6. Then Jessica Smiled 5:56 (Featured Track) Album Track Five
6. Then Jessica Smiled 5:56 (Featured Track) Album Track Five

Genre: Americana / Blue Eye-Soul / AAA / Springsteen-esque

Music & Lyrics Rich Krueger (RockinK Music®)
Copyright / Publishing / Licensing
©RockinK Music® / ℗ RockinK Music® / Licensed through BMI (Administered by CD Baby)
©℗ all rights reserved
Master and Synch Licenses available

Then Jessica Smiled
for JM, R. Graves and B. Tyler

Love without hope,
As when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.
Robert Graves (1895-1985)


How’s your weekend going?
They’re always going.
Do you think you could ever make one last?
Kiddo, from my end, I fear a fool’s heart
always breaks way too fast.
How is it that a girl like you?
How is it that a smile
Could make me so proud to be humbled,
broke up, and beguiled?
Kiddo, I am just another stupid fan,
Another old weak married foolish man.
But you, you are wild life,
A pistol, sex, white light,
A dancing pyre built of a thousand
burnished diamonds.
Dare I take your hand?
Crash with open arms wide,
‘Til everything stops still
And you flash another smile?

I pray that this song finds you,
And wherever it finds you,
that it finds you well.
But kiddo, did I forget to mention my wife?
She said she liked you. I can always tell.
Me, I hold to this kind of bent
Punk-Christian view.
Always try to ask myself,
“Now just what would our Sid Vicious do?”
And when I find an answer to put
my heart at rest,
I draw a broken bottle across my chest.
Though if God could just forget,
or forgive, just this one time.
If Sidney is still dying for all these
stupid sins of mine.
Then grace might co-mingle with ecstasy
While my mounting stupor whiles
Away everything that once seemed
somehow important
Before Jessica smiled

Kiddo, I just an old man.
Even less of an old man than
some knotted old tree.
But kiddo, can you try to help me remember
Just how it felt to seem so free?
Young mens’ inspiration just spills
down from above
While we old just prattle on
about Graves and hopeless loves
And you, you’re young and rare enough it’s true
To be Graves' squire’s only daughter, too.
But if all the larks that sleep within my hat,
Dream of their escape to fly and sing about you,
All the drunken drumming,
The singing madly in that room.
And underneath the din, a rock rolls from a tomb.
But do I long for you,
Or what could have been had I been
Wanton heedless and wild?
Or is it that just that for so long,
I have so longed
And then Jessica smiled.

It’s a heartache…

-April ‘07

rich krueger - acoustic guitars, electric 12 string guitar, harmonica, vocals
vence edmonds – drums, tambourine
bill kavanagh – electric bass
issac lyons - hammond b3
jodi walker & naomi ashley– background vocals
skinny williams – tenor saxophone
paul kotheimer – acoustic left handed stand-up bass, piano, organ, mellotron, shakers, glockenspiel
vocal arrangements by paul kotheimer