*Once Again, She’ll Be Coming Around The Mountain- The Work Of Mountain Music Singer Gillian Welch

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Gillian Welch performing "Miner's Refrain".

CD Review

Hell Among The Yearlings, Gillian Welch, Acony Records, 1998

The Carter Family, Maybelle and Sara Carter, June Carter Cash, Jean Ritchie and so on. What they all have in common is that they form part of the line of our common mountain musical heritage. I am sure that there are others who I could have included without doing an injustice but I wanted to make this point. Just as the folk revivalists of the 1960’s searched for roots musicians (once they knew they were still alive and kicking and waiting, just waiting, for a second chance) to emulate ad then extend those musical traditions today there is a need for develop a new generation of mountain music singers. That task has been made infinitely easier by the emergence over the past decade or so of Gilliam Welch to keep this mournful mountain music alive. This CD under review, “Revival”, from 1996 is my prima facie case for that last statement.

I did not, honestly, know the details of this singer’s background although I have heard that she is from some upscale background in California. And that is the rub here. Before I hear that information I would have sworn on that proverbial stack of bibles that she was from the hills and hollows of Harlan County, Kentucky or somewhere nearby. That gives her plenty of credibility in my circles. What gives more, much more is her voice and her song selection as she goes through the mountain women’s litany of troubles, not enough money, two many kids, a hard-drinking, two- fisted man who tales out his frustrations on … well you know the rest. And then there are the songs of lost like “Orphan Girl” (the first song of Ms. Welch’s that I ever heard) longing and, of course out in those longing hills facing an inscrutable god, death. Stand outs here include the gruesome “Caleb Meyer” and the soulful “Miner’s Refrain”. Welcome to the mountain music tradition.


"Caleb Meyer"

Caleb Meyer, he lived alone
In them hollarin' pines
Then he made a little whiskey for himself
Said it helped pass the time

Long one evening in back of my house,
Caleb come around
And he called my name 'til I went out
with no one else around

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin' chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don't you call my name

Where's your husband, Nellie Kane
Where's your darlin gone?
Did he go down off the mountain side
and leave you all alone?

Yes, my husband's gone to Bowlin' Green
to do some business there.
Then Caleb threw that bottle down
and grabbed me by my hair.

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin' chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don't you call my name


He threw me in the needle bed,
across my dress he lay
then he pinned my hands above my head
and I commenced to pray.

I cried My God, I am your child
send your angels down
Then feelin' with my fingertips,
the bottle neck I found

I drew that glass across his neck
as fine as any blade,
and I felt his blood pour fast and hot
around me where I laid.

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin' chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don't you call my name

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin' chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don't you call my name

"Miner's Refrain"

In the black dust towns of east Tennessee
All the work's about the same
And you may not go to the job in the ground
But you learn the miner's refrain

I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a hole,
Down in a deep, dark hole
I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a hole,
Down in a deep, dark hole

When you search the rain for the silver cloud
And you wait on days of gold
When you pitch to the bottom
And the dirt comes down
You cry so cold, so cold

I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a hole,
Down in a deep, dark hole
I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a hole,
Down in a deep, dark hole

Now there's something good in a worried song
For the trouble in your soul
'Cause a worried man who's been a long way down
Down in a deep dark hole

I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a hole,
Down in a deep, dark hole
I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a hole,
Down in a deep, dark hole

I'm down in a deep, dark hole

*She’ll Be Coming Around The Mountain- The Work Of Traditional Mountain Singer Gillian Welch

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Gillian Welch performing "Orphan Girl".

CD Review

Revival, Gillian Welch, Almo Records, 2001

The Carter Family, Maybelle and Sara Carter, June Carter Cash, Jean Ritchie and so on. What they all have in common is that they form part of the line of our common mountain music heritage. I am sure that there are others whom I could have included without doing an injustice but I wanted to make this point. Just as the folk revivalists of the 1960’s searched for roots musicians (once they knew they were still alive and kicking and waiting, just waiting, for a second chance) to emulate and then extend those musical traditions today there is a need for develop a new generation of mountain music singers. That task has been made infinitely easier by the emergence over the past decade or so of Gilliam Welch in order to keep this mournful mountain music alive. This CD under review, “Revival”, from 1996 is my prima facie case for that last statement.

I do not, honestly, know the details of this singer’s background although I have heard that she is from some upscale background in California. And that is the rub here. Before I knew that information, whether it is true or not, I would have sworn on that proverbial stack of bibles that she was from the hills and hollows of Harlan County, Kentucky or somewhere nearby. That gives her plenty of credibility in my circles. What gives her more, much more is her voice and her song selection as she goes through the mountain women’s litany of troubles: not enough money, two many kids, a hard-drinking, two- fisted man who takes out his frustrations on … well you know the rest. And then there are the songs of lost, like “Orphan Girl” (the first song of Ms. Welch’s that I ever heard), longing and, of course, out in those lonely hills facing an inscrutable god, death. Welcome to the mountain music tradition.



Gillian Welch, Orphan Girl Lyrics

I am an orphan on God's highway
But I'll share my troubles if you go my way
I have no mother no father
No sister no brother
I am an orphan girl

I have had friendships pure and golden
But the ties of kinship I have not known them
I know no mother no father
No sister no brother
I am an orphan girl

But when He calls me I will be able
To meet my family at God's table
I'll meet my mother my father
My sister my brother
No more orphan girl

Blessed Savior make me willing
And walk beside me until I'm with them
Be my mother my father
My sister my brother
I am an orphan girl



Gillian Welch, Annabelle Lyrics

I lease twenty acres and one Jenny mule
From the Alabama trust
Half of the cotton, a third of the corn
Ya get a handful of dust

Chorus:
And we can not have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

I had a daughter called her Annabelle
She's the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I never had
I didn't want to ever hear her cry

Chorus

When I'm dead and buried I'll take a hard life of tears
For every day I've ever known
Anna's in the churchyard, she's got no life at all
She's only got these words on a stone

Chorus
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We only wonder why

Obama And The Race Question In America

Commentary


Make no mistake, Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama is another in the line of garden variety liberals who have been that party’s candidates over the past half century or so and therefore no more supportable by militant leftists that any of the others. No more and no less. That is the beginning of wisdom for us here. Nevertheless Obama's nomination does represent one significant different from past Democratic candidacies- his race. A not unimportant difference as this misbegotten presidential race heats up and the question of race will, one way or the other, raise its ugly head. Obama’s nomination, in the final analysis, is significant-for him- not so for the vast majority of blacks (and others for that matter). The reasons for that situation I have addressed in other commentaries in this space and will in the future. What I want to discuss today though is this question of whether Obama is electable today in this racially-divided society.

Part of Obama’s drawing card among some whites and others has been a deliberate strategy of arguing for a post-racial candidacy (I know, I know to even mention such a thing seems absurd on its face given the historical and current racial realities.). That appeal had a certain very real cachet among the young, well-educated urban college types, up and coming blacks and other minorities. Frankly, if wishes were reality it would be very appealing. But here is the nut. This election is about votes and, more narrowly, swing votes in a few key states if the past several presidential elections are any indication.

Frankly, as the numbers are starting to firm up things are starting to look grim for Obama’s chances. An in-depth recent poll I looked at told the tale that is the real face of American society, at least its voting segment. Obama, despite some cold water from die hard Hillary supporters, is very solid with the woman vote. He is obviously solid with the urbane young and virtually all blacks, no question there. He is also, and here is the kicker, solid with the very poor and lower white working class (family incomes under $50,000) that Hillary bashed him over the head with in the spring primaries. In short he looks good thus far for holding many of the old Democratic coalition segments together. So where is the problem?

The problem is the white suburban vote that has tended to call itself independent as it has left the cities but has swung Republican over the past several elections. Mainly, from what I can gather, this is now a second generation (at least) out in the suburbs. And that is the rub. One way of dealing with race (or better, racial fears and hatred) is to walk away from it, if you can. This segment has, generally, walked away from the cities with its teeming minorities. Thus the hard symbol of racial segregation is no longer the rope or the separate facilities but the “gated” community (I mean that metaphorically here). This is no the "white trash" of literary mention but those with some college, some money and many frustrations. These, moreover, are the people I live among. That is the deep, dark secret of American racism and ultimately why Obama is in serious trouble. More later as the campaign progresses (if that is the right term for this thing).

The Battered, Tattered Generation Of' '68- Part III- Hands of Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn

Apparently, the Republican presidential campaign of Arizona Senator John McCain is trying to get mileage out of some tenuous connection between Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama and very, very ex-Weatherpeople Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. This same issue popped up in the spring of 2008. The introductory comment used there reposted directly below and a review of what The Weather Underground really meant politically still apply. I would only add that forty years of "cultural wars" by these reactionaries, led by Karl Rove and his ilk, is enough. I only hope that when our day comes we will relegate them to some nice island somewhere so they can "reflect" on their sins and leave the rest of us alone.

*******

There is currently a tempest in a teapot swirling around Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama concerning his relationship with former Weatherpeople Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Here are a couple of reviews from last year on the historic significance of that movement. The real question to ask though is not why Obama was hanging around with Ayers and Dohrn but why they were hanging around with this garden-variety bourgeois candidate on the make. Enough said.

YOU DO NEED A WEATHERMAN (PERSON) TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS

DVD REVIEW

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND: REBELS WITH A CAUSE, 2003

In a time when I, among others, are questioning where the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War is going and why it has not made more of an impact on American society it was rather refreshing to view this documentary about the seemingly forgotten Weather Underground that as things got grimmer dramatically epitomized one aspect of opposition to the Vietnam War. If opposition to the Iraq war is the political fight of my old age Vietnam was the fight of my youth and in this film brought back very strong memories of why I fought tooth and nail against it. And the people portrayed in this film, the core of the Weather Underground, while not politically kindred spirits then or now, were certainly on the same page as I was- a no holds- barred fight against the American Empire. We lost that round, and there were reasons for that, but that kind of attitude is what it takes to bring down the monster. But a revolutionary strategy is needed. That is where we parted company.

One of the political highlights of the film is centered on the 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Convention that was a watershed in the student anti-war protest movement. That was the genesis of the Weathermen but it was also the genesis of the Progressive Labor Party-led faction that wanted to bring the anti-war message to the working class by linking up the student movement with the fight against capitalism. In short, to get to those who were, or were to be, the rank and file soldiers in Vietnam or who worked in the factories. In either case the point that was missed, as the Old Left had argued all along and which we had previously dismissed out of hand, was that it was the masses of working people who were central to ‘bringing the war home’ and the fight against capitalism. That task still confronts us today.

One of the paradoxical things about this film is that the Weather Underground survivors interviewed had only a vague notion about what went wrong. This was clearly detailed in the remarks of Mark Rudd, a central leader, when he stated that the Weathermen were trying to create a communist cadre. He also stated, however, that after going underground he realized that he was out of the loop as far as being politically effective. And that is the point. There is no virtue in underground activity if it is not necessary, romantic as that may be. To the extent that any of us read history in those days it was certainly not about the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 19th century. If we had we would have found that that movement also fought out the above-mentioned fight in 1969. Mass action vs. individual acts, heroic or otherwise, of terror. The Weather strategy of acting as the American component of the worldwide revolutionary movement in order to bring the Empire to its knees certainly had (and still does) had a very appealing quality. However, a moral gesture did not (and will not) bring this beast down. While the Weather Underground was made up a small group of very appealing subjective revolutionaries its political/moral strategy led to a dead end. The lesson to be learned; you most definitely do need weather people to know which way the winds blow. Start with Karl Marx.