Hello friends,

We apologize if one or two of you got all excited because you thought we were crawling out of our cave to play a show on the 30th of May at One Eyed Jack's. The advertisements for the concert should read "Ross Etherton" instead of "Red Cloud". That said, please go and see Ross play some bitchin' solo jams, including 4 of his composed translations of 8th century Chinese poet Li Bai and an accapella performance of a translation he did of Homer's "Siren's Song" from "The Odyssey".
Although the Cloud has no shows booked at the moment, there is always the chance that we will damage your eardrums in the future. In the meanwhile, please befriend and pity our various other projects including (but not limited to): Ross Etherton and the Private Club of the Satan's Helpers, The Fire Drills, Bad Luck City, Git Some, Bull of Heaven, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake and the Back$treet Boyz.

Big Love,

RCW

so we just posted two new songs from our split EP with big timber. here's our lineup on the CD:

1. castle keep
2. tug at the wrist
3. hard way

they were all recorded live, no overdubs (except for vocals) in our practice space by our drummer andrew. here's the lyrics:

CASTLE KEEP
oh arianne do you long for him as he longs for you?
oh arianne know he pines for you, know he wants you too.

jack, jack, with your castle walls built so strong and tall.
jack, jack, build your walls so high and they will never fall.

father, father, will you pray for me as i pray for you?
father, father, as you once held me, i will hold you too.

oh arianne with your skirts hitched high and your robin's breast.
arianne know that i loved you once. know i loved you best.


TUG AT THE WRIST
you were on your way home, when something just broke.
now you're rising up with the tarry black smoke.
with a tug at the wrist and a pull in your heart and blood on your shirt, now you'll have to go.

the squeal of the breakes, the scream of the tires, the flashing red lights, now you're rising up.
my name on your lips is the last thing i will hear.
now i'm rising up with nothing to fear.


HARD WAY
work in the cornfields till your fingers bleed.
eat what you earn, boy, steal what you need.

it's a hard way of living

rust on the plowshare, and the ground grows cold,
hold me to your breast now, mama, keep me warm.

now your lips will quiver, and our bodies are as one.
your body is as the earth now, bring forth our son.

music isn't a sporting event or an industrial venture. please don't compete with each other. there is no hierarchy among local bands. it's just a sick fucking illusion...

here's some of ross' lyrics from our CD.....


TWO FIERY EYES

Its time to go back home, where all the old hurts roam.
All the kicks and the hits and the pricks echoed off the school room walls.
Its time to go back home, where all the school boys roam,
turned into tiny gnomes by the passing of the years.
All the apes and the elephants, giving birth to indigents, rocking cradles and saving cents, theyre all still around.
Standing at their gasoline pumps and pulling out all the stumps in yards where I go bump in the woolly night.

I am a troubadour, steely-eyed and wanting more,
carving out a kingdom with the flat end of a spoon.
I am two firey eyes, that cut the country night.
I am your cornfield crow.
I am all that you despise.

LOVE, IT'S NOT WORKING

You work on the railroads and I slave in the house, tending our children all day.
You sit on the porch with our dear baby boy, just rocking him soft on your knee.
Love, its not working.
It wont work anymore.

Go to the places youve never seen.
Ill go to the places youve seen in your dreams.

You lived in this house for the last 15 years, just to die in this sweaty old hole.
You worked all your life for another mans gold and youre shaking to death now, it seems.
Love, its not working.
It wont work anymore.

Now go to the places youve never seen.
Go to the places youve seen in your dreams.
Ill be in the places youve seen in your dreams.

GREENGROCER

Sacks of potatoes in the cellar, meal strewn about the ground
You tipped the scales at 165 pounds.
Oh greengrocer, boy scout leader of the day,
with knots of rope, Both shiny and soaped,
asleep beneath the sand and clay.

I see you hanging from the gallows,
Hewn from the best of woods.
Pulleys, pine, weights and measures
Above all the wartime goods.

Do your best to weigh the produce.
Your body is the counterweight.
Now wash yourself in Baltic waters.
Beat your breast and steam your breath.

A ROOMFUL OF FOLKS

With eyes so distant and hard that I feel out of place
Theyre just empty stars in a vacuum of space.
A blink is a wink and a smile is a crack,
Across a visage of stone, pulleys clanking on bone.
The body wanders alone now while the mind stays behind.
And it knocks out the teeth and it blackens the eyes,
Rips through the pavement and lets loose a cry.
Were dancing alone in a roomful of folks,
Singing victory songs and cackling at jokes.
And the world is a corpse upon which we feed,
And if we are all stones, then tell me,
How can we bleed?
The body wanders alone now while the mind stays behind.
And it knocks out the teeth and it blackens the eyes,
Rips through the pavement and lets loose a cry.
Die, die, die, die, die, die, die
The body is lean now,
A well-oiled machine.
And out on the streets is where we feed.
Well eat up the cake, Lord, that was given to us,
And fly to the stars, and decay into rust.

CHILDREN YOU LEFT LAUGHING

The bodies from the spacecraft lay scattered on the ground,
Outside the citys white walls, with the children all around.
And the lines the children fed you boy, were all limericks and lies.
With the Occupants you just wandered round, while they scripted their goodbyes.
The children you left laughing, with symbols on their shoes.
With the Occupants you just wandered round, singing Tom Thumbs Blues.
And silly bikes were ridden to a hidden house where light shone bright and defeated night and you turned your captors loose.

The Occupants they rose up, unaided, to their craft.
Shimmering in the noon sun, seven silent ones.

COONSKIN CAP

In a coonskin cap in a copse of trees, with the spider webs and the silvery leaves, you threw down your guns and you turned up your palms.
You whistled a tune right between your teeth as the leaves fell in circles all around your feet soft and low.

And the troubadours with their robins breasts burn through the cities and stop to rest in roadside inns with their gabled roofs.
They take to their rooms and they make their pillows wet.

The air-raid marshals took their turns running in circles and flapping their arms and they put out the fire that burns in your heart.
They made the blood run in stops and starts from your nose, soft and low.
The carousel came and it took you away, the horses whine and the calliope neighs and youll ride on the stage for the rest of your days.

A TOWN WITHOUT A NAME

I was born on an April morning.
April 5th of 1976, to be exact.
Nobody came and no voices sang my name.
Just a beat-up mom and a beat-up dad in a beat-up town.
And I guess I never knew how bad-off we were or how good it was back then.

Steel cans rain down on a corn-fed town.
Clink-a-clink-clank, theyre afalling, I can hear em falling.
And we stand up tall.
God bless us all, each and every one.

Theres a town out there without a name, that clean, clean place from which we came.
And I dream that well all go there some day.
Please, God, let us go there some day.

OUR LAST NIGHT ON EARTH

Im cooped up, sitting in a third floor room with you,
Seeing if the worlds gonna end tonight.
Im drunk and youre sick, sick of what this worlds been doing to us.
Gunshots ring out, and fly past our windows, up into the stars.

Im cooped up, sitting in a third floor room with you.
With your eyes closed, in your bathrobe and
Im walking on some creaky floorboards.
And this is
Baby, you have got to understand.
That this is our last night in this world.