From the recording Both Sides Of The River
THE BLUFF
“Did you ever say something you wish you could take back, but it’s too late? Don’t discount the healing effects of sitting alone up high watching the city lights twinkle while consuming a quantity of good cannabis.”
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
I had thought recently of an old haunt near my hometown. This place called Bottomless Lakes, just outside town was a string of gigantic sinkholes filled with very deep water. They lay in a string along the base of a mesa and culminated with an actual decent-sized lake. There is a road on top of the mesa looking down on the lakes and back at the city lights, and there is a low road along the base of the mesa and near all the lakes. Usually, the low road was for drinking beer. The high road was for admiring the view or making out or both.
One night after a gig at Raven’ View just outside Cave Creek about as far as Bottomless Lakes from the old hometown, this song hit me in the parking lot. I sat there in my truck and plucked it out.
Ed Skibbe, Cave Creek
August 2023
CREDITS
Ed Skibbe: acoustic guitar, vocal
Spencer Pyne: bass
Brian McClure: drums
Robert Hoke: lap steel guitar
NOTES
We recorded basic tracks, bass, drums and reference guitar and vocal at ESP in Colorado. If I remember correctly, I sang keeper vocals and tracked new guitar in Arizona. Robert Hoke came over and played some of the most hauntingly beautiful lap steel I have ever heard. Spencer produced the heck out of this one.
Lyrics
THE BLUFF (Skibbe)
© 2023, Coyote Tongue Music (ASCAP)
Drive the truck out to the lake
Cattle guard, rusty gate
Spark one up, park way up on the bluff
Sometimes enough is just enough
Horizon line is the city glow
Like a simmering volcano
Ready to erupt
Sometimes enough is just enough
Lakewaves twinkle like a universe of stars
A fish leaps free like a comet and I wonder
Did I go too far?
I exhale the cloud real slow
Then I watch it grow
Then I watch it go
Up on the bluff
Sometimes I think things through
Sometimes I just do what I gotta do
This bottle in my hand, it is a potion and a crutch
Sometimes too much is just too much
I wish I’d held those words for a little while
Tasted the blood and the hurt and the bile
Lord I wish they had not stuck
Sometimes too much is just too much
Lakewaves twinkle like a universe of stars
A fish leaps free like a comet and I wonder
Did I go too far?
I exhale the cloud real slow
Then I watch it grow
Then I watch it go
Up on the bluff
Maybe we were only fooling
Maybe we just lost control
No one ever means to break the thing that makes us whole
Lakewaves twinkle like a universe of stars
A fish leaps free like a comet and I wonder
Did I go too far?
I exhale the cloud real slow
Oh
Then I watch it grow
Oh
Then I watch it go
Up on the bluff
Up on the bluff
Up on the bluff