In Remembrance

Chimneys of Abandoned Coal Camp Houses, Jewell Valley, Virginia. Mawmaw stopped the car at every place like this and let me take pictures. "They might not still be standing next time we come down here," she said.

In remembrance. 9.11.01

Going up Chicken Ridge

Going up Chicken Ridge! Some folks said they wanted photos of Chicken Ridge, so I took these snaps on our visit two weeks ago. Mawmaw Ann was driving and even she said, "I hope we don't meet a coal truck comin' the other way!" You know it's a curvy narrow road if she says that. We did meet the school bus and we were on what Billy calls the "air side of the road." Mawmaw and I both sucked in and tried to make ourselves feel narrow. Enjoy!

Used to be a train

"There used to be a train

that hauled this coal away

back when John L. Lewis

paved the miner's way."

-- "Local 6167" by Jeni Hankins

Report from Chicago, IL: What a thing to see this coal train rolling by in Downers Grove right after seeing a passenger train drop off about a hundred people who had finished their working day in the city. Took me back to a time in this country which I never knew in my lifetime where trains were the great movers of people and things and nearly everything depended on their timetable.

If it's a good time of night for you or you have a device to record off the internet, you can hear us streaming tonight on WFMT Folkstage from 8pm Central Time 'til 9. Let us know if you are listening. If I can get away with it and they have signal in the building, I'll read a message or two on the air. 

Big Pharma versus Kentucky

"Oxycodone has wrecked our home, and I ain’t seen Daddy for years.

Our last goodbye, I was high, and Daddy was fighting back tears.

Down in the cave, ain’t nobody saved from fear it’ll be their last time.
Daddy once said, 'Son keep your head, cause life it can turn on a dime.
Son just look at mine.'” – "Oxycodone" by Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp

Back in 2008, right before we were getting ready to finish our Jewell Ride Coal record, my Dad sent me an article about the opening of a methadone clinic for oxycontin addicts in Tazewell County, Virginia. After reading the article, we stopped production on the record, wrote the song “Oxycodone,” recorded it, and then put the song on Jewell Ridge Coal. The song helped us tell the whole story of life in the Appalachian mountains, today. Over the years, I’ve received more thank you messages about that song than any other, and, in particular, more messages from people in Southwest Virginia. 

Today Pacific Standard magazine published an article on the State of Kentucky versus Purdue Pharma, the purveyor of Oxycontin. It seems that Purdue is getting ready to pay the piper, but we all know that no money and no admission of devil-dealing, will bring back the communities and families destroyed by this drug. 

It’s an excellent long-form article about the voracious greed of big pharma and just how insidious they were in their false marketing of the drug to physicians: http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/how-the-american-opiate-epidemic-was-started-by-one-pharmaceutical-company

For the excellent article, “A Dark Addiction” by Nick Miroff, which inspired our song “Oxycodone” you can go here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/…/01/12/AR2008011201181.html

And to hear Oxycodone and any song from any Jeni & Billy record, you can visit our newly designed website: http://www.jeniandbilly.com/listen/s/oxycodone

Coal Camp Life Letterpress Series

How nice to be bringing some new letterpress cards with us on our Florida tour! My Dad (Greg) and I got my 1911 Golding Official table-top letterpress machine working and we made the first in a series of "Coal Camp Life" cards using type and ornaments from the Montgomery Herald, a newspaper once owned by Grandaddy Hankins. The little "Milk" ornament on the envelope flap is from Montgomery Dairy in North Carolina.

This is something that Mawmaw told me about Jewell Ridge Coal Camp which was nicer than many coal camps. Even though her father built their house over on Smith Ridge, he still made sure they had a fruit tree, a nut tree, and a cow, too. Though Mawmaw did say the cow was ornery and prone to kick.

I've done them in pink and brown and packaged them 6 cards for $12. There are all pink sets, all brown sets, and neapolitan with 3 pink and 3 brown. We only had time to make a few, so if you are keen to get some before they hit the mercantile table in Florida, just message me and you can get your own set or sets for an additional $2 in postage/packing (so $14 total) via Paypal by sending money to jeniandbilly@gmail.com or via check by mail. International postage is more dear, so please check with me first. But I can always bring over your set at no additional charge in May/June if you are in Britain (8 pounds sterling). Hand delivery and a hug, too!

They really make me smile. It seems my Dad, my grandmother, great-grandparents, grandfather, and I are all wrapped up together in these cards. Heritage.  

Napa and Coal Country, not that different after all

Report from Napa, California: Napa has more in common with the Appalachian coalfields than you might expect. When Americans think of Napa, we think of elegant people drinking elegant wine, and when we think of the coalfields we think of rough people doing rough work. But in fact, a person living in Eastern Kentucky and a person living in the East Napa Valley Watershed have something vital in common and that is wilderness, water, and the people who would sell it out from under them for the almighty dollar.

I had no idea what Napa would look like -- green or gold, flat or rolling, forest or field. And I can tell you that it is all of these things. California wine country looks a bit like the Yorkshire Pennines, but done in gold instead of green, with low rolling hills dotted by crooked and wizened trees. It looks like the drive from Mawmaw's up on Smith Ridge to Aunt Bonnie's down in Kingsport, especially that part around Lebanon – but when the grass has gone dry. And much of these rolling hills are covered in acre upon acre of vines heavy with grapes destined for a sparkling wine glass. In the midst of these ordered rows, sit grand homes from the jumbo sized plantation villa to the ultra-contemporary house of glass. But what I did not know is that parts of Napa are wild and free in the way that fells of the Lake District are – because Beatrix Potter envisioned that and fought to make it so.

We had the honor to spend a day among a group of Napa's citizens who live quietly in one of the few remaining wilderness areas in wine country and, much like their counterparts in Eastern Kentucky, they love their mountain, their forests, and the animals who share them. But they are facing their own kind of mountain top removal where the mountain won't be blown up but cut up – 3000 acres of it. 500 acres of old growth oak forest, gone. The scarce water supply hurried into reservoirs which will serve the vine before the people downstream. And what water does trickle down will be thick with sediment from erosion. How will the company get it all done. Roads, blasting, and gravel crushing. Does this sound familiar?

And what are they mining? Wine and tourist dollars.

Driving through wine country, you can't throw a stick without hitting a winery, but a developer from out of state – who also has interests in oil and fracking – thinks that one more winery, maybe the daddy of them all, ought to be built across some of the last remaining wilderness up here. 

"I come from the mountains, Kentucky's my home

where the wild deer and black bear so lately did roam.

By the cool rushing waterfall the wildflowers dream

and through every green valley, there runs a clear stream.

Now there's scenes of destruction on every hand

and only black waters run down through my land."

– Jean Ritchie, 1971

"When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"

– Pete Seeger, 1955

Please hold the people of the East Napa Valley Watershed in the light as they try to save the wilderness and the home they love.