Sails - Lyrics - Ballydowse
Ballydowse was a celtic punk rock band from Chicago, Illinois with a rare mix of anarchist and religious ideas infused into their music. Many of the group's members were from the Jesus People USA commune. In addition to the group's Mekons Pogues-style Celtic punk influences, the group also draws from world musics such as klezmer and Tibetan throat singing. Ballydowse released two albums both engineered by Steve Albini. The debut was entitled The Land, the Bread, and the People and was a home place for many who found common cause with certain elements of Christianity while rejecting the American right wing bias so prominent in the church at the time. Their second album Fertile Crescent continued this trajectory with a growing Eastern European flavor. The group's political activism over the economic sanctions on Iraq in the 2000s, prison reform, death penalty and the short-comings of capitalism was unique among Christian bands of the time. The group disbanded in 2003.
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Like pirates off your shores of waste
our kiss you can forget
a newborn sense of smell and taste
for things you've never met
our nose no longer knows the heel of
give it more and give it faster
our pleasures still retain their feel for honor is their master
three winds fill the sails of my sisters and my brothers
grace from beyond, scorn from behind,
and love for each other
God of all gods father of each holy one
God of all gods father of each lowly one
God of all gods like a mother to the orphaned ones
God of all gods wholly other to the broken half of me
dim memory brings the shade of lesser days around me
back before the waking, the time of my founding
dark was the heart with but its own desires
when a god will not be tamed, man will serve a liar
from the shores i saw the sails of my
sisters and my brothers
left hehind the old life, born into another
eighteen years upon these waves storm, salt, and pounding
i wouldn't trade a minute of the seeing or the doubting
alive i am in the teeth of faith, few answers i have found
but the call that brings me back to life, to it i am bound
three winds fill the sails of my sisters and my brothers
grace from beyond, scorn from behind,
and love for each other
