Uploaded October 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
Our last available recording together!! This 3 1/2 year-old take was hidden in the attic on my digital recorder! Found it last week. If you love good fiddling--do not miss Emma (fiddle) and Halie (keys) @ 6:00. I almost cried when I found it because I had so wished I recorded more of them together right before Halie left to teach in Korea. Em's fiddle throughout showcases her sensitivity of interpretation--the break at the end is moving and masterful. It was such a joy to sit in between them at our gigs (grinning) and listen to them work off each other as only they could do in those last years.
Among modern songs, this is a great American icon by Darrell Scott. One of the best of the modern third-person, narratives that we need WAY more of in modern songwriting. I have always related to this song because my ancestors worked the coal mines too, except in Johnstown, PA, and a distant ancestor is said to have led Daniel Boone's expedition through the Cumberland Gap. The very first image is of my great-great (great) grandfather. He was a school teacher there. Some of these images are the Johnstown mines where my grandfathers and great uncles worked.
I wrote my Master's thesis on third-person narrative ballads like this one, which continue in an ancient English ballad tradition. Beginning with classical rhetoric and continuing through to the fascinating Humanist understandings of the poetic, I became convinced these songs have power to shape our reality (to help us see people and circumstances that we otherwise could not)--to help us empathize and record identities and trials of the past, so that we might feel enough to right those wrongs and work on making better futures.
I'll challenge all the songwriters out there to imitate this style! Maybe later I will put together a video pointing out for us some of the poetic tools used in this type of songwriting that I discovered while writing my thesis. It is a goal of mine to write a few songs like this.
Our last available recording together!! This 3 1/2 year-old take was hidden in the attic on my digital recorder! Found it last week. If you love good fiddling--do not miss Emma (fiddle) and Halie (keys) @ 6:00. I almost cried when I found it because I had so wished I recorded more of them together right before Halie left to teach in Korea. Em's fiddle throughout showcases her sensitivity of interpretation--the break at the end is moving and masterful. It was such a joy to sit in between them at our gigs (grinning) and listen to them work off each other as only they could do in those last years.
Among modern songs, this is a great American icon by Darrell Scott. One of the best of the modern third-person, narratives that we need WAY more of in modern songwriting. I have always related to this song because my ancestors worked the coal mines too, except in Johnstown, PA, and a distant ancestor is said to have led Daniel Boone's expedition through the Cumberland Gap. The very first image is of my great-great (great) grandfather. He was a school teacher there. Some of these images are the Johnstown mines where my grandfathers and great uncles worked.
I wrote my Master's thesis on third-person narrative ballads like this one, which continue in an ancient English ballad tradition. Beginning with classical rhetoric and continuing through to the fascinating Humanist understandings of the poetic, I became convinced these songs have power to shape our reality (to help us see people and circumstances that we otherwise could not)--to help us empathize and record identities and trials of the past, so that we might feel enough to right those wrongs and work on making better futures.
I'll challenge all the songwriters out there to imitate this style! Maybe later I will put together a video pointing out for us some of the poetic tools used in this type of songwriting that I discovered while writing my thesis. It is a goal of mine to write a few songs like this.
