READ: WVRockScene Blog

Nick Harrah at the blog WVRockScene.blogspot.com was gracious enough this week to do a post about Soft Rock Renegade. First, thanks to Nick for the support of the blog, but also the support of the West Virginia music scene.

While SRR serves mostly as an archive of music of the past, WVRockScene has been an up-to-date source for happenings in the Mountain State since at least January 2008. His nearly 300 posts to the site have included reviews of new records and shows; interviews with local musicians; music and video posts; event/show announcements; and general news about bands, tours, releases and more. Taking pride in their work, Nick and crew have done an wonderful job of promoting artists and shows and maintaining an impressive array content including a Top 10 CDs of 2009 list, a roast of Huntington's Jeff Ellis, and news of a Byzantine reunion. And for West Virginia ex-pats like myself, the blog has been essential in keeping up with what is new in my home state. So thanks again to Nick and WVRockScene.blogspot.com for the good work and for the kind words about this blog.

READ: WVRockScene.blogspot.com.

DOWNLOAD: The Heptanes - Phantom Cadillac

This is a continuation of contributions from a reader. The contributions include a number of rare, out-of-print or unreleased material from bands from around the state from the early '90s to '00s. I will be posting those records over the next couple weeks. Unfortunately, I don't know much about some of the bands so I won't have anything to say, so I have to rely on short write-ups by the contributor. The help with adding new material to the blog is always welcome and much appreciated. So thank you and keep them coming. Enjoy. If you would like to contribute, just contact me at srrblog@gmail.com.

"This rockabilly revival act combined the talents of Fuzzbucket’s Kevin Allison and Alex Kendall with Chum’s Chris Tackett, a union that resulted in this David Barrick-produced album that drew raves from the underground rock press."

Artist: The Heptanes.

Album: Phantom Cadillac.

Year: 2000.

For fans of: New Duncan Imperials, Reverend Horton Heat, Southern Culture on the Skids.

DOWNLOAD: The Heptanes - Phantom Cadillac.

READ: Michael Shnayerson - Coal River

I met Michael Shnayerson in Charleston once, but have not read this book. I will this weekend. We should all read this book.

Synopsis: One of America’s most dramatic environmental battles is unfolding in southern West Virginia. Coal companies are blasting the mountains, decapitating them for coal. The forested ridge tops and valley streams of Appalachia—one of the country’s natural treasures—are being destroyed, along with towns and communities. An entire culture is disappearing, and to this day, most Americans have no idea it’s happening.

Michael Shnayerson first traveled to the coal fields four years ago, on assignment for Vanity Fair. There he met an inspiring young lawyer named Joe Lovett, who was fighting mountaintop removal in court with a series of brilliant and daring lawsuits. He also met Judy Bonds, whose grassroots group, the Coal River Mountain Watch, was speaking out in a region where talking truth to power was both brave and dangerous. The two had joined forces to take on Massey Energy, the largest and most aggressive of the coal companies, and its swaggering, notorious chairman, Don Blankenship.

Coal River is Shnayerson’s account of this dramatic struggle. From courtroom to boardroom, forest clearing to factory floor, Shnayerson gives us a novelistic and compelling portrait of the people who risked their reputations and livelihoods in the fight against King Coal.

PURCHASE: Michael Shnayerson - Coal River.

WATCH: Sarah Ogan Gunning - Come All Ye Coal Miners

Another great singer, another powerful miners anthem, another beautiful song from the soundtrack of Harlan County, USA, this time from eastern Kentucky's Sarah Ogan Gunning. The video also includes some moving images of mining communities in the '20s and '30s.

LISTEN: Hazel Dickens - Coal Miner's Grave

Hazel Dickens, born in 1935, is a legendary bluegrass singer from Mercer County, West Virginia. She may be best known for her songs featured in the 1976 documentary Harlan County, USA. Dickens' songs are pro-miner, pro-union, pro-West Virginia anthems sung with an unmistakable high lonesome voice. In the wake of Monday's coal mine disaster in Raleigh Country, never more appropriate is Dickens' "Coal Miner's Grave," which was one of her songs featured in Harlan County, USA, an absolutely incredible and important film about the coal miners striker against Duke Power in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1973. (If you haven't seen in, see it. Immediately.)

READ: Denise Giardina - Mourn the Mountains

From the New York Times:

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Mourning in the Mountains

By Denise Giardina

Published: April 6, 2010

Charleston, W.Va.

PEOPLE in West Virginia had hoped that on Monday night we would gather around televisions with family and friends to watch our beloved Mountaineers face Butler in our first chance at the men’s N.C.A.A. basketball title since 1959. Men working evening shifts in the coal mines would get to listen thanks to radio coverage piped in from the surface. Expectations ran high; even President Obama, surveying the Final Four, predicted West Virginia would win.

Then, on Tuesday morning, we would wake to triumphant headlines in sports pages across the country. At last, we would say, something good has happened to West Virginia. The whole nation would see us in a new light. And we would cry.

Instead, halfway through Saturday night’s semifinal against Duke, our star forward, Da’Sean Butler, tore a ligament in his knee, and the Mountaineers crumbled. And on Monday evening, while Duke and Butler played in what for us was now merely a game, West Virginians gathered around televisions to watch news of a coal mine disaster.

On Tuesday, the headline in The Charleston Gazette read instead: Miners Dead, Missing in Raleigh Explosion. And we cried.

Despite the sunny skies and unseasonably warm weather, the mood here in southern West Virginia is subdued. As of Tuesday afternoon, 25 men have been confirmed dead, two are critically injured, and four are missing and presumed dead. Their fellow West Virginians work round the clock and risk their own lives to retrieve the bodies.

Already outrage is focused on Massey Energy, owner of the Upper Big Branch mine. Massey has a history of negligence, and Upper Big Branch has often been cited in recent years for problems, including failure to properly vent methane gas, which officials say might have been the cause of Monday’s explosion.

It seems we can’t escape our heritage. I grew up in a coal camp in the southern part of the state. Every day my school bus drove past a sign posted by the local coal company keeping tally, like a basketball scoreboard, of “man hours” lost to accidents. From time to time classmates whose fathers had been killed or maimed would disappear, their families gone elsewhere to seek work.

We knew then, and know now, that we are a national sacrifice area. We mine coal despite the danger to miners, the damage to the environment and the monomaniacal control of an industry that keeps economic diversity from flourishing here. We do it because America says it needs the coal we provide.

West Virginians get little thanks in return. Our miners have historically received little protection, and our politicians remain subservient to Big Coal. Meanwhile, West Virginia is either ignored by the rest of the nation or is the butt of jokes about ignorant hillbillies.

Here in West Virginia we will forget our fleeting dream of basketball glory and get about the business of mourning. It is, after all, something we do very well. In the area around the Upper Big Branch, families of the dead will gather in churches and their neighbors will come to pray with them. They will go home, and the same neighbors will show up bearing platters of fried chicken and potato salad and cakes. The funeral homes will be jammed, the mourners in their best suits and ties and Sunday dresses.

And perhaps this time President Obama and Americans will pay attention, and notice West Virginia at last.

Denise Giardina is the writer-in-residence at West Virginia State University.

WATCH: Mine War on Blackberry Creek

To show how Massey coal treats its works (and always has), here is a documentary by Appalshop's Anne Lewis, now a lecturer at The University of Texas at Austin.

Mine War on Blackberry Creek reports on the long and bitter United Mine Workers of America strike in 1984 against A.T. Massey, America's fourth largest coal company with corporate ties to apartheid South Africa. While strikebreakers work inside the mines and security men with guard dogs and cameras patrol the compound, miners on the picket lines detail the history of labor struggles in the region and their determination to hold out until victory.

A.T. Massey CEO Don Blankenship, listed on AlterNet in 2006 as one of "the 13 scariest Americans," addresses capitalism, social Darwinism, and the global economy, while Richard A. Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer and currently running for President of the AFL-CIO, expresses union values.

WATCH: Mine War on Blackberry Creek.

WATCH: Jean Ritchie - West Virginia Mine Disaster

As of Tuesday at 9:10 a.m. CST, the death toll from a blast at a West Virginia coal mine rose to 25, making it the worst mining accident in the United States in 25 years. Four miners four miners were still missing, and officials said it was likely that those men also had been killed in the explosion on Monday - New York Times. Massey Energy and Don Blankenship need to be help accountable for the deaths of these hard-working West Virginians.

Here is a video from 1980 of Jean Ritchie performing "West Virginia Mine Disaster," which is based on the flooding of a coal mine in Hominy Falls, West Virginia. The song is incredibly timely and moving. Please keep the families and friends of these miners, as well as all of Appalachia's underground coal miners in your thoughts. And let your voice be heard in any way possible.

Lyrics:

West Virginia Mine Disaster
© Jean Ritchie, Geordie Music Publishing

Oh Say, did you see him; it was early this morning.
He passed by your houses on his way to the coal.
He was tall, he was slender, and his dark eyes so tender
His occupation was mining, West Virginia his home

It was just before noon, I was feeding the children,
Ben Moseley came running to give us the news.
Number eight was all flooded, many men were in danger
And we don't know their number, but we fear they're all doomed

I picked up the baby and I left all the others
To comfort each other and to pray for their own
There's Tommy, fourteen, and there's John not much younger
And their time soon is coming to go down the dark hole

What will I say to his poor little children?
And what will I tell his dear mother at home?
And it's what will I say to my heart that's clear broken?
To my heart that's clear broken if my darling is gone

If I had the money to do more than just feed them
I'd give them good learning, the best could be found
So when they growed up they'd be checkers and weighers
And not spend their whole life in the dark underground

Oh say, did you see him; it was early this morning.
He passed by your houses on his way to the coal
He was tall, he was slender, and his dark eyes so tender
His occupation was mining, West Virginia his home.

DOWNLOAD: Karma To Burn - Live on the Morgantown Sound 1997

This is a continuation of contributions from a reader. The contributions include a number of rare, out-of-print or unreleased material from bands from around the state from the early '90s to '00s. I will be posting those records over the next couple weeks. Unfortunately, I don't know much about some of the bands so I won't have anything to say, so I have to rely on short write-ups by the contributor. The help with adding new material to the blog is always welcome and much appreciated. So thank you and keep them coming. Enjoy. If you would like to contribute, just contact me at srrblog@gmail.com.

"This highly revered Morgantown trio has been playing its brand of uncompromising instrumental rock for more than a decade. This performance, captured live in the studio at West Virginia University, followed on the heels of the band’s first European tour supporting their debut album."

Artist: Karma To Burn.

Album: Live on the Morgantown Sound.

Year: 1997.

For fans of: Fu Manchu, Kyuss, Nebula.

DOWNLOAD: Karma To Burn - Live on the Morgantown Sound 1997.