STORY

Just your typical pop song featuring an Egyptian percussion ensemble, a Romanian string quartet, two different kinds of medieval European lutes, & harpsichord. :)

Through a freak of luck, somebody loaned me a 17th-Century harpsichord - an ancestor of the piano. It sat in my living room with broken strings, dusty & hopelessly out of tune. So I made some calls around Seattle & found an old man who could talk me through repairing it. I re-strung the damn thing myself, carved pieces of felt & plastic for string padding & plectrums, tuned the strings into shape & voila! - it sounded like something you’d hear a fella in a powdered wig playing in some king’s drawing room.

So I wrote ‘Flower of Lebanon’ on it, in the style of old English folk songs.

And then I did what Cat Stevens would have done: surrounded the harpsichord part with Egyptian percussion: sistrum, darbuka, dumbek, riqq, & daf…& roped my Romanian violinist friend, Constantin Parvulescu, into writing a gorgeous string arrangement. Flower of Lebanon also features Patrick Strole playing a bouzouki, an ancient Middle Eastern stringed instrument.

P.S. Scroll to the bottom to hear a bonus track that also features Patrick on the bouzouki. It's an unreleased song, exclusive to the All the Waters of This World Album Experience!

 LYRICS

Oh where have you gone my Flower of Lebanon?
Where have you gone my Flower of Lebanon?
I have gone upon the breath of my maker

Where have you gone my pretty young maid?
The sun is at rest and the table is laid
I have gone to seek the source of this red river

Where have you gone sweet Flower of Lebanon?
Oh where have you gone my Flower of Lebanon?
I have fallen from the strings of memory and rust

Come home my Flower where your trust I am keeping
For the kettle is crying the candles are weeping
I have gone to tally the bones of the unjust
I have loosed the chains of certainty and trust

Oh where have you gone my Flower of Lebanon?
Oh where have you gone my Flower of Lebanon?
I have gone to heed those first-born cries
I have gone to know how the sun feels to leave the sky
I have gone to sleep and dream endlessly of you