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Alice, Gloria and Jon

by J.E. Sunde

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    Gate fold with design by Stephen Lurvey
    Cover Photo by NIcolas Despis
    Interior Photos by Shane Leonard

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    Design by Stephen Lurvey
    Cover Photo by NIcolas Despis
    Interior Photos by Shane Leonard

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1.
Stop Caring 03:28
Maybe if I just stop caring at all Maybe if I just stop dreaming Then I’ll finally lose that awful feeling I got one life to live But I’m not doing it right Maybe if the money was just a little better The days would be sunny and nothing would upset her But for all my trying the baby’s crying She says I just want you Here when you’re here Maybe it’s the reason like healing is to health The impulse for asking The thing unto itself And the unmoved mover Pursued and pursuer The light in the dark The why
2.
3.
There is no answer I can offer When all your patience has worn through The lights are dimming in the corridor The heartsick thrumming of our youth As we bear witness to the passing Of the age we thought we’d know The kind of love that’s everlasting A certain sense that we’re arriving A certain sense that we’re arriving A certain sense that we’re arriving A certain sense that we’re arriving A certain sense The world is stranger than they told us We feel unequal to the task Gaslit that shit and then they rolled us You know the past ain’t even past Are we to wonder at the sadness That animates the quiet hours Just keep the people cold and callous To keep the powerful in power And everyone I’m passing on the stairway Seem to see right through me to my bones We’ve become the dashes on the highway But you don’t wanna leave it alone A pattern moving And you don’t wanna leave it alone You don’t wanna leave it alone You don’t wanna leave it alone
4.
Well I love you but you make me crazy You stuck around now and it’s sort of amazing ‘Cus I’m mad sometimes Can’t let it go Barking like a dog on a chain And on the weekend we bend the bottle top My wasted youth like the fruit that rots on the vine But given time Becomes a spirit of a whole different kind Glory Gloria Glory Gloria my love You’re my one and only Glory Gloria Glory Gloria my love You’re my one and only Gloria You grew up beside I-85 You learned to drive and decided right then That you’d ditch this town When you turned 18 Go out and shake it like no one’s ever seen And I met you on west 54th I was trying to be a singer And you had such a pretty voice And I told you so You said buddy I’m just here for the show Glory Gloria Glory Gloria my love You’re my one and only Glory Gloria Glory Gloria my love You’re my one and only Gloria
5.
Blind Curve 02:45
It’s hard to feel unnoticed When my work requires that I Find a stage in a dark room To tell some strangers all my secrets Cus I feel a strange transcendence When I get some words to rhyme I don’t understand the purpose But it makes my father smile so I am Betting on a blind curve I’m betting on a blind curve I’m betting on a blind curve I can’t see what’s to come I thought it’d be more certain Than life has proved to be But if love still runs the game Then love is proof enough for me To keep on calling all my friends In the struggle and the doubt You need not die to make it holy We’ll just try to sing about it ‘cus we’re Betting on a blind curve We’re betting on a blind curve I’m betting on a blind curve I can’t see what’s to come I’m betting on a blind curve I’m betting on a blind curve I’m betting on a blind curve I can’t see what’s to come
6.
Alice 03:28
Alice wrapped around a cold beer Second-handed necklace The pockets of her jeans Beautiful and restless With a preference for a gap in your teeth Laughing like a jackal with the fellas They’re all catch and release She speaks in koans quotes and sonnet Some crewneck sweatshirt college A self designed degree She said she learned enough to know That learning had become obsolete You could almost find it funny If it wasn’t for the blood on the streets Alice cigarettes and lipstick Bad debts got her homesick A hero in retreat The golden age is waning But a sunset is still something to see They’ll take all that’s worth taking But there’s nothing there that you really need Alice Alice Alice Alice
7.
God 01:11
I want to thank you More than I Know how to I’m not in the practice of praise I thought I’d have to chase you down And wrestle you to the ground Wrestle you to the ground Wrestle you to the ground Not quite my mother Or my father though I love her And he said there’s one thing that I know Love is a river that flows And can’t but carry you away Carry you away Carry you away
8.
Home 04:06
Home The home I made with you Four walls and a garden And room for children Maybe one or two Home Ten thousand dinners there Pencil lines on the doorway For every birthday Sing a birthday tune If the bankers come And lock the doors on us I may spit and I may cuss But it can’t undo The home I found in you Home We lie in the dawning light Your hair on the pillow The open window world is waking up Home You’ve got a painter’s eye And I am a singer And there together Learn to stretch a dime If the bankers come And lock the doors on us I may spit and I may cuss But it can’t undo The home I found in you If the bankers come And lock the doors on us I may spit and I may cuss There’s one thing they cannot touch No they can’t undo The home I found Home I found
9.
Morning 02:53
10.
Nurse 04:00
You were happy when I knew you then You were studying to be an obstetric nurse Perfect moments like they’d been rehearsed Stage black moments like they’d been rehearsed We’d dodge traffic like we’re toreadors Late night chinese ‘fore the place would close You’d laugh easy like you did back then Before it had to end And I’d be singing “Wild Horses” You’d sing with me on the choruses Fading passion softened promises You would dream of places I had never wanted to go

about

Being an adult is a strange and surprising thing. Although I tend to focus on the uncomfortable aspects of that reality, the experience of the strange and surprising isn’t necessarily negative. As much as my insecurities paint a tempting picture of a life that I can totally anticipate—and in that sense control—I suspect much would be lost if strangeness and surprise were removed from our lives.

That said, life surprising me by not turning out the way I hoped or expected can really throw me for a loop. Over the years I’ve tried to talk about this uncomfortable aspect of adult life to people older and wiser than me with the hope that they can, I don’t know, tell me how to be a grown up. In asking for the shortcuts, I’ve had the annoying experience of being told “It sounds like you’re doing a good job” or “It seems like you’re on the right track.” I guess because I can put words to my surprise and uncertainty. And maybe that’s what part of “doing a good job” as an adult is. To become aware of life’s strange and surprising nature and then talk to somebody about it. But I always assumed that there would be some . . . answer. And that answer would bring a feeling of resolution. And that feeling of resolution would make me happy for the rest of my life. And also, somehow, I would have a lot of money.

If you’ve listened to my songs before, I suspect you can guess that this hasn’t been my experience. And I want to acknowledge that, due to being a white man in the USA who grew up with an amazingly supportive family and continues to have a deep and supportive community of family and friends, I come to my struggles with resources that many do not. Yet, regardless of our circumstances, part of what the wiser among us are saying is that life will ask more of us than we think we can handle. It will subvert our expectations and humble us with the reality that we aren’t in control. My grandmother would say, “Life is a series of transitions.” Life seems to be a perpetual exercise in change, followed by our adjustment to that change, and struggle will be woven through the whole of it. Although I wouldn’t wish any particular struggle on anyone, struggle is the ground from which much of our most profound growth springs. Interestingly, it is often that growth that leads to those experiences of resolution, of progress that are sprinkled through our lives.

I don’t know why comprehending this has been so surprising to me. Most of the songs and novels and movies and religious texts that I’ve encountered speak to the struggle of living. To paraphrase Fr. Richard Rohr, most transformation is born out of great love or great suffering and, unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a romantic version of suffering. At least in the first person. To name a couple of my own tempting mythologies, it turns out starving artists are just hungry. Depressed intellectuals are just depressed. Their experience of need is not of a sexier kind.

The work of recognizing and understanding this leads to all the big questions, and adulthood requires us to try out some of the possible responses. In my own experience, the work has led to a deepening belief in a spiritual reality that undergirds this whole song and dance and endows it with purpose. I can’t say that this belief is always a present comfort, but it has offered me the opportunity to commit to hope. Some days I hope. Some days I really struggle to, but this spiritual framework proposes that as much as struggle will be a reality through the whole run, good also will be born in our lives in strange and surprising ways.
If this all feels vague and confusing, forgive me. I’ve always been better at singing about these things than writing them down. So that’s what I did on this album. As much as these ten songs are about anything, they are about the strange and surprising experience of being an adult.

J.E Sunde
January 2023
Minneapolis, MN

credits

released June 16, 2023

Co-produced by J.E. Sunde and Shane Leonard
All songs written by J.E Sunde
Arrangements by J.E Sunde
Arrangement for “Home” by J.E Sunde, Shane Leonard and Andrew Thoreen
Bass arrangements on “Glory, Gloria,” “Alice,” “You Don’t Wanna Leave It Alone” by Andrew Thoreen and J.E Sunde
Engineered by Shane Leonard at The Bungaleau
Eau Claire, WI September 2021 and March, August 2022.
Mixed by Shane Leonard
Mastered by Piper Payne at Infrasonic

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J.E. Sunde Minneapolis, Minnesota

Songwriter/composer J.E. Sunde writes beautifully unusual music. A classically trained musician with a love of songwriters and performers like Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, and Paul Simon, Jon writes densely poetic songs with a bent toward the philosophical. Also, his voice sounds like some sort of weird angel. ... more

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