that somehow we make it out alive

Breaking down songs of Mountain, day one – “Sleeping with Lions”

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We are 9 days away from the release of “Mountain” now. We thought it might be cool to break down some of the songs from the album for you guys. We’ll start out with our single “Sleeping With Lions”.

Pre-cancer, so around late 2011 I had the main riff of the song and it had morphed into a song called “Come Apart”. At that time it was angsty relationship song with what I felt were sub-par lyrics. We were playing the song out some and had even cut a demo in the studio. “Come Apart” didn’t feel up to snuff to me, and so it didn’t make the cut. Move forward two years and I was in the middle of chemo and radiation fighting cancer. We were doing everything that we could to move forward and keep recording. I literally was in the studio with Brian and Greg with a rash covering my body from the chemo trying to cut guitars. It was during that time that I kept coming back to this powerful guitar riff, and the opening anthem type melody. It just felt like it deserved lyrics that would match the power of the riff. I had been reading and focusing on people that had faced great adversity and overcome through faith. Two men really stood out to me, one was Job and the other Daniel from the bible. Both having to survive on nothing but faith. I could really relate to that. At the time I was also thinking about legacy, and that if something happened to me, any lyrics I left behind I wanted to inspire people. I was driving home one night and starting singing a line in my head over the guitar riff. “I hold the light that lights the pathway”. The way I write a lot of times is to construct the entire song in my head. I write a line, repeat, add another, repeat two, and another repeat three, until I’ve written and memorized something until I can make it to a pen and paper. By the time I had gotten home I had the chorus. “I hold the light that lights the pathway, I hold the key that locks the door, I mark the steps that lead to freedom, I swim the sea that leads to shore”. It was a declaration of giving 100% trust and faith to God that he would lead me through whatever was to happen.
I sat down and wrote the rest of the song in probably 2-3 minutes. The first verse I imagined a prisoner, locked away with no hope. Metaphors for a woman trapped in an abusive relationship, a kid stuck in a bad home, someone fighting disease, people silenced for their views, anyone trying to overcome. “Well they took them a hammer, and they took them a nail. And they built you a prison, and they made you a cell. And they gave you no ransom, and they set you no bail. No view of a heaven, yea they gave you their hell.”
Second verse came easily as well, and it is the story of David which still makes me shudder to think about. “Daniel on his knees, he continued to pray, and the king he forbid him, and they led him away. And they laid him with lions, and they told him goodbye. They returned in the morning, just to find him alive.” It is the universal story of faith and perseverance.
Forward months later, and I was on the mend and we cut the new song which was now “Sleeping With Lions”. With no releases immediately coming up we sat on the song. Forward a couple years and we had given some songs to our new publisher who was synching songs to television. Out of all the songs he had to pick from he kept telling me that “Sleeping With Lions” would land somewhere. I wasn’t so sure, and didn’t see it as a single. Sometimes this happens when you are very close to a song and it seems like it was just written for your circumstance. Regardless, I said sure, give it a shot. A few months later I got the call that it had been chosen out of our songs for the “Animal Kingdom” show on TNT. The rest as they say is history. “Sleeping With Lions” then followed up to be placed on ESPN’s coverage of the X-Games this fall. We have a good inclination that you will also hear it on something big in 2019. It was released October 1st 2019 as the first single off of “Mountain” and was added to 12 Spotify Editorial Playlists. To put that in perspective, on our last album “Break My Fall” and “Head Bent” were added to ONE each. Previous releases saw NO playlists placements. “Sleeping With Lions” is currently doing 10-15,000 streams per day and has done 180,000 since October 1st at the time I’m writing this.
I want to add one more note while we are on this subject. Bands ON record labels release records and spend tens of thousands of dollars to have consultants recommend their songs for Spotify playlists. Even after doing that, most do not see any of their songs make the editorial playlists. Those lists are the new top 40. The fact that we have released this record, WITHOUT a label, without consultants, paid for by our fans, and had this success solidifies that it’s a new world out there and this can be done without labels. It requires a lot of hard work, a lot of hustle, and more than anything a lot of FAITH. See you tomorrow with another track explanation. CT

Sleeping with Lions on Spotify

Call or post a request for “Sleeping With Lions” on SiriusXM Octane or email Octane@siriusxm.com them and help us continue the success.

“Sleeping With Lions”
Well they took them a hammer
And they took them a nail
And they built you a prison, and they made you a cell
And they gave you no ransom, and they set you no bail
With no view of a heaven, yeah they gave you their hell

But I hold the light that lights the pathway
I hold the key that locks the door
I mark the steps that lead to freedom
I swim the sea that leads to shore

Daniel on his knees, he continued to pray
And the king he forbid him, and they led him away
And they laid him with lions, and they told him goodbye
They returned in the morning, just to find him alive….

I hold the light that lights the pathway
I hold the key that locks the door
I mark the steps that leads to freedom
I swim the sea that leads to shore

Over 100,000 streams on Spotify for “Sleeping with Lions”

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“Sleeping With Lions” from the TV show Animal Kingdom is the first single off our new full length record “Mountain” set for release on Halloween. Yesterday we crossed over 100,000 streams in the first ten days! Thanks to everyone streaming and saving and sharing.

Get the song here-
Sleeping with Lions
And request it here!
SiriusXM Octane

“Stuck in a Rut” used in Dodge commercial!

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Very proud to announce that you can now hear The Cold Stares song “Stuck in a Rut” on a new Dodge commercial. You’ll find it on the Velocity channel on Roadkill Nights as well as Dodge’s website and social media. As car fanatics, I’m sure a lot of you know what this means to us. Absolutely stoked.

Dodge – Stuck in a Rut – The Cold Stares

Tracks off for mastering!

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Tracks sent off for final mastering touch up for vinyl this morning. Here’s the song listing for-

MOUNTAIN

1-The Great Unknown
2-Stickemup
3-Under His Command
4-Friend of Mine
5-Gone (Not Dead)
6-Wade in the Darkness
7-Child of God
8-Sleeping With Lions
9-The River
10-Cold Black Water
11-The Plan
12-If Your Way Gets Dark
13-Two Keys and a Good Book
14-Killing Machine
15-Mountain

TCS - Mountain

Trussart guitars for 2018/19 tour and album!

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Couldn’t be more excited to announce that I’ll be officially playing Trussart guitars on this upcoming tour 18/19 and next album. James makes incredibly unique guitars and I’m stoked to be a part of a list of artists they endorse including heroes of mine like Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Charlie Sexton. I’ll still be playing Collings guitars as well but the Trussart provides a unique voicing that I was looking for on these next recordings. I’ll try to post an interesting story next week of why this post took so long after the announcement. Fairly interesting story. Please check out Trussart’s amazing guitars here- -CT

James Trussart Guitars