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about
an unmastered, impatiently released rough cut from the upcoming full length album O Does It Know, It Makes It's Light Known?
This song is an ode to Southeast Ohio, where I currently reside.
The Southeastern region of the state is the most forested, and arguably most beautiful part of Ohio. The pristine nature of this region has only recently recovered from the ecological and social impacts of it's fabled mining days, which ended roughly one century ago. And in many ways, the land and it's people have still not recovered from them. By the time all the coal was gone it had pillaged the resource, destroyed the ecology, created a generation of desperate workers without a trade, and left scars on the land, impossible to hide. Time, however, has returned to us the land. The forest is regenerated, the lifeblood of the land is pulsing again, and the balance of nature is being seen restored.
But from a pit of greed, and a lust for more no matter the costs, a new threat arises. And it takes form in the practice of hydraulic fracturing. "Fracking". This being the most potentially dangerous ecological threat to see the region yet. In this the we are forced to note that
"All in all we have all been left in the same place in this space and time."
And it forces the question...
"Why can't one human do for the other what they'd do for themselves, not for wealth, but for all?"
This song is an observation on repeated mistakes.
lyrics
There’s a fire burnin’ beneath New Straitsville,
and it’s burned down there for over a hundred years.
Some say the devil has come to dwell in these lands.
From my window I can see in every direction,
through moonshine towns, and west to the ancient mounds.
Decaying smiles of the miner’s sons, the faces of children weary.
Across the river, into the forest, into the devil’s lands.
There’s a story told in the Moonville ghost town,
it’s written down in dark graffiti,
in a language of one who was lost or looking for pity.
The emptiness of a lost trade, left out to wander in the woods,
the bitterness of minimal pay, and the loss of my brother for what was left…
Across the river, into the forest, into the devil’s lands.
Into the hollow, down the mine shaft, into the devil’s den.
Throughout history, it’s our repeating mystery of falling into the devil’s hands.
The inferno of the mines,
it’s a tale that’s been retelling in a pattern throughout time.
The resource is gone, the people are spent,
the time has now dawned, revival is in the woodland.
But now the fracking well breaks into my shell… the fracking well breaks into my shell...
All in all we’ve all been left in the same place in this space and time.
Why can’t one human do for the other what they’d do for themselves, not for wealth, but for all?
credits
released February 5, 2014
Recorded and Mixed by Josh Buck and Brett Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan
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