The Year It Rained

A pandemic album from 2021, containing songs from 1981 to 2007.

Produced by mediaunion, Portland, Oregon

Cover Art by Amy Gray – Zing Arts

What Stones We Throw (1987)
Joni Only (1981) +
A Walk In The Dark (1988)
Both Sides Of The Line (1990) +
Saturday Rain (1987) +
I Was Sure She Could Fly (1988)
My Skin Makes Me Proud (2007) *#
Never Thought This Would Happen (1986) +
A Ghost In Marble (1994) ^
Dreams Of The West (1987)
Hope They Don’t Find Amelia (1992) +
Surf Wherever You Want (2005) *

Patrick Short: music, lyrics, piano, sounds, lead and backing vocals
Kevin Laurila: bass, sounds, mixing and mastering
+ Mike Short: lead guitars
* Steve Adams: lead guitars
^ David Short: cello
^ Emily Lewis: viola
# Additional vocals from Amy Gray, Jenn Hunter, Tobias Berblinger, Lindsay Feathers, Cowan Jenkins and Fiona Jenkins

Additional lyrics by Amy Gray, Fiona Jenkins and Cowan Jenkins

What Stones We Throw

I’m sliding down the banister any time you’re around
I’ll say the stupidest things and make an ass of myself
What is it about you? Your quiet air of dignity?
Maybe encouragement you gave me once upon a time

What stones we throw, the ripples they create
Years later, still rock us gently in their wake

So how does he treat you? I hear there’re stories to tell
I can still see the bruises even as you smile
It cuts those who know you and it tears those who care
Let me bleed for a future where you never wear that look again

What stones we throw, the ripples they create
Years later, still rock us gently in their wake

So it could never happen, I understand it all too well
A marriage is sacred even as a living hell
In the endless circle we find ourselves dancing in
The one comfort I have is that you’ll never know

What stones we throw, the ripples they create
Years later, still rock us gently in their wake

Joni Only

You held the cup
I drank it up
Only then did you tell me it was somebody’s blood
I believed it
‘Cos I thought you believed it
Until you left me holding your unleavened bread

Joni wants me to just to want her only
Joni promises me hell if I don’t
Not like the boys who see her on Sunday
They say they’ll be true to her memory
But they won’t

You held the delicate world
In your loving hands
Then you crushed it when it didn’t fit your master plan
I’d like to leave you
I’d like to stay
Can’t do either in conscience
I was brought up that way

Joni wants me to just to want her only
Joni promises me hell if I don’t
Not like the boys who see her on Sunday
They say they’ll be true to her memory
But they won’t

A Walk In The Dark

What’s that noise?
What just broke the silence?
Turn around
Search the darkness
When I reach out, then you know I’m afraid
Don’t reach out and I might drift away

Thought this was going to be
Just a walk in the dark
Nothing too frightening
It’s gone far beyond that now
Thought this was going to be
Just a walk in the dark

Is this it?
Is this the real thing?
God, so fast, my head is spinning
I must break the surface
I must get some air
I turn around
You’re always you’re always you’re always there

Thought this was going to be
Just a walk in the dark
Nothing too frightening
It’s gone far beyond that now
Thought this was going to be
Just a walk in the dark

Casual
The name of the game
All that I sought
Was warmth for the winter
All that I found
Was the dark side of us
Oh my God, are we losing control?

Thought this was going to be
Just a walk in the dark
Nothing too frightening
It’s gone far beyond that now
Thought this was going to be
Just a walk in the dark

Both Sides Of The Line

Sirens started blasting
And the wind began to howl
We should have seen it coming
Long before now
Used wisdom as a shelter
Until I turned to find
The horror I was hiding from
Had crept up from behind

Everything all ways
Both sides some days
Can’t make up your mind
Walking both sides of the line
Both sides of the line

We headed out for cover
The pastor rang the bell
The others had to fall in step
With everybody else
I guess I believed
Everything you said
Woke up with my hands tied
Bleeding from my head

Everything all ways
Both sides some days
Can’t make up your mind
Walking both sides of the line
Both sides of the line

Sirens started blasting
And the wind began to howl
We should have seen it coming
Long before now
Brave minds that once took chances
Frightened beyond help
The things you take for Gospel truth
Are lies for someone else

Everything all ways
Both sides some days
Can’t make up your mind
Walking both sides of the line
Both sides of the line

Saturday Rain

You showed me your playhouse
But I can’t stay to play
I’ll be on a plane flying
Saturday Rain
Factories closing around you
And the snow melted down
Are those tears that I see?
Or Saturday Rain

Saturday Rain
I can’t go walking with you
In the Saturday Rain

Times like these, I think the clock’s hands
Move too easily
I’ve pleaded with them for hours now
They won’t slow down for me
It may be easier to fly away from pain
Endless turmoil and Saturday Rain

Saturday Rain
I can’t go walking with you
In the Saturday Rain

How many days? Maybe a hundred
How many lives we’ve put asunder
How many reveries have been ruined by Saturday Rain?

There is no space between us
Just the gulf of Utah
And a curtain in shadow
Called Saturday Rain
As you’re rocketing up there
In orbit somewhere
Remember that life without you
Is Saturday Rain

Saturday Rain
I can’t go walking with you
In the Saturday Rain

I Was Sure She Could Fly

I was there at the wedding
When they came up the aisle
New-minted marrieds
In the spring of their lives
She sang Ave Maria
It made everyone cry

I was sure she could fly

It was just another nightclub
In the middle of the week
She stepped behind the microphone
Too shy to speak
But when she started singing
Not an eye stayed dry

I was sure she could fly

Somebody told me
You were planning to leave
Will we ever forget you?
How could you think that of me?
Imagine me at eighty
Putting your tape in the stereo

I was sure she could fly

My Skin Makes Me Proud

See, it’s written IN TALL LETTERS
Give it to the beautiful serving maidens
My skin makes me proud
My skin makes me proud
My skin is attached to me

There is nothing like a banana
My skin makes me proud
My skin makes me proud
My skin is attached to me

I call you Boo-Boo ‘cos you’re funky

I know all about the Presidents (they’re dead)
My skin makes me proud
My skin makes me proud
My skin is attached to me

I’m just making this part up
Keep your nose to yourself
My skin makes me proud
My skin makes me proud
My skin is attached to me

I call you Boo-Boo ‘cos you’re funky
I call you Boo-Boo ‘cos you’re funky

(Lyrics by Fiona Jenkins)
© 2008 Patrick Short, BMI

Never Thought This Would Happen

I grew up with the thought that I’d meet this girl
Who’d strike a match one night and set fire to my whole world
Well, the word divorce wasn’t in my vocabulary
I never, ever thought this would ever happen to me

You couldn’t wait to leave when we hit hard times
You didn’t care to talk so we walked and fell off the line
Well, we’ve made the break – our life together is through
I wonder if you thought this could ever happen to you

I think about our child shuttling back and forth
Think about all the wretched fighting to get this all sorted out
I think about things and how they’ll never be
I wonder if I thought this would ever happen to me

When she gives me smile that looks like your used to do
That looks like yours used to do back when I trusted you
Full of loving and faith and commitment
I try to remember you
Thought I’d only ever ask one woman to marry me
I never, ever thought this could ever happen to me

A Ghost In Marble

I can only know what you feel free to tell me
Your silence forces contemplation of endless possibility

Uncertain shadows
A deepening blue
A ghost in marble
Of a girl that I once knew

You seek the higher calling and you seek beyond the known
I know you sang in me once a long time ago

Uncertain shadows
A deepening blue
A ghost in marble
Of a girl that I once knew

I can only wonder what roads remain
A curtain falling down on a land of mist and rain

Uncertain shadows
A deepening blue
A ghost in marble
Of a girl that I once knew

Dreams Of The West

He stood with one foot on either side
Of the imaginary line called the Continental Divide
There was a mountain and there was a stream
And someone leaving everything he wanted behind

In the face of deception, we live our lives
Holding onto our dreams of the West

He slowly walked the high plateau
Where the wind ripped blindly and the sagebrush blew
There was winter that he barely survived
And someone leaving everything he’d worked for behind

In the face of deception, we live our lives
Holding onto our dreams of the West

The water was cold, the waves were high
Fog hung heavy and I could not hide
Left hanging out there alone without pride
Someone leaving everyone he loved behind

In the face of deception, we live our lives
Holding onto our dreams of the West

Hope They Don’t Find Amelia

Hope they don’t find Amelia
She’s better left in history
Don’t go digging up desert islands
Let her stay a mystery

Hope they don’t find Elvis
At the Burger King in Heaven
Please remember reverently
How bad he was by ’77

Hope they don’t find Hoffa
He’s holding out for better pay
I like to think the man was buried
Deep beneath where Giants played

Hope they don’t find Amelia
She’s still soaring to this day
I like to think her motor’s running
If they dig her up, she’ll fly away
If they dig her up, she’ll fly
If they dig her up, she’ll fly away
If they dig her up, she’ll fly
If they dig her up, she’ll fly away
If they dig her up, she’ll fly

I’ll fly away

Surf Wherever You Want

Caught in a closing mind
Unable to see it through
Cut walking on the edge
Depending on all of you
This is impossible
These are all lies
Don’t have the time
Any more to be wise

Surf all the way to Chicago
Surf all the way to Utah
Surf all the way to Spokane, now baby
Surf wherever you want

I know you keep telling me
Walk out there without an idea
Couldn’t believe it for years
Caught up in all of my fears
This is impossible
You cannot surf
You don’t belong on this
Marvelous earth

Surf all the way to Chicago
Surf all the way to Utah
Surf all the way to Spokane, now baby
Surf wherever you want

If everybody smiled with arms open wide
We’d find a power greater than the rising tide
Than the rising tide, than the rising tide
If everybody waved at the same time
There’d be a wave big enough for everyone to ride

Surf all the way to Chicago
Surf all the way to Utah
Surf all the way to Spokane, now baby
Surf wherever you want

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Patrick Short's Extended Family