1992

1992 - Lyrics & More

About Dark Side:
”Birds were my first love. I carry my binoculars everywhere with me. I’m also a cancer (July 8), governed by the moon. She’s beautiful through my spotting scope, a rare bird indeed. Inspired by the beautiful, temporal quality of love. A feature, not a bug. Like a moonflower’s blossom, transient, ethereal.”

Dark Side

ca. 2017

It’s not what it’s made for, but I got out my scope
And looked up at the moon, but I didn’t feel hope
It made me feel pain and I know you know why
Cause I bet in this moment, you’re watching the sky

And you’re wondering if– is there always a dark side?
Can love orbit two souls without the locked tides?
Without hidden shame, hidden craters of heart
Without its own shadow always covering part

Can love be what it is like a green thing that grows
If you just meet its needs and let it alone
Once, before us, before pruning and grafts
It just bloomed for the nighthawks and the bees that flew past

And it bloomed for the stars, the bright side of the moon
Pale moonflower fades away soon
Unlike us with our woes, on the very same vine
The next bloom comes along in almost no time

I hope til I die I respond to its pull
For every eclipse, half-hearted or full
And if you look up – I mean “when,” cause you will
I will be too, the dark side means no ill

For it’s all the same moon, can we take it as whole?
The thing is celestial no portion is dull
If it gives sleepless nights, don’t wallow or sigh
For in that same night the last moonflower dies

It’s all the same moon, can we take it as whole?
The thing is celestial no portion is dull
If it gives sleepless nights, don’t wallow or sigh
For in that same night the last moonflower dies

About U R the HWY 1 (APT 2):
“When quarantine began in response to COVID-19, my dear friend Tristan Scroggins beat all of the inevitable social media trends with his #QuarantuneChallenge. Notorious for not writing instrumentals (I have but one to my name), I found inspiration in only one prompt for one day out of thirty: “California.” Written for a beautiful boi who enjoys an almost as beautiful view of the Pacific, across the PCH.” (Tuning: Open F)

U R the HWY 1 (APT 2)

ca. 2020

About Everglades:
”Don’t go on a cruise with your ex. Don’t share a cabin. Especially not mid-cancer treatment, on a high dose of ativan for chemo-related nausea. You’ll cry yourself to sleep every night, and all you’ll have to show for it is this song. A warning to your future self and a love song to the Everglades, the sacred, devastatingly gorgeous lands of the Seminole, Calusa, and Taino peoples.” (Open F)

Everglades

ca. 2019

As I stare down at the Everglades I wonder if I’d flood them with my tears
If I could only plummet down, I’d pace around in sorrow to my ears
And I wonder if you wonder, if you took a second glance up at the sky
Even if you did, I’ll never wonder why my heart won’t let this die

Noah
Why did I let you kiss me?
Why won’t my bones just shout above the din that it’s time to say goodbye?
Oh Noah
Why won’t you let me go?
If you don’t free my heart you’ll bleed me dry
And I’ll wade through mud and rushes under darkness of the night
Til I float off in the morning with the tide

The wind and waves were mocking when I begged the frantic waters to be still
In a boat that’s set to rockin’ of its own accord, I don’t suppose they will
And I’ve got nothing left to lose as all the oceans slowly grow and rise
But if you find my message in a bottle, throw it back and let it ride

Chorus (x2)

About Benson Street:
”The ex I just mentioned? We’ll stick with that particular heartbreak for another song, from earlier in our journey together, before the breakup… stuck. When the longing and loneliness were unmatched except by the roar of the cicadas and the oppressive humidity of Nashville summers. My first co-write with dear friend and musical hero, Molly Tuttle.”

Benson Street

by Justin Hiltner & Molly Tuttle, ca. 2015

Glow of the street lamps, shadows of tree limbs
Bungalows creaking, tucked in for the night
Smell the crepe myrtles, cicadas are singing
Nothing has changed, nothing feel right
Hear the crunch of the gravel under my feet
As I walk down Benson Street

Life goes on living, but something is missing
No light in your window no car in your drive
Your porch swing is rocking, though empty, forgotten
Your neighbors are laughing as they pass by
If they look my way, our eyes won’t meet
As I walk down Benson Street

The silence between us keeps calling me back here
If I knocked on your front door, what would I say?
Can I tell you I miss you when I still can’t be with you?
Should I work up the courage, or just walk away?
I long to see you, but it’s not what I need
So I walk down Benson Street.

I’d give anything to see you
But it’s not what we need
So I’ll walk down Benson Street

About 1992:
”Survivor’s guilt is an odd acquaintance. The day my parents discovered my sexuality was the day I learned what HIV/AIDS was. Like most queer folks raised in the ‘90s and ‘00s, my existence would be colored by my growing up side by side with the disease – though I would not realize that until adulthood. It dawned on me that I was almost assuredly born into a hospital in which HIV patients were dying, many disowned, unloved, spurned. Those who professed to love me most would eventually follow in those same paths. Of disownment. Of conditional love. And my survivor’s guilt would grow to include cancer and COVID-19.” (Open F)

ca. 2018

Maybe you were one or two floors down
Or maybe you were one or two floors up
But on my floor, quiet glee
And whispers about naming me
With bright balloons and flowers in a paper cup

Maybe you had kind and loving care
Or maybe they gave judging sighs and stares
While safe below – or safe above
A newborn child was wrapped in love
A happy family, joyful, unaware

While your body ached for loving touch
It ached on every level, in your bones and in each breath
Abandoned by your country, by your god, and by your blood
While my mother held me tight against her breast
She daydreamed of my future, while you never could admit your days were few
Were the heavens mocking both of us when they traded me for you?
Cause I didn’t die in 1992

They brought me home to gawking crowds of friends
With countless gifts and blessings, thankful prayers
You cried in anger, tossed and turned
A soul like mine, forsaken, spurned
Worried at the end no one would care

They buried you surrounded by your friends
Each one marked in marble, bleak and cheap
The raindrops fell down on your stone
While happy tears fell in my home
And your surviving chosen family softly weeps

Will you forever ache for loving touch?
Conditioned to the pain deep in your bones and in each breath
Abandoned by your country, by your god, and by your blood
While my father held me tight against his breast
He daydreamed of my future, while your kin forgot that they forsook you, too
Were the heavens mocking both of us when they traded me for you?
Cause I didn’t die in 1992

We took my life for granted, while you never could admit your days were few
Were the heavens mocking both of us when they traded me for you?
Cause I didn’t die in 1992
I didn’t die in 1992
That was you

About Hannah:
”My father is from North Dakota. Cavalier county (Métis / Ojibwe / Yanktonai lands), on the border with Canada. Just a mile south of the international boundary is Hannah, a striking, empty, nearly abandoned town that used to bustle as a port of entry. In 2018, two weeks before my cancer diagnosis, I went back to Hannah. I carried my banjo inside the elevator – which is neither empty nor forsaken – to play through the song. The speaker’s story is fiction, but the inexplicable longing for a place such as this is somehow so real.”

Hannah

ca. 2014

Eight streets ain’t a town
And somehow it’s so much less, when those cold winds start down
From just north of the border, Canada is just a mile away
It’s just as flat and cold and gray

It’s all but boarded up
The blizzards and big farms took all of our good luck
This is Hannah, North Dakota, borderline is just a mile away
By now I’m just as worn and gray

The wind will cut you like a knife
It brings the tears back to my eyes
And it’s been callin’ my whole life
And now I finally realize

Go back to Hannah
She will never do you wrong
Her love will always span the
Months and years that have come and gone
Go back to Hannah

Not even trains go back
The elevator’s empty, forsaken by the rats
There ain’t no hustle and no bustle
City lights are hours and hours away
I’d trade them in most any day

I never thought I’d find
The place I ran away from, stuck inside my mind
I dream of Hannah, North Dakota longing while I slave my days away
In buildings tall and cold and gray

The whiskey’s sharp just like a knife
It brings the tears back to my eyes
And it’s been callin’ my whole life
But now I finally realize

Go back to Hannah
She will never do you wrong
Her love will always span the
Months and years that have come and gone
Go back to Hannah
She will never do you wrong
Her love will always span the
Months and years that have come and gone
Go back to Hannah
Go back to Hannah
Go back to Hannah

About Oligarchs:
”A holler song, in the style of Ralph Stanley, southwest Virginia, and central Appalachia. The second time I ever performed this song on stage (I found out later) a woman left, mid-song, yelling for all within earshot to hear, “Goddamned socialist!” Now, when I intro the song, I tell that story – with a kind correction: I’m more of a land-back communist. Written in the middle of the night, in bed, in one fell swoop of indignant rage.”
Yours is what I’ve made them for…

Oligarchs

ca. 2018

Come out the dark, ye oligarchs, come out the dark
Come out the dark, ye oligarchs, come out the dark
Your money and your hearts are black, you’ve stole from us now give it back
Come out the dark, ye oligarchs, come out the dark

Come meet my fists, ye nationalists, come meet my fists
Come meet my fists, ye nationalists, come meet my fists
They’ve never met a face before, but yours is what I’ve made them for
Come meet my fists, ye nationalists, come meet my fists

You’ll pay for this, ye capitalists, you’ll pay for this
You’ll pay for this, ye capitalists, you’ll pay for this
Cause none of god’s creatures did care or fuss til man made money and never enough
You’ll pay for this, ye capitalists, you’ll pay for this

Come face your sins, Republicans, come face your sins
Come face your sins, Republicans, come face your sins
Christ himself would be sick a little to hear you called “evangelical”
Come face your sins, Republicans, come face your sins

Come meet my fists, ye nationalists, come meet my fists
You’ll pay for this, ye capitalists, you’ll pay for this
Come face your sins, Republicans, this won’t be your country no, never again
Come out the dark, ye oligarchs, come out the dark

About 10 Years (Gotta Get Out):
”Somehow, not a pandemic song – because it’s a cancer song. Being confined to too small a space for health reasons, a scenario I thought wasn’t nearly relatable enough, inspired this antsy, wanderlusty, wasting-time-on-Google-Flights anthem. The reference to plovers isn’t just a gratuitous bird reference, but… yeah, that same ex again.”

10 Years (Gotta Get Out)

ca. 2019

Like wooden spokes the highways all run out of town
And I’m sittin’ on the hub, which one will I start down?
It’s all the same direction: east, west, north, or south
I gotta put this city behind me, damn I gotta get out

Oh I gotta get out
There was never a doubt
Thought I’d just be a minute, see whose dreams were left about
I’d pick one up, dust it off, set course on my new route
But it’s been ten years of spinning around, I gotta get out

From thirty thousand feet up I’ll just pick a spot
Let me throw a dart, stop the globe and I’ll get off
It’s like I’ve always worn a blindfold anyway
And the cure for indecision didn’t hit shelves today

Oh I gotta get out
There was never a doubt
Thought I’d just be a minute, see whose dreams were left about
I’d pick one up, dust it off, set course on my new route
But it’s been ten years of indecision I’ve gotta get out

I can’t pretend my heart could never choose a place
But if home is where the heart is, why have neither left a trace?
I blame myself for wrapping them both up with you
To cross the wide Pacific like the plovers do

Oh I gotta get out
There was never a doubt
Thought I’d just be a minute, see whose dreams were left about
I’d pick one up, dust it off, set course on my new route
But I’ve spent ten years unanchored, damn I gotta get out

About Pieces:
”Ah, a song written for a different boi. I wrote this hooky delight with my longtime friend Caroline Spence, when we were both mere babes, newly Nashville residents. When my friends and I were performing as the Vickie Vaughn Band, Vickie would sing this number with heart-wrenching conviction. It translates so well on solo banjo and in D position, but I often miss the full bluegrass five-piece. Even if, during that time, we all insisted on calling it ‘Peaches.’ LoOoL”

Pieces

by Justin Hiltner & Caroline Spence, ca. 2014

I left my heart in the front seat as you up and drove away
I can’t forget those fading tail lights, you never turned and waved
You took my heart away
Now where’s my heart today?

I left my arm around your shoulder, so you could fall asleep
Now I still feel you every morning, though you’re not with me
There goes another piece
I never thought you’d keep

Will I ever get it back?
All this love that once was mine
Will I keep leaving trails of lonesome tears
For the next poor fool to find?
And if I never get it back, I’ll have nothing left to give
So I’ll keep going home in pieces for as long as I live

I left my eyes on your body, as it turned and swayed
To the songs that I wrote you, humming every note I played
But the music fades
I still can’t look away

I left my hand in your back pocket, walking down the street
So that everyone who passed us would know that you’re with me
But you couldn’t be
There goes another piece

Chorus

I left it all out on the table, but still you couldn’t see
What you thought was not enough was really all of me

Chorus

About I Wanted More:
”As a glutton for punishment – in love and otherwise – this song became my way of expressing the beauty in refusing to say no, despite the arduous heights laid out ahead of you. I imagine the singer as a hermit-like, pelt-wearing trapper stationed in a ramshackle cabin above the tree line somewhere, head over heels for the wilderness, the quiet, and the cold. Despite themselves. Whoever popularized the idea that ‘insanity is repeatedly attempting the same action and expecting a different result’ was a simplistic bitch.”

I Wanted More

ca. 2015

I wanted more
Just one more week of fall
Before the winter cold came crashing in again
Just one more breath of sunshine, cooled by mountain wind
Just one more stolen moment, me and him

I needed more
I knew I must give up it all
I could feel it in the shiver of my bones
Now I’m the man who ran away, left his only home
Traded in the warmth to be alone

Now the wind will howl around these shaky rafters
Snow will fall, the icy rain will pour
You will hear me sing in springs and summers after
I wanted more
I wanted more

Been here before
And every time it rolls around
I wonder if it’s worth it to begin
To start down this winding road, knowing where it ends
Somehow I just can’t make myself pretend

That I won’t go
For this is what I’m made to do
The mountain and the stars will call my name
The seasons always change, and so they stay the same
The quiet cold will take away the pain

Chorus

I don’t wanna say goodbye
With tears in my eyes
And start this lonely climb
But the choice was never mine

Chorus

I wanted more

About I Cry Every Day Now:
”A cancer song and a pandemic song, though not written with either of those intentions. In the early days of the COVID-19 shutdowns, my well-meaning loved ones would pester me with questions about how I was doing. It felt, ever since I had been diagnosed with cancer, that all anyone wanted to know was “how I was doing,” even though none of them really wanted to know. None wanted to own their contributions to how I was doing. Or lack thereof. My brain began ceaselessly reverberating this answer, which became this song. A poem of grief, of pain, of the strange, non-linear journey of forgiveness. For myself, too.”
(Performed on Marcy Marxer’s Shelley Park Django-style guitar.)

I Cry Every Day Now

ca. 2020

I cry every day now
Like I did over you
It doesn’t feel familiar
But I’m weary of it, too
I wish it were that temporary
This grief I’m walking through
I wish I had his problems
The kid you thought you knew

I try to call more often
I try to laugh along
I try to give you something
To ease the hurt that I am gone
I’ve tried to teach myself to trust you
Might take another try or two
But I’ll still wish I had his problems
The son you thought you knew

I was taught to be forgiving
And to turn the other cheek
The world is mine, ripe for the takin’
If I’m gentle and I’m meek
Now I’ve learned the meek get nothing
Unless we take it from the few
And they’ll wish they had his problems
The man they thought they knew

I cry every day now
And if the tears don’t ever cease
It’s not because I’m joyless
It’s just my heart’s grown tired and weak
I guess it won’t be temporary
Until I’ve closed my eyes to sleep
I’ll wish I had his problems
The man I used to be

I’ll still wish I had his problems
The soul I used to be

About Another Way:
”I wrote this song bedridden, my chemo pump still attached via tubing to the port in my chest, slowly pushing minute drops of highly toxic therapies into my heart. I wrote this song unable to imagine anything but agony, deep, bruise-like fatigue in my bones, nothing but nausea and shadows and the pump’s click-buzz every thirty seconds for forty-six hours. I wrote this song when I couldn’t imagine “Another Way” forward – for myself, for my embodiment, for justice, for our failed nation state. I wrote this song, because I hadn’t yet realized writing this song was my defiance. My perseverant assertion that there would be any way forward, if not an easier one.” (Open F)

Another Way

ca. 2018

Let my head fall on your chest
Run your fingers through my hair
Don’t tell me it’s okay, don’t tell me not to fear
Just let me feel the warmth of your breath across my ear
And I’ll close my eyes and dream
Of another way

Whisper softly of the sun
And her gentle, warming rays
Did she ask you where I’ve been?
Does she think I’ve gone away?
Kiss my forehead as you laugh,
“Love you’ll both be here to stay”
And I’ll close my eyes and dream
Of another way

But I can’t, we wouldn’t
Lord I’ve tried, still I couldn’t
Leave the path laid out before me
Please let me stray
But if life is made of choices
Blotted out by countless voices
I’ll just close my eyes and dream
Of another way

I ain’t ever wished so hard
To hear him say, “I told you so”
For the sun to cross my cheek
With a shining, summer glow
As he leaves me with dozing kisses
Wrapped in arms that won’t let go
I’ll just close my eyes and dream
Of another way

I’ll just close my eyes and dream
Close my eyes and dream
I’ll just close my eyes and dream
Of another way