Hello all,
So much has happened this past month and the Blair Pathways Project is coming along wonderfully!
I’ve begun assigning songs to several musicians, including Jubal’s Kin, Morgan O’ Kane, Rev. Robert Jones, Elizabeth Laprelle, Bret Ratliff, Jason Shelton’s Nashville Choir and Sam Gleaves! What a wonderful list of folks! We have many more musicians involved, and will soon be profiling everyone on our website!
Each invitation to cover a song includes some history on the song itself, its relationship to the history of the Southern West Virginia coal wars, and suggestions for different ways to approach the piece. We want each musician to approach these historic works with a sense of the experiences and motivations of the original singers. We’re already getting song samples and full recordings from some of our musicians, which is very exciting. It feels as if the project is coming alive!
This last weekend I had the great pleasure of attending the People’s Music Network Conference in Lawrence, MA. Last year at the March to Blair in June, Sue Rosenberg and her son Matt both convinced me to attend and present on the Project. I presented on Blair Pathways by taking the audience on a song-based journey through the history of the WV coal wars. We sang coal-field ballads such as The Striker’s Orphan Child, radicalized hymn-tunes like Stand Out, Stand Out Ye Miners and songs from the 2011 March- all of which we plan to feature on the Blair Pathways CD. The Conference was full of amazing social and environmental activist/song writers and educators. All the workshops were so inspiring. Charlie King and Karen Brandow conducted a phenomenal presentation on the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The strike was an incredible win for the textile workers of Lawrence, led by the Industrial Workers of the World. It ended just a month before miners in Paint Creek in Fayette and Kanawha Counties, WV would go on strike with the support of the United Mine Workers of America. This year being the 100th anniversary of the Bread and Roses Strike, Lawrence is hosting a number of celebrations and events, so I recommend anyone nearby to go check out what’s going on, and at the very least take a tour of the mill museums.
Another wonderful musician and activist at the conference was Bev Grant, who just recently wrote a song about Jimmy Weekly called Last Man on the Mountain. Many of those who were on the march last year saw Jimmy speak several times- he’s been fighting to save Blair for decades.
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I’ve got a lot coming up this month: I’ll be assigning more songs to musicians, putting new features on the website, creating art media for the CD, promoting the project, and working on the historic narrative that will accompany the songs. If all goes according to schedule, fans can look forward to the CD release in June or July at the latest.
We will have a final round of fundraising beginning in February, and we appreciate any monetary or media support that you, our fans can provide when that time comes. Funds can be sent at any time via check to 36 Longview Rd, Asheville, NC 28806, addressed to Sara Lynch-Thomason (not Blair Pathways). We will have a paypal account up soon on our website, to make donations even easier.
Please do spread the word about the project: twitter about us, “like” us on facebook and do some good old-fashioned talking and gossip about what we’ve got going on.
In Song and Solidarity,
Saro Lynch-Thomason
Download the CD on Bandcamp below!
