Browsing tag: bluegrass

the valley of the heart


It’s empty in the valley of your heart The sun, it rises slowly as you walk Away from all the fears And all the faults you’ve left behind The harvest left no food for you to eat You cannibal, you meat-eater, you see But I have seen the same I know the shame in your

fist city. the original coal miners daughter.


Being a coal miner’s daughter myself, I’m contractually obligated to bring up Loretta Lynn whenever I can swing it. But I’d like to think I’d do it anyway. Even if I weren’t. When you grow up on in a holler like I did, wanting to overcome the mountains with your art, you sometimes think there’s

wayfarin stranger


I grew up in a family full of wayfarin strangers. Gnarled old men who I didn’t know but should have – because Pa said they were kin – sang the words with such strength of conviction that I always saw the story as their own. A cousin even adopted it as his anthem when we