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My Kingdom

by Glorious Leader

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    This download includes the glorious bonus track, Half Alive.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $4.99 USD  or more

     

  • Sheet Music + Digital Album

    Made with windmill power from 100% recycled paper, the 'My Kingdom' pocket booklet is a miniature gem containing lyrics, guitar/ukulele tabs, chords, and a short lesson on reading tablature.

    This booklet puts a new world of technique in your pocket. Concise yet thorough, it covers all the necessary techniques in a brief 34 pages. Lay down some four-on-the-floor, mountain-style fingerpicking with Borderline. Learn hybrid thumb-strum-clawhammer technique with Onism and Kyla. Branch into classical finger rolls with The Wide Sargasso Sea and Sweet Louisa.

    This pocket booklet also comes with a download code for My Kingdom, which includes the hidden 6th track 'Half Alive.' Each one of these first 100 prints is signed.

    Includes unlimited streaming of My Kingdom via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 2 days
    edition of 100 

      $9.99 USD or more 

     

1.
Borderline 05:12
there’s a bird somewhere above my driveway in a spruce that escaped my saw and he sings in key when I play in E but I haven’t played too much so far cause I’m building my house this summer from the ground up to the peak with a radiant floor and a glass French door facing Bald Mountain to the east each day I work in the shade of the maples where the air smells like a childhood lost and I’m gonna get it built without a leak, without a tilt and we’ll move in by the frost this morning I woke up above the clouds till the sun roused them from their beds in the chilly valleys, where the rivers breathe into the air as they churn the jagged rocks to death I see my friends less as I age and I feel that middle-age loneliness lurk one’s in Vietnam, one’s in Kentucky, one’s in Colorado, and I’m up in Vermont, trying to make it work I guess we’re all trying to make it work why couldn’t I, why couldn’t I have moved above the 45 instead of wishing that I could why couldn’t I, why couldn’t I be happy in the sunshine? I crave the snow, I crave the woods I crave the rocks, I crave the streams and the cedar bridge that crosses from the street each day outside with nail guns and compressors with drills and miter saws that scream an awful tune and my back has started pinching, and my hands hurt when I clench them and holy shit, it’s only June but when I ache, I think of Keith Richards I think of Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Elvis and if their bodies got them through the sixties then my body can get me through this it’s twenty miles to the borderline then Montreal, Quebec, and hinterland then the wild north frontier, where I long to disappear for reasons I’ll never understand but there I go, being dramatic talking death when I’m 31 this spring I guess I’m at my best when I’ve got someone to impress but oh man, that gets so tiring oh man, it gets so tiring
2.
Onism 03:52
someday it won’t pain me to say that I will never be an actor and I won’t cry at the thought of being tied to just one life, and nothing after someday I won’t dream my days away that I might preside over my country your love has calmed me, but it’s not defused the bomb that nagging ticking that still haunts me this is where I am not to terrify you but you are in this with me and nothing’s gonna happen if we don’t do something quickly let’s road-trip to Labrador hop a boat to Greenland get married on the icecap then ferry to the mainland someday when my lust has burned away I’ll look back fondly on this chapter did I grow or did I stagnate? I don’t know I guess you never know till after I know, I know this is where I am this is where I am and you know, when I go I’ll always be your man I’ll always be your man
3.
Sweet Louisa 03:21
hold me now, my sweet Louisa put my heart on your loom weave me into your web of sweetness summer’s leaving too soon some folks smile right straight through the autumn without a change in their mood lovely traits if by chance you’ve got them but I need sun, I need you I still cry when the lakes are frozen I still fret when they’re blue highest clouds to the deepest ocean sweet Louisa love of mine that’s how I lost you I can’t promise you light unfading I can’t promise unbroken joy like you, I can be complicated like you, I can destroy and I can’t say what I’ll feel tomorrow I can’t say what I’ll do the only wager on which I’d borrow Sweet Louisa, is you
4.
Kyla 03:44
talk to me pretty baby with your language I could never learn see, we humans never settle for “maybe” we’d rather be wrong than unsure if you don’t come home this evening it doesn’t mean that this is not your home and if you weren’t okay with leaving tell me, would you have told me so so talk to me, please just talk to me with all the language surely you must know just one word and we don’t have to do this just one word and we can go back home and tomorrow we could wake up slowly and watch the sunlight slide across our room and though I wouldn’t feel quite so lonely you wouldn’t feel quite like you I miss you more when I’m sleepy and I miss you more when it snows no matter how traumatic, I’ll put you in the attic but it feels so wrong to let you go Kyla Kyla
5.
when the sailing boats came to shore couldn’t hear a thing through the roar a sunburned man yelled the names of the racers we cheered them on as they took their starting places my fingers fidgeted in spite of it all rolled my lunch receipt into a ball everyone shouted into the rapture as I toyed with a dream of something faster but a voice said “boy, you’d better obey your master” I asked her to cast her prediction of what I’d be giving the masses she spat that the world had no trophies for dreamers who sat on their asses but I’m putting effort and time and long careful thought in to rejecting the hard-earned advice that I’ve gotten I fought it, I thought I was above the curve all the basic bitches, sending wishes, faking smiles, taking pictures vicious is the truth that I’ve wasted my youth on delusions and try as I may, and try as I might, all I’ve caused is confusion the illusion I’m choosing to run with is the one with the cards stacked against me so I’ll get defensive, I don’t need you, I’ll make ends meet I’ll build it myself, I’ll set off like a sailor and leave in my wake a small fortune of failures oh, may the winds take me, shake me to the core but the Wide Sargasso Sea is as still as a corpse and try as I may, and try as I might my clever ideas may never see light because I talk too much and I don’t want to listen for fear what I hear makes it clear what I’m missing I’m pissing myself to receive some hard-earned affection so I’ll have credentials to lecture my friends but ignore their suggestions if only the world had a place for idea men who could send off their boats and let someone else steer them I fear them the most, those who don’t need to boast to get rated so hand me a trophy for the race and I’ll go to my grave validated

credits

released January 14, 2020

written & recorded by Kyle Woolard
viola & invaluable help from Karl Pestka

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all rights reserved

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about

Glorious Leader Glover, Vermont

Glorious Leader is the solo project of American musician, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Kyle Woolard. Written and recorded in his home in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the music is an attempt at uncompromising honesty. It is a quest for simplicity. It is a celebration of humanity, of the far north, of the infinite shades between joy and sorrow, of wood stoves and whiteouts. ... more

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