SENIORITIS

TRACK LISTING

(click song to scroll)

THE BOOK REPORT
POSTCARDS (FEAT. JESSE DENARO)
OLD ARMOR
GARDEN OF THE GODS
BELL #1 (SKIT)
GOOD MOURNING SUN RISE
KISS MY ASS GOODBYE (FEAT. MAC LETHAL)
BELL #2 (INTERLUDE)
BEST THINGS (FEAT. A-GAME)
I'M STILL SPINNING
SENIORITIS

THE BOOK REPORT

Written/performed by Dylan Owen
Music by Dylan Owen, Skinny Atlas
Produced by Skinny Atlas, Devin Arne
Senioritis, 2010
Inspired by countless nights on Suicide Hill with my friends, and by the endless feeling of longing for childhood that comes with age.

Intro
You are my favorite miracle
I have seen you in a field of marigolds
But I’m glad I don’t have to give my prayers to you
‘Cause I know we’ll make it through whatever happens

Verse 1
I don’t care how we proceed
I just care that you know me.
I’ve got bags under my eyes
Like I’ve been carrying groceries for a long time
With a strong mind, we were brought up on the wrong side
Of the railroad cross-slide where my Grandma says they all die.
But if you think about it, every soldier fights for compromise.
I can’t predict the future but we all can prophesize
On your bedroom floor where I promised I would never grow up
I think since then I’ve seen we all eventually go
To that white hospital bed, we watched your dad lay
And almost turn into a ghost, Ghost, I know you’ve had a bad day
But that’s okay buddy ‘cause I swear to God I’m by your side.
And I’ll be with you any time you say you’re down to ride.
So, here I am in the midst of feeling tired
Watching fireworks from your garage in old facades that we’ll retire.
I only recently believed that we’ve got tires in our souls
That don’t weary any time we go to drive ‘em.

Chorus
We’re the suicide kids
We only think about ourselves
And keep secrets, like ‘I won’t tell.’
And up on Suicide Hill, where we climbed high as hell
We used to hide out and try to find ourselves.
We are the suicide kids
We only think about ourselves
And keep secrets, like ‘I won’t tell.’
And up on Suicide Hill, when we got high as hell
We used to hide out and try too hard to find ourselves.

Verse 2
And so I started liking English
It managed my expressions
And felt like wet cement;
It could carry my impressions.
What if the butterflies inside our stomachs are still hatching?
Or imagine that we search the dirt pile and find the hatchets that we buried?
In light of all this faith that I still can’t believe
You left it on the trampoline when you were barely teen.
I mean we traveled to September, the summer-killing month
And missed the cigarette kisses and the poems that I wrote that sucked.
But on that white hospital bed you watched your brother cry.
Now I swear I’ll shave my head, grow out my hair some other time.
‘Cause I’ve been fighting things myself, I can be his savior
I cleaned my room and emptied out those medicine containers.
So that I can take this pencil, the one meant for the book report,
Use up all its graphite on emotions I’ve been looking for
Lose myself inside a childhood of looking forward
Well, whatever, life just took its course.
I hope you’re looking for

The suicide kids
We only think about ourselves
And keep secrets, like ‘I won’t tell.’
And up on Suicide Hill, where we climbed high as hell
We used to hide out and try to find ourselves.
We are the suicide kids
We only think about ourselves
And keep secrets, like ‘I won’t tell.’
And up on Suicide Hill, when we got high as hell
We used to hide out and try too hard to find ourselves.

Refrain x 2
You are my favorite miracle
I have seen you in a field of marigolds
But I’m glad I don’t have to give my prayers to you
‘Cause I know we’ll make it through whatever happens

And on that white hospital bed, we’ll watch each other lie
And swear that it’s forever on the tattoos that we cover.
I don’t believe in miracles but I have at other times
And I believe that I can carry all your troubles. I swear
On that white hospital bed, we’ll watch each other lie
And swear that it’s forever on the scars that we cover.
I don’t believe in miracles but I have at other times
And I believe that I can carry all your troubles. I swear
That I’mma take this pencil, the one meant for the book report
Use up all its graphite on emotions I’ve been looking for
Lose myself inside a childhood of looking forward
Well, whatever, life just took its course.
I hope you’re looking for

The suicide kids in every person that you haven’t met
And all the perfect places that we haven’t been to yet
All the cameras and the passed-out floors that I haven’t mentioned yet
You give ‘em hell kid and never let yourself forget.
‘Cause we’ve all got higher hills to climb regardless of our depths
But I would never look to suicide if I had nothing left.
I would simply form a smile thinking back on all my friends
And read The Book Report I wrote so many years ago again.

POSTCARDS (Feat. Jesse Denaro)

Written/performed by Dylan Owen & Jesse Denaro
Music by Jesse Denaro
Produced by Skinny Atlas
Senioritis, 2010
Inspired by summer campfire parties, flings & relationships, and a few old friends.

Jesse
I’ve got postcards for all the friends I’m not close with
I’ve got broken hearts from the summers where we lost ourselves
I’ve got Band-Aids for all the girls that I’ve broken
But darling we will be alright.
Darling we will be alright.

Dylan
You know I’m bad at listening and, shit, we’ve had our differences
But the past diminishes if we can laugh at how it finishes.
It’s funny now how we’ve established grimaces
From when we got mad, killed what we had, and stabbed the witnesses.
Let’s take it back before the days of the confusion
Back before you know who was dating raging lunatics
Back before Nujabes and Proof became elusive
Back before Auto-Tune sucked at making music.
I wasn’t being honest when I told your best friend
That I thought I might have loved her right before we had sex.
So we’ve still got mad shit that we’ve gotta address
But there are bigger issues that we haven’t passed yet.
All those friendships born in summer took their last breaths
And I haven’t seen like any of ‘em in class since.
Our sticky skin and two cups toasting to the night sky.
Your discipline will turn to ashes if you like my postcards.

Jesse
I’ve got postcards for all the friends I’m not close with
I’ve got broken hearts from the summers where we lost ourselves
I’ve got Band-Aids for all the girls that I’ve broken
But darling we will be alright.
Darling we will be alright.

Jesse
Darling,
We will be alright, we will be alright.
Darling,
We will make it out alive.
I said, “Let’s leave our secrets with the night sky”
And,
“Darling, we will be alright.”

Dylan & Jesse
Because I’ve got postcards for all the friends I’m not close with.
Broken hearts from the summers where we lost ourselves.
Band-Aids for all the girls that I’ve broken.
But darling, we gon’ be alright.
Postcards.
Broken hearts.
Band-Aids.
But darling, we gon’ be alright.

OLD ARMOR

Written/performed by Dylan Owen
Music by Skinny Atlas
Produced by Skinny Atlas, Devin Arne
Senioritis, 2010
Wear it proudly, Max. You are the owner of this world.

"As I sit up behind my mom’s house and watch the railroad tracks where I know that people lived and breathed and worked and died
I think… there’s gotta be something more than this.
I wish I could show this song to every stranger that I meet because every stranger is someone new, and they’ve got their own story.
And this is my story.
Check it"

I ripped the calendar down
I started settling.
I made it home to my small-town development
After walking past the picket fence and telling ‘em
That I found some things out on my own.
And I wrote it on a bathroom stall door in Pennsylvania to forget it
Yeah but somehow just writing it down made me remember that
My heart is as big as an elephant knocking at your door
But I don’t knock there anymore, shit.
So that’s irrelevant. I’m constantly in reverse
I’ve been around the block so many times that my feet hurt
The stories underneath our sneakers teach me new words
Like Austin from Newburgh reminding me to “Do Work”
I read it in graffiti on a Newark bridge
That the infinite abyss of Garden State is just a myth
But that don’t make it dumber. I still loved it in the summer.
Yeah I’ve loved the drive-in movies since last summer.

And I don’t need a map to know my way around,
I’ve been traveling too long to lie and say I’ve found nothing.
I’ll take the path that’s still buried in the ground.
I wear my past on my sleeve and my heart like a crown.
Man I don’t need a map to know my way around,
I’ve been traveling too long to lie and say I’ve found nothing.
I’ll take the path that’s still buried in the ground.
I wear my past on my sleeve and my heart like a crown.

I ripped the calendar down
I started settling.
I took a picture of my small town, developed it and
I just admired all the little things’ elegance:
The cracks in their sidewalks and stones.
And I found it on a Rhode Island balcony window where I was venting
All your seventh grade betterment of anti-depressants
Really didn’t make me better at all. So keep your medicines
I’ll keep my DJ, don’t insult my intelligence.
We saw Bob Dylan after months of hard rain
We tried to stay friends saying, “those were our days”
It was 2:07 in the morning, watching cards race
Everybody’s got something that’s hard for them to chase.
Maybe I do think too much of Colorado
Springs from my heart some kind of fate I can’t follow.
Like how the cigars and novels of South Harwich Port passed
But I don’t need y’all to tell me that.

GARDEN OF THE GODS

Written/performed by Dylan Owen
Music by Skinny Atlas
Produced by Skinny Atlas, Devin Arne
Senioritis, 2010
“I neglected to say that you’re on my mind, all the time”—ARG

I’m left behind trying to smile at your lonely ghost
I guess I’ll find you in some miles on the open road
And I will take you home like a designated driver
And hold you until heaven waits to find ya.

There’s probably not too many other people you could simply touch and coat in gold
But for me you reconnect the pieces of my broken soul
So, if last week’s another seven days behind us,
Then I guess I gotta wait until I resonate inside ya.
I can’t wait to be beside ya, I’ll admit it all the pictures
That I’ve pictured in my mind were just envisioned on the simplest of slides,
Dismissing all the superficial lines that I’ve been fishing with.
The sea’s got too many fish to cry in
But I verified I’m terrified to make decisions
Since I learned that Michigan is shaped like a mitten
And I learned that Tanner is a girl’s name.
When they were listening to John Mayer, we were waiting on the world to change
Its mind. I suppose this caged prison isn’t mine
But is a fixture in which my imagination dies.
I’m on a mission to make sense of every plan I paint in fiction
Till the next plane is landing, I’ll be waiting for you there, thinking that

Chorus

I will take you home like a designated driver
I will take you home like a designated driver
I will take you home as if I was your designated driver
And hold on to you close ‘cause eventually I’ll find you
And I will take you home like a designated driver
And I will take you home like a designated driver
I will take you home as if I was your designated driver
And hold on to your bones in case eventually you die before I find you.

And I will keep your secrets warm.
Like the time we lost ourselves beneath the floorboards
It was all raw and it was written on the floor
So I will take you home Delilah that’s where you belong
Until I will I lift you to the visions I’ve enlisted in my summer journal entries
That all say “I miss you, Stranger, it’s been centuries,
We’ve both been very well.” A show-and-tell of carried mail
We lived in our epistles through a love that comes from fairy tales.
But whatever we’re given we’ve been given without reason
And within what I’m living I’ve been living without breathing.
It’s a hell like forest fires in a fit since our stations parted
Hey soul sister, your lip stick stained my heart
And if you take apart the distance, break it into pieces
You can see that not everything that’s stabbed starts to bleed.
And so I know I won’t be bleeding. Yeah I know I won’t be bleeding.
As long as you promise me that you won’t ever leave me, I believe that

Chorus

I hold my breath and I close my eyes and I look to the West where they turn back the time for you.
I know the dawn of a new day should rise but I wish that New York would just turn back its time for me.

GOOD MOURNING SUN RISE

Written/performed by Dylan Owen
Music by Skinny Atlas
Produced by Skinny Atlas, Devin Arne
Senioritis, 2010
Here’s my advice, travel and explore the world. It’s a small world but if you’re feeling down, then you’ve still got a lot of exploring to do.

Good mourning sun rise.
Good mourning sun rise.
Good mourning sun rise.
We all fall down sometimes.

You are the owner of this world, my friend
Again, you belong to a world that transcends all these roads.
So I’m casting my vote. Don’t you ever tie a knot if your back’s to the ropes.
I can smell the moist air driving West from the coast
Or that Best Western that eventually closed
One too many days spent digging out our souls
And all we’ve got to remember it by’s a couple quotes and the clothes that we wore.
But hey, life at times is a road trip filled with pot holes and quarter-mile signs
And on the ride home, you can watch the sunrise
Diving overtop the mountains from behind.
I only judge feeling blue from looking at the sky
Like an alcoholic struggling to keep his spirits high.
If only I could hold you I’d know that you’d be fine
But keep your saltwater.
We’ve all got a reason to cry.
I’m leaving behind the last time I shook
At that grey cement terminal that classically looked
Like a movie script ending, if the lighting wasn’t wrong
And this quilt of our friendship was sown without flaws.
I’ve been dreaming, head on the desk, dreaming
Ready to crash like the waves that we haven’t seen yet
But believe it: the sun won’t go down if you mean it
You can ask Daniel Johnson about his grievances
They aren’t worth a damn, damn thing at all
Like spiders when we get close to ‘em all our feelings start to crawl.
So here’s how I see the world bigger:
I like cafes where the forks are bent before dinner
And the waitresses have lyrics written on their chests
They carry coffee pots and burdens and sweep but aren’t swept
Well, here’s my advice, if I have to take a guess
Your sadness will be better off if it ain’t kept anymore.

When you’re falling and there’s nothing to turn to
Fueling up the hate that you harbor in your journal
The gasoline smells like the clothes that we burn through
Watering our teenage inhibitions if they’re fertile
So part the clouds over the bridge that’s been broken
Part those dark ass clouds and leave them open
And never let them say it’s too late for you to change
Paint your pain and wait for the rain to wash it away then say

Good mourning sun rise.
Keep sleeping, open up those ugly blinds
If you were dreaming, I’m sorry that I cut into your time
But reality’ll cut you like a hundred knives.
It was defined once upon a time by an unknown whim
That I was fine ‘till the dusk rolled in
I’m thinking, look at me now, I can travel on my own
And give life to dead ends and shabby old bones.
Last week, I got another wake-up call from my Dad
Saying, “Good mourning, son, rise! You’re too bright to be so sad.”
So I acknowledge that I’m relatively miniscule
Following the tiki torches down to her swimming pool
The heat of the moment always leaving me a little cool
I wrote this verse in a middle school parking lot
A theme song to dream beyond your written rules
And make sure you're not ever bitter or confused.

When you’re falling you can mutter the words to
The secret little prayers that you tally in your journal
The tragedy will fit like the clothes that we’ve learned to
Leave upon our younger selves that we’ve since bursted through
Part the clouds over the bridge that’s been broken
Part those dark ass clouds and leave them open
And never let them say it’s too late to be your day
Paint your pain and wait for the rain to wash it away then say

Good mourning sun rise.
Good mourning sun rise.
Good mourning sun rise.
We all fall down sometimes.

Good mourning sun rise.
Good mourning sun rise.
Good mourning sun rise.
Yeah, we all fall down sometimes
But it’s those people that get up that shine.

I'M STILL SPINNING

Written/performed by Dylan Owen
Music by Dylan Owen
Produced by Skinny Atlas
Senioritis, 2010
I wrote this song on an old keyboard my sophomore year of high school, and performed it with a full band at the Battle of the Bands which we lost. I always wanted to name this ‘The Graduation Song’ but didn’t to avoid the cliché. I wrote it imagining how I’d feel in this exact moment, and it’s scary accurate.

So here we go, record playing, stepping into separate ways
This one’s a toast to the roads that we’ll have to take
I know it’s been a couple years in the making,
But my head’s spinning faster than the ceiling fan’s blades
As I say I still remember when we chilled in the attic
An overdose of dead jokes I think I’m still laughing from,
Our whispers on the roof of the car that you had.
If we’re doing this, let’s do it big as dynamite, imagine that
Another fifty years pass, I mean what I said:
Look to the right when it seems like nothing’s left
Look to the sight of the smiles after setbacks
It feels like time flies wearing wings and a jetpack.
Money can’t buy happiness but if I had a million bucks
I’d spend it on a million things to help me get my feelings up
Thanks for the everything, the clichés, the keeps.
Thanks for the running rugged road at my feet.
Now it’s time to leave behind the things you couldn’t get to me
And now it’s time to breathe out a “thanks for the memories”
Man, I gotta make sure this one’s turning gold
‘Cause this one’s one for the road
And so I’m singing loud, I gotta leave behind the things you never said to me
Now it’s time to scream out a “thanks for the memories”
There’ll be nothing like you at the place where I go
So this one’s a toast to the road.So here we go, destination: I don’t know, wherever’s waiting.
This one’s a toast to the roads that we’ll soon be taking.
This one’s an ode to the faces that’ll change.
Take your blueprints and throw ‘em away
And let me tell you that
I think our names are still written underneath the bleachers
I think that Molly’s still got a lot for her to dream of
I’ve seen the parking lot, it’s still vacant with relief
The Pink Sombrero Bandits weren’t taken from the scene.
But imagine that the world ends and I’m still spinning
Faster than a carousel of memories that never finish.
The road’s a skinny place, you might not fit
But if you’ve never had hope, let that shit out of your system
‘Cause I’m getting sick of being lonely on your lawn
Throwing rocks at your window in the middle of the morning.
Stop, if you think that you can fiddle through this song
Of life. It’s like the road the way it keeps moving on.
Now it’s time to leave behind the things you couldn’t get to me
And now it’s time to breathe out a “thanks for the memories”
Man, I gotta make sure this one’s turning gold
‘Cause this one’s one for the road
And so I’m singing loud, I gotta leave behind the things you never said to me
Now it’s time to scream out a “thanks for the memories”
There’ll be nothing like you at the place where I go
So this one’s a toast to the road.

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