1) Patience & Grace (3:18)



Song Description
The first song from part 2 of Brandon Caulfield’s Into The Wild picks up where part 1 ended, as a soft acoustic guitar begins the intro to Patience & Grace, already the mood is set as the first line of the song begins, “I’ve Got A Beaten Down Guitar/And The Distance Is Too Far/I’ve Got Some Words And A Melody Saying This Is What It Means To Me/Now That I’m Alone/How I Long To Be Back Home.”
It’s a quiet moody with only the soft lonely vocals of Brandon and the strings of an acoustic guitar as his only company on this track and with the song comes a story of being so far away from home just trying to make a living out of music with a young guy crashing down in shelters and even sometimes on the street as he tries to make a future for himself and his wife, but the song also tells of his loneliness and how he is just longing to be back home as the touring life becomes a mundane place to be.

As the song moves towards the chorus, Brandon sings about a phone call home to his wife, “All I Ask For Is Patience & Grace/I Can’t Be There Like An Absence Of Faith/But Hold On My Sweet/Because Come The Fall/We’ll Be Back Together And We’ll Have It All.” He sings with emotion, putting his heart and his soul on the line and into the song to the point where you can almost hear the desperation in his voice, he seems to have inhabited the feeling of the guy in the story and you can tell that this song has more than just a fictitious story to it, as the song comes towards the end, the guy in the story has finally had enough of touring and has found himself on a train, making his way back home.

Songwriters Comment
“I wrote half of this song during the recording session for Into The Wild Part I, I was away from home and I wasn’t feeling particularly great about it, I was feeling kinda lonely and then I just sort of forgot about it for a little while and never really thought anything of it really. And then in February I was looking through some things in my apartment and I came across this piece of paper with lyrics scrawled on it and red through them and thought, you know what, that’s actually some pretty good stuff right there and I just sat with an acoustic guitar and finished the rest of the song, I called JR (Rhythm) and met him in LA and played him the song and he loved it, and I decided to put it on the record and here we are.
I think when I wrote the song, I was in a pretty lonely place and when I recorded the song, the emotion all just sort of came out and it’s a pretty raw song to listen back to you, because it sort of takes me back to how I was feeling when I wrote it and I think people who have felt a similar way will feel something when they listen to it. It’s a song I’m proud of and thank god I found that piece of paper, otherwise it’ wouldn’t have existed.”
- Brandon Caulfield

Similar To
Foo Fighters - Home

3) Morning Breath, On My Neck (6:42)



Song Description
The third song on the album is soft song about love, it’s melodic piano backing is perfectly accompanied by soft guitar playing by Caulfield as he also provides his typical heartbreak vocals to what is clearly a song about love and fear, singing about the feeling of waking up beside someone who can just look at you and get your heart racing and on the flip side, the fear of letting her know exactly how you feel, the bottled up emotions come to breaking point as Caulfield yells out at the top of his voice just the crazy depth of his love, “Girl You Get Me So Mad, I Just Wanna Take The Plunge From The Rooftop/And Have That Relief When I Feel My Heart Stop/But Something Burns Deep Inside My Soul/And I’m Forever Yours, Baby That’s All.” With anxiety, fear, love and eventually relief, it’s a song of mixed emotions as Caulfield tries to get across as many different feelings as possible and but the thing that makes this song work is Caulfield’s ability to switch vocally from sadness to joy within the blink of an eye, certainly something he seems to do with ease.

At almost seven minutes long, the song also has an extended instrumental break at around the 5:03 mark and ends at almost at 6:00, as the drums beat softly and the piano continues the melodic theme of the song, the inclusion of Brandon’s acoustic guitar adds to the aura and makes way for the final part of the song as Brandon sings, “It May Be Hard To Get Over You/But A Less Honest Man Would Stay True/I’d Find It Tough To Love You Again/At Least Not In The Same Way/So Drink Your Wine And Deal The Cards/Hold The Gun And Break My Heart/But One Thing I Know/Is That I’ll Never Forget/Your Morning Breath, On My Neck.” And with a soft sigh into the microphone the song ends.

Songwriters Comment
“I wrote this song a little while back, I think 2008. It wasn’t a particularly great year for me on several different levels but there was this element that things could change so quickly in my life, I may not have been hugely happy at the time but somehow, I kept finding the inspiration to get out of bed every morning and keep trying to make things happen for myself, It wasn’t a particularly good period of my life but there was always that feeling that, Yeah it feels bad now, but it’s gonna get better someday and it was written in the two weeks after a tough break up and I just wanted to let all of this sort of built-up frustration out and it sort of found it’s way into this song and it’s a song I’ve always been pleased with and I only recently found the lyrics to it again and decided that I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to record this for this album.”
- Brandon Caulfield

Similar To
Ryan Adams - La Cienega Just Smiled

4) New York Is A Strange Place For A Nobody (4:51)



Song Description
The fourth song starts off with a only an acoustic guitar and soft drum beats and after about 30 seconds of the music, Brandon finally sings the first line of the song with a soulful feel but also with an air of anger in his voice, “The New York City Lights/Shine Down So Bright/Highlighting Every Single Move You Make/Good Or Bad Or One Big Mistake/The Pressure On Your Shoulders At Twenty-One Years Old/Nothing Feels Heavier On You/As You Play Your Hand/You Fold.” And as the song continues, the pressures of being a struggling musician in the most famous city in the world get the better of the guy in the song as he decides to give up and head back home, the guitar becomes more aggressive along with the drum beats and Brandon sings, “Instead I’ll Head All The Way Back Home/To The People That Once Loved Me/I’ve Failed To Achieve What I Set Out To Do/If It Don’t Happen Then It Ain’t To Be/I Could Go To London, Paris Or Berlin/Because New York Is A Strange Place For A Nobody.” he sings with regret and sorrow. The guitar that Caulfield was previously playing has gone and is instead replace for a piano which eases the song towards the end.

Songwriters Comment
“I guess this one is pretty autobiographical. I went to New York at 19 years old and attempted to begin a music career, the reason why I chose New York because all of the people I looked up to as a young musician, The likes of Dylan, Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Sinatra and Simon & Garfunkel all had some sort of connection with New York, and I saw the city as a very sort of cool and artistic place to be. But it never really worked out in New York, Maybe I never stayed there long enough but it was pretty tough because there’s so many talented young musicians or actors or painters or poet’s or whatever that head to New York to attempt to get noticed and it’s like being a small fish in a big pond, it’s much more difficult to do things that way, so I had a little bit of resentment for New York City, I absolutely love the place but at the time it was a pretty lonely place to be and that’s when and why I wrote this song.”
- Brandon Caulfield

Similar To
Ray Lamontagne - New York City’s Killing Me