Geoffrey William Rickly

Hey Friends!!! John Nolan and are setting out on a small tour in May! We’ll be playing all kinds of great stuff and maybe even collaborating a bit! We can’t wait to see you all on our little Taking Back Thursday trip down memory lane. ALSO, for anyone who till hasn’t heard my first solo work, it’s free here: MIXTAPE 1

Dates:

Fri/May-10 Brooklyn, NY St. Vitus
Sat/May-11 Philly, PA North Star Bar
Sun/May-12 Cleveland, OH Mahalls
Mon/May-13 Chicago, IL Beat Kitchen
Tue/May-14 Indianapolis, IN The Hoosier Dome
Wed/May-15 Pitts, PA Moose
Thu/May-16 Charlotte, NC Casbah @ Tremont
Fri/May-17 Richmond Kingdom
Sat/May-18 W Springfield DC Empire

OSHO THOUGHTS

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:22:16 -0500

Without Love, Life Has no Poetry in it

“A greater fear than death grips you whenever you are in love. That’s why love has disappeared from the world. Rarely, very rarely does the phenomenon happen that love descends. What you call love is just a false coin: you have invented it because it is so difficult to live without love. It is difficult because without love, life carries no meaning; it is meaningless. Without love, life has no poetry in it. Without love, the tree exists but never flowers. Without love, you cannot dance, you cannot celebrate, you cannot feel grateful, you cannot pray. Without love, temples are just ordinary houses; with love an ordinary house is transformed, transfigured into a temple. Without love you remain just possibilities – empty gestures. With love, for the first time you become substantial. With love, for the first time, the soul arises in you. The ego drops but the soul arises…

“Moving towards love is moving towards an abyss. One starts wavering, one feels dizzy. Go to a height in the Himalayas and look down at the valley; that valley is no-thing. When you look down at the valley of love, a tremendous fear grips you. You are almost paralyzed: you cannot run away, you cannot take the jump. You simply tremble in infinite fear. What to do? Going back is not possible because love attracts: love calls your depth, love calls your future, love calls your potentiality; love gives you a glimpse of what you can be. You cannot run away from it, and you cannot jump because the cost is too high. You will have to drop yourself – all that you have been thinking yourself to be – the image, the past, the identity.

“But I tell you, the cost only seems to be too much before the jump. Once you take the jump…then you will know that whatsoever you have given up is nothing, and what you have attained is infinitely valuable. Let me tell you a paradox: love demands that you drop that which you don’t have, and love offers you that which you already have. Love wants you to get rid of that which you don’t have.”

Osho, Come Follow to You, Vol. 4, Talk #6

Still free music here:
geoffrickly.bandcamp.com
geoffrickly.com

THANK YOU!!!! You’ve all been so supportive that I can...

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 21:55:58 -0500

THANK YOU!!!!

You’ve all been so supportive that I can hardly believe it. The posters are all sold out but the Mixtape is still free:
http://files.geoffrickly.com/Geoff_Rickly__Mixtape_1.zip

Tickets are still available for some of the house shows:
http://houseshows.limitedrun.com/categories/tickets

And with Anthony Green:
http://anthonygreenschildren.com/tickets-on-sale-for-december-tour-w-geoff-rickly/

And please don’t forget Redcross.org or http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/ if you can help.

I love all of you people. No one has had more support from great people than I have.

Thanks,
Geoff

Here’s another hand-signed & numbered, limited edition...

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 21:22:13 -0500

Here’s another hand-signed & numbered, limited edition SCREEN PRINT POSTER for you. This one’s for the song, Going to Hell, off Mixtape #1 which comes out free, today at noon. It’s a tribute to the Processians and, again, will be printed with the amazing Brooks Tipton

I’m offering 25 here(last time 50 sold in less than an hour—-just a head’s up). The shipping is killer for me, so it’s $15 all included. US ONLY for now(SORRY!). The rest will be with me on tour! (House Shows with Fred Mascherino’s band, Terrible Things)

NOV 29 Buffalo, NY

NOV 30 Springfield, MA

DEC 1 Lowell, MA

DEC 2 Wallingford, CT

DEC 3 Lancaster, PA

CLUB SHOWS with ANTHONY GREEN

DEC 05 Irving Plaza, NYC

DEC 07 TLA, Philadelphia

DEC 08 ENCORE, Freehold, NJ

DEC 11 Culture Room, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

DEC 12 White Rabbit, San Antonio, TX

DEC 15 THE FONDA THEATER, LA

DEC 16 THE GLASS HOUSE, Pomona, CA

Friends-Here is the first piece of my solo recordings....

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:00:57 -0500

Friends-

Here is the first piece of my solo recordings. It’s called Mixtape 1 and its available for a free download here: http://files.geoffrickly.com/Geoff_Rickly__Mixtape_1.zip

The Mixtape format is meant to be a casual way to try out some new things. There are some brand new songs, along with a cover and a rewrite of one of my oldest favorites. The majority of it was recorded in my apartment in the middle of Hurricane Sandy and the song New Sympathies, in particular, reminds me of those heavy winds and deep waters.

There are no strings attached, no hidden marketing games. This doesn’t reflect my belief that music should be free or any desire to revolutionize an industry. I just want to do this myself, for now. No art-by-committee, no selling music. Just me & my friends at home, making songs(bedroom songs, songs not too polished up). I’ll keep making more of these and giving them to you when I finish. Maybe someday I’ll make a proper record and sell it. Maybe not.

If you’re interested, you can “LIKE” the Facebook page or come see me play these songs and more at one of my few house shows or at a date on my tour with Anthony Green. If you feel like you want to pay for this music, please make a donation to the Red Cross. From the volunteering that I’ve been doing, I can tell you they’ve had a visible and well-organized presence. I also have very small runs of Silk Screen posters that I sell 100 hand-numbered & signed copies of. I make one for each song and they usually disappear pretty quickly. Maybe there are a couple left here for Going to Hell.

Below, I have all the lyrics and artwork posted(on Facebook and Tumblr) so feel free to take what you want of the music and words. As an added note, My Favorite Blue Raincoat is a response to the Leonard Cohen song, “Famous Blue Raincoat.” The friend that he’s writing to, in the original song, is writing back here.

I need to thank Don Devore, Brendan Tobin, Brooks Tipton, Tom Keeley and Anthony Green, for helping me to make this and, of course my Thursday and United Nations family. Most of all, this is a big thanks to YOU. For all the years of support and love you’ve given me in my various projects, I want to extend my fondest appreciation.

Sincerely.
Geoffrey William Rickly

Photo

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:35:28 -0500

New Sympathies

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:30:52 -0500

I have to confess,
I’ve made my bed
Now I’ll sleep in it, alone.
I’m going to have bad dreams…
Captains of Industry,
It’s time to sail the Seven Seas.
You should think twice…
Sweet, sweet, sweet Kerosene,

A lonely light walks with me
To make a mess and have a blast.
Well, I have to confess:
I made my bed,
Now I’ll sleep in it,alone,
But I’ll have bad dreams
Like the bottom of the sea
With the waves crashing down,
The sight and sound of a sinking ship and what goes with it:
A shudder from above, a groan and a creak,
The crackle and streak of a spark set free
And it’s learning to sing
Unholy sounds
Like God’s open mouth.
The words come in waves just to drown out all the pleas of the damned
Who hear what it says…
And it says, “Don’t breathe.”
There’s a woman in the sails hanging over the rails,
A kid with a kite who just watched the string fail,
Three guys in a raft and it’s upside down
(They think they rise when they sink and the sky’s gone out)
Well, there’s ice in the drink
And the ship’s gone to hell.
The passengers talk
And they’re starting to tell
Of a Captain on deck
And he’s pacing around
And he’s waving his arms
Trying to comfort the crowd
He says,
“Please, Please, Please,
One at a time.
Please, Please, Please,
Stay Calm…
We’re all going to die.”

Photo

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:20:46 -0500

your love is a pawnshop

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:17:22 -0500

Your love is a pawnshop
And everything in it is used:
A faded magazine rack, a worn pair of shoes,
A leather valise,
A bag of old, beaten blues
And that dress…
I bet it looks nice on you.

Let’s go for a dance in the back.
Let’s light those kerosene rags
And we’ll spin ‘round & ‘round the fire
Like the jukebox is playing our song.
Like it plays anything at all…
But the worn-out, second-hand men
Who walk into our lives to get turned out again
‘Cause Jesus won’t show with a redemption ticket
For any second-hand prayers when
Your love is a pawnshop.

Your love is a pawnshop
But everything in it is mine
I just traded it in to try to buy some time
For us to figure it out
—I know, it sounds wise—
But tell me now,
Is it gonna be alright?
Come on, come take me by the hand
And look me in the eye, make me understand,
‘Cause I’ll spin ‘round & ‘round the shop,
Trying to hide my doubt
When I see— If I see anything at all
But the worn-out, second hand women
I let into my life and let them out again
‘Cause Jesus don’t show up
With a six-pack and friends
For any second-hand liar who sings,
“your love is a pawnshop”

Photo

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:15:40 -0500