{"id":12044,"date":"2021-02-27T20:35:47","date_gmt":"2021-02-27T20:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=12044"},"modified":"2023-12-31T11:22:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T17:22:00","slug":"steve-earle-and-james-mcmurtry-mine-the-hearts-of-forsaken-trump-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=12044","title":{"rendered":"Steve Earle, and James McMurtry, mine the hearts of forsaken Trump voters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Ghosts of West Virginia” album cover. Courtesy www.bear-family.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Exacerbated by the January 6 Capitol mob attack, President Biden\u2019s greatest domestic challenge is bridging the chasm between \u201cred\u201d and \u201cblue\u201d America, as deep and wide as any Appalachian valley. Thus, Steve Earle\u2019s brilliantly insightful 2020 album, Ghosts of West Virginia<\/em>, is so pertinent.<\/p>\n

It took courage and empathy, but this Texas liberal imaginatively inhabits the lives of West Virginia coal miners \u2013 among Donald Trump\u2019s most forsaken followers. 1 Earle\u2019s outlaw country singer-songwriter sensibilities might\u2019ve helped him to connect with the lives and spirits of other \u201coutsiders\u201d of sorts, plus he\u2019s a native of the neighboring Confederate state of Virginia. 2<\/p>\n

Ghosts <\/i><\/em>became the soundtrack to a 2020 documentary theater work, inspired by the tragic 2010 explosion in the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, Coal Country, <\/i><\/em>written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen.<\/p>\n

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Steve Earle performs material from “Ghosts of West Virginia” in a live performance of the 2020 theater <\/span>documentary “Coal Country.” Courtesy Pinterest\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Earle\u2019s crusty singing, and the sinewy band playing, often sound as expressive as the heaving guts of a working miner, or his exhalation in pained repose and reflection. Earle unearths richly peopled story-songs, \u00a0\u201cDevil Put the Coal in the Ground,\u201d at once grave and scathingly boisterous, or the deep-veined singing and words of \u201cTime is Never On Our Side,\u201d as if Earle is tenderly scraping shards of blood-stained coal from the blast\u2019s ravaged site. “Black Lung” is a worker defiantly testifying to The Grim Reaper, about the industry’s deadliest side-effect. On “Union, God and Country,” Earle deftly personalizes the history of mining unions, their decline, and the company’s ease in exploiting unrepresented workers.<\/p>\n

Earle doing a solo version of “Devil Put the Coal in the Ground”:<\/p>\n