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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.

    Download includes the original 11 track album, a PDF file that includes original cover art, credits, and a scanned copy of the handwritten letter included in the physical copy. Also included are lyric sheets made exclusively for this digital release.

    This download also features a thirteen song set originally broadcast live on Pittsburgh's WRCT radio on 1/30/06, studio versions of two never-before-released songs written during the Husky Tenor-era ("Mid Air Version" and "The Song: The Husky Tenor"), and an audio recording of Mike reading "The Letter."

    If you do not have a credit card/Paypal/disposable income, please send us a message at www.facebook.com/endlessmikeandthebeagleclub and we will work something out. If you want something, you should be able to have it. Thank you.
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  • The Husky Tenor - Compact Disc
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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    Includes unlimited streaming of The Husky Tenor via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
Mainstreet Johnstown is a one-way that leads out and only out, but I guess everything does. So whether it's two-way or sixteen lanes, I won't complain. I promise that I will not save your place. When you speak of change, it's not a metaphor for what's come before. This is real. This is how. This is now in a daze. So, honestly, Abe, did you have them at "four score," or was it more about what you had to say? Because, you know, that's not how they do it these days. But the fact remains. I promise that I will not save your place. When you speak of chains, it's not a metaphor for what's come before. This is real. This is how. This is now in a daze. So as the indecisive seem to say, Hmmm..... So you take care, now. I'll take care of everything. Try to bring a pair of comfortable shoes because I don't want to hear you complain. But the fact remains. I promise that I will not say her name. When we speak of change, it's not a metaphor for what's come before. This is real. This is now. This is how... Hmmm....
2.
So first I was a bomb in a briefcase, a mess of smoke and fear. I couldn't hide it from me, let alone anyone in here. I saw myself in the mirror for the first time in a while. I was rudely interrupted by a guy with a great big smile. I said, "thanks a lot for nothing, asshole. Is this some kind of joke?" He said, "I don't hear anyone laughing over the sound of you as you choke. But don't let it go to your head. There's room enough in here for us both." So then I was a priest at a pulpit and the only people in the nave were the only people that my message would never save. So Jesus, if you're really coming, really, you should get here soon. The price of gasoline has been going through the roof. So should we mourn like we believe in something or live like someone died? Do good things happen to terrible people? Is there even such a thing? I still can't decide. I open the paper and let it make up my mind. I want to be a cause with no martyr. I want to be a fight I can't win. Let's give it up to the ghost that haunts me once again. Because even though it's falling apart, I still want it and even though it's all I know, it seems to me if you never quit writing, you never have to read what you wrote. And how is that different from making it up as you go? And how is that different from walking on the side of the road? And how is that different from everything that I know?
3.
There's no shame in living in the red. I'm not going to wait until it's overhead. There's no such thing as a fair wage and it's better to owe something to yourself than to own anything, any day. But when we think we're owed an explanation as to how we arrived at this destination. "Destiny" and "nation," each has nothing to do with the other's definition. They treat us like the new kid in a school, like our mantra's "do you dare me to be cool?" But dare I say that it's okay, or at least that it will be? If it makes it easy, when you're feeling all alone, you're feeling all alone with me. Don't you see? But oh, what fortune we were too young to remember when first the umbilical cord was severed. There are those of us not yet over that day and that affliction is called "nationalism." Think about it this way: You can scream out "fuck the poor!" and "God hates fags!" or you can go into a street and burn a flag, but only one of these is a crime. Tell me who in his right mind really thinks that it's alright to put a place before it's people? Well, I guess that that's one form of sodomy that's never been illegal. And if it's killing you, it kills me, too. But somehow it's alright. Did you get the invite? You're invited cordially to feel all alone with me. Because there's a bell with a crack in it ringing to deafened ears. There's a "W" standing for "wrong" for four more years, but he believes in a Jesus and that's all some people can hear not the backwards grind of the gears. But when they've made me feel like I'm all by myself, it helps to just feel helpless with somebody else, where I can let my heart bleed all over my sleeve. I want to see change in my lifetime, is that so naive? I want to see the old ways burn, is that so wrong of me? I want to see an end to this New American Century. I want to know that everyone feels alone like me.
4.
I've got a few hours to kill (if they don't kill me first), a television set with the sound off, a stack of books my friends all recommend, but I'm laying here staring at the same ceiling that's covered my head for twenty-four years, almost twenty-five. And the telephone won't stop ringing because someone's got my number.
5.
I've been where I'm supposed to be at least once or twice now. I always end up driving away the first day the weather gets nice out. Luckily there are only two seasons in western PA, just construction work and snow storms and either way they cause a delay so I'm always late for everything. But it's a great excuse, so I can't complain. I remain. I remain. I met this guy who says he's lived here his whole life, and now he's pushing seventy. He says he knows the name of everyone in this town who has done the same and believe me, there are plenty. So I said, "maybe sometime you could introduce me to someone who's lived here longer than you: whoever owns that house on the corner with the stain-glassed windows and the pointed roofs." He said, "I got to warn you. He's a bit of a recluse. Maybe try the bars. Buddy, that's what we do." I remain. I remain. Right now, I've got my wallet full of things that I don't need: my money and my ID and Laura's old apartment key. I watch the grass grow greener on the other side and it makes my eyes water when it gets cut. I leave my keys in the ignition, lock the door and slam it shut. Maybe this will keep me away from college. Last time I went, I guess I never left home. I just waited for the weekend so I could still pretend I hadn't grown, hadn't grown alone, hadn't grown so small, hadn't grown apart, hadn't grown at all. I remain. I remain. I remain in the same state.
6.
Buildings tumble, people crumble, nothing seems to last. Once you held your head until those feelings passed. And I tried to call you, I tried to stall you, but I guess you got there first to that place where anger takes whatever hurts. Well what if one day everything you used to think you knew turned around and turned the doorknob and just walked right out without you? Could you stand to just start over, would it really be so bad? I asked my mom, she told me, "go and ask your dad." Because like the cure for cancer, if there's an answer, no one lets it out because the cost of treatment makes the world go around. And it's like all these fears through all these years are rings inside a tree and if you were cut open, they'd be there to see. Well, I see inside you're insisting that nobody really cares. Well, fuck that. Tell yourself you're beautiful and meet me on the stairs. We've got a million different feelings that we need to hammer out so by the morning we'll have walked beyond a shadow of a doubt and into the sun and then back into the shade again. The leaves are on the branches and the cars that pass us can't see in to find us "me and someone else" doesn't make an "us." So start over if you must, but I refuse to let it end this way.
7.
If I ever meet Free-wheelin'- era Bob Dylan, I'd tell him that we had the same dream. And he would probably say, "you mean that one on the train? You and everybody else, it seems." And I would probably say, "Yeah. You're right. Okay. But why do you think that is?" And he'd probably reply with, "friend, I don't know why. It just seems to be what happens. That everybody changes into mothball scented clothes, telling stories that never even happened, at least not the why their stories go." Oh yeah? Well, it's not youthful naivete or some ungrateful bellyache or living like I'm trying to forget. I know there's something commendable with being responsible and dependable, I just haven't figured it out for myself yet. And I know there's something I should say to make it all okay, but all I have to show for it, at the age of twenty-three is this juvenile philosophy: "There's more to life than taking people's shit." Oh yeah? Well how many people start cool and end up cold? Is that some kind of prerequisite to getting out and getting old? Oh yeah? But when the boredom in your life meets the boredom in your eyes, justify it all you like, but some things should never change. So if I ever have an audience with nowadays-era Dylan, I'd just ask him where the hell has he been, when will he return, and why is he concerned with commercials and lawsuits against Hootie and the Blowfish. And if you ever meet Husky Tenor-era me, promise you'll promise me this: Still my beating heart if ever I'm a part of what I nowadays try to resist. Oh yeah.
8.
Houses don't know that they're houses. Pets don't know they're your pets. They spend their whole lives confined to those houses, they've got nothing to compare it with. Hipsters don't think that they're hipsters. Bad guys don't think that they're bad. People don't know that they're teaching each other to want only what they can't have. So what am I that I don't know? What don't you know that you are? I feel like driving all night with my brother in a car that doesn't know it's a car. The sun doesn't know it sustains us. The clock doesn't know it's on time. Still every February twenty-nineth, every four years, somehow it doesn't seem like March in our minds. But this song doesn't know that it's empty and this room doesn't know it's a song. And people drift in and out of my life like they don't even know that it's wrong. But only a fool speaks in absolutes, though they never know that they are. What if tonight we just all cleanse ourselves of these scars that don't know that they're scars? What if it's really that easy and we only think that we know that it's hard?
9.
The trees look lovely in the sunlight as I'm staring at the ground. The kids are coming back to college. I live here all year round without a formal education. Do I have anything to say on this subject of "destination," when I forgot about "Point A." A point I thought I made when I made it a point to try and nothing anybody had to say about it then was ever going to make me bat an eye. I used to keep my eyes closed through these fireworks displays and know that what I pictured in my mind could blow the truth away. Oh, once so proudly did I hail from Point A. A point I thought I made when I made it a point to say that nothing in the world outside of art or truth or rock and roll is ever going to get in the way. So I pick up the pace to find a road to take, to get home before the streetlights are on again. The trees look lovely in the moonlight and the shadows that they cast are just as lovely as the feeling of talking about the past and knowing everything is on track. Because there's a beginning and there is an end. There is a line and I am drawn to it again. It's like I never missed it and it never missed me, and it doesn't matter if there ever will be a point b.
10.
Route 1981 05:33
We didn't come out of nowhere whether we belive that we're bound to end up there, along the way we keep an eye on passengers and passers-by, on road blocks and on one way streets. I had the chance of a lifetime. Whether I believe that the course set is all mine, I've got an atlas I can hold, I've got a road map you can fold, I've got a station we can change but the world we live in isn't giving anything for free unless we think it should be. A lesson learned of you and you and you and me. One more stop for the tour guide to buy a sovenier that matches the inside to get a look at those who paid to see what somebody else made to hear what somebody else said before and one more drink for the driver who always kind of hoped he would be a survivor. And so what better way to learn than first to crash but not to burn, to back up traffic on Route 1981? But the ice we're skating won't be waiting for another night as cold as this one or a warm sun. A lesson learned of you and you and everyone. But it's not the height or weight that has been sinking arks or breaking covenants, it's crossing over solid yellow lines, it's failing to make the worst of worst times. I always thought I would find you if I just looked up and saw I was behind you. I'd let your brakelights be my guide, let someone else give me a ride or lose my words and have to start again, so We didn't come out of nowhere. Whether we believe that we have to be somewhere, we know that nowhere feels the same once there's a place put to a name, a TV dinner in the living room. I stayed in bed until I lost my head and then I went outside and walked around while the rain fell down. A lesson learned of you and you and everyone who stuck around to know that all we want is something better, but all we need is food and shelter. Everything falls under one of those. It's just one of those things that everybody knows. But it doesn't stop them. Why would it? Why? Is there any way this could be mine, everything on this street but the stop sign?
11.
I wear the same clothes for days at a time. I've got the weight of a washing machine on my mind with the whole world bouncing around inside of it. And as I talk about doomsday and bands, I'm letting the chance of a lifetime just slip through my hands and land on the floor by the bed that I'm lying in. I'm having trouble with sleeping again. I turn to the stack of books that all my friends recommend, but I can't even focus on the lines, let alone what's between them. So I surrender and watch some TV and feel ashamed of myself for giving into complacancy, breaking the two packs a day mark days ago. And I finally paid off the van then I bought a new car with better gas mileage than the van got but I know I'm financing a war fought for greed and bravado. I know where my taxes go while my taxes know nothing about me. My roommate's boyfriend's a nice enough guy but still I dread when he's here and I have to say "hi" even though our conversations never go on much beyond it. I don't know when I first got this way. I think that I used to be someone with something to say, but for the first time in my life, I feel more lonely than anything. I know people my age with children and I know people my age with husbands and wives, even more people my age with high paying jobs, even more people my age with miserable lives. So it's they that I take shelter under and let laundry nor loan payments ever put asunder and help me stay happy inside of these four smoke-stained walls, waiting for someone to call, as I'm waiting to just disappear.
12.
The Letter 10:20
13.
I had this friend - a novelist, One day he left without an ending. Sometimes I still wonder about how he has been - Did he get his plot worked out? When I was in high school, I had this teacher - She was my friend/ she was my hero - I thought she was perfect. One day she told me, "I still don't know if I'm where I ought to be." That made her even more perfect to me. You see, my dad - he builds. My mom - she cares. My friends create and I just stare. "Guys, look around. Look at where we are. We've got a ways, but, we've come so far." But I want to know, but what do I know? But I want to say, but what do I say? But I want to feel, but what do I feel? And I want to do, but what do I do? What do I do?
14.
Let this be real: I want to believe me. I want to relieve me of the way I feel. So close my eyes, and hold my breathe for me. It's all I need. The weeks go by and I feel trapped in a pattern of spreading thin, no matter how I try. I'm not making excuses, but this could be a reason to let me in. And all this time, you've been on my mind. I know it might not sound true, but I swear it is - I promise you. I know that's all I ever do. I can't explain it - I just lose sense of it, and lose my senses - it's all the same. Every time I think I've found it, I lose it. But I was driving and I put some music on, heard one of your favorite songs and thought of you and of how that makes it one of my favorite songs, too. And I know that doesn't make us close like the way we where before, but I just can't let any more time come between us. So let's carry out the plans that we always had. And we'll make it right, even if it's hard to. We'll make it worth it, we always do. And I'll say every word that it's taken too long to tell you.
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about

The Husky Tenor was originally released in 2006 on Friends Make Records. It was re-issued in 2008 by Crafty Records.

credits

released May 6, 2006

Album credits available with download.

Lyric sheets made exclusively for this digital re-issue.
Type-set, etc. by Mike Miller
Photos by Emmy Volkar *
*with one notable exception - sue me.

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Endless Mike and the Beagle Club Johnstown, Pennsylvania

A singer-songwriter with a loud punk band

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