1 - Where’s Your Fire

This fourth and final iteration of the song represents an 18 year history of reworking. It’s first form was as the song “One Question,” which was originally released on a J. Withrow solo record “Never Done This Before.” It’s 2nd incarnation was an acoustic track, and it’s 3rd was Bus Seven’s first attempt on their “Songs from the Neighborhood” album. This final version represents the song in its most mature form.

V1:
Every day I come a little further
To get inside your head and light up a flame
What about them people that just sit lookin’ on
I just can’t understand. I got one question…

CHORUS:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me where’s your fire?
Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me where’s your fire?
Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me where’s your…

V2:
I see how things are going down
Get it together, listen for the sound
It’s like a tower fallin’ straight to the ground
If you can’t hear the thing, I ask one question…

CHORUS

BRIDGE:
Do you wake up these morning on the wrong side of your bed
Do you hit your head on the front side of a ledge
Do you try and sing a song but you’re coughin’ instead
When you’re living, when your moving

Do you hear that snake speaking in your ear
When the fruit is looking good with shining skin in the clear (don’t eat it)
It’s poison breaks you down from fire to ice
For the price it ain’t worth it. You gotta sacrifce

CHORUS

2 - Burning Down the Lighthouse

As the title track, ”Burning Down the Lighthouse” captures the essence of Bus Seven’s fourth release. With simple power chords, this track grapples with the shock and betrayal of losing the trust of someone who was dearly close and a pillar in life. They have burned down the lighthouse—the very thing meant to give light and safety, turns into darkness and a grave.

V1:
Held me like a child
underneath the moon
Touched me with the sun 
through the afternoon
Kept me in the moment
Kept me in a place where
I could never know it 
Never know the darkest devilish opponent
Who was hidin’ ‘hind the door

V2:
Spoke to me with tongues 
ancient as the dawn
Illuminated every sign—
perfect, pure, and strong
But anchored in the water 
anchored was a broken stone
and disregarded, 
though it had the power to kill everything we started
Everything that carried love

CHORUS:
You were burning down the lighthouse
You were burning down the lighthouse
You were burning down the lighthouse

V3:
Snapped the wings of a future
flown in heavens above
Buried all the keys of instructed past 
Deep beneath the mud
With smoke on the horizon
all the many questions 
they rise up to the surface
Why did all the mountains and stars fall down upon us?
Weren’t we supposed to lift them all?

ENDING:
You were burning down the lighthouse
and the fire was bitter cold
You were burning down the lighthouse
and the fire just wanted more
You were burning down the lighthouse
and the fire was in your soul

3 - The Tree & The Knife

Birthed from a bass riff, “The Tree & The Knife” is this EP’s sole track with all music written in-the-round. Lyrics were later compiled from a group of three original poems. The song presents an apocalyptic, end-of-all-things perspective undergirded by low tuned electrics and hazy fade out.

V1:
What if I dug and put my legs inside the earth
Watch them penetrate and intertwine with the dirt
Arms and neck growing long in the sunny sky
My fingers leaves, my head the open flower

CHORUS:
Bright the tree, the knife so dark
Push it deep beneath the bark
Watching the golden future flow
Compose

V2:
Extract now what you want from my preservation
I think you’ll find a sequence you can replicate
My life, my days, are encased in amber
Feeling the hand return for one more turning

BRIDGE:
Let the ages pass and waters climb forever
Roots grow down in histroy
Lifeless as the bones of our forgotten fathers
Yet the tree still stands in death

CHORUS

4 - Jealous Lover’s Song

Based on the old testament scriptures which in many places depict Yahweh as a Husband longing for the love and affection of his Bride, the people of Israel—though she is often cruelly unfaithful.  “Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy.” Zechariah 8:2

V1:
I wrote you down a letter, I wrote you down a letter from the field
And I delivered it up
Now you got the letter, oh you got the letter in your hands
And I ain’t making it up
Words are spillin’ everywhere, the feelings from my heart
Oh how I care for you
I had to write a…

CHORUS:
Jealous lover’s song, a jealous lover’s refrain
(taking your soul back, bringing in love, giving you freedom)
A jealous lover’s song, a jealous lover’s refrain
(how could I leave you? I love you too much to see you just drift away)

V2:
I could never measure, I could never measure all the pain
But it don’t matter at all
’Cause you are the treasure, oh you are the treasure in my mind
And I have savored it all
I have given everything—my life, my time, my energy,
to see you live out eternity. I can’t stop.
I had to write a…

CHORUS

V3:
Brave the stormy weather, brave the stormy weather for you baby
Hand and hand together, hand and hand together
’Till the sun rises and sets
A thousand days, a thousand ways
To show my devotion, to show my care
To show myself so you can see the way I made you to shine
I had to keep with a…

CHORUS

ENDING:
When everything’s firmed up bought and sold, everything’s bought and sold
I will choose you to have to hold, choose you to have to hold.
When everything’s firmed up bought and sold, everything’s bought and sold
I will choose you to have to hold. You will shine bright, you will shine brighter.

5 - Long Way Down

Certainly the most instrumentally ambitious undertaking by Bus Seven, this undulating closing track features vocalist Crystal Yates and guitarist Quintin Hope. It wrestles with the acute suffering of disease and death experienced during the 2020 COVID pandemic, and seeks to find hope in and through the pruning work of pain.

V1:
Creatures in caverns cry. Villains in vapors fly.
Reaching to the peak of death and life.
Hidden little tears.

CHORUS:
Feel my head, feel my heart, feel the rhythm from the start
Going strong, they ain’t wrong, it’s a long way down
To the drop, to the stop, to the time without a clock
I ain’t dead, still they said, “It’s a long way down.”

V2:
Lanterns fill the void of air and room
An ever waiting suffocating light that seals the tomb
Speculating rise and fall of man
Let the numbers show the difference ‘tween the embers and the stones

CHORUS

BRIDGE:
Prune the branches, peal the bark off what’s diseased
Let it burn, let it burn
Shield my eyes, let the glow fill up the sky
Let it die, let it die, let it die

CHORUS

ENDING:
Feel my head, feel my heart
Feel my head, feel my heart

CREDITS

Jairus Withrow - Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitar
John Hames - Lead Guitar, Vocals
Colin Campbell - Bass, Vocals
Aaron Hass - Drums

Crystal Yates - Vocals
Quintin Hope - Guitar Soloist “Long Way Down”
Ishmael Moody - Organ, Synth
Grace Lands - Rhodes
Chris Clark - Horns arrangements, trumpet
Michael Peterson - Saxophone
Paul Birk - Trombone

Austin Cope - Recording Engineer
Jared Fox - Mixing
Joe Causey - Mastering 

Art Design - DJ Newman
Cover Art - Cameron Apodaca