1. |
Coffeehouse Anthem
04:40
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Coffeehouse Anthem
Music & Lyrics by S.D. Williams
Well I’ve come to sing some songs I’ve learned
From the muse and the troubadours
I hope before the night is through
You’ll teach me some of yours
And I hope my fingers find the right strings
And I hope my voice rings true
On these songs that ask you to believe
This world belongs to you
You can sing it when you’re down
You can sing it when you’re blue
You can sing it when your luck runs out
This world belongs to you
Now there are songs that sing of freedom for all
In the factory and the field
There are songs that sing of wars and bombs
The destruction that they yield
And there are songs that sing of giving your love
To the world or your favored one
Or to the poor wayfaring man of grief
For by this shall all be done
You must love them when you’ve lost
You must love them when you’ve won
You must love them when they change the rules
For by this shall all be done.
Oh these songs get sung in studios
And in famous concert halls
More often though they’re played in parks
And wailed to bedroom walls
And the folks that keep these songs alive
You’ll hear ‘em sing now and again
For singing builds the strength they need
To keep from givin’ in
You can hear the nighttime fall
You can hear the day begin
You can hear the songs that help us all
To keep from givin’ in.
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2. |
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3. |
Roger and Willie
04:53
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Roger and Willie
music & lyrics by S.D. Williams
Roger and Willie are slow and twisted and the live up on the hill,
Passing their days with a thousand like them and they probably always will.
Down in the city you’ll never see them, they live in a house that we built to keep them away
And out of that exile found a home where they like to stay.
Roger is stiff and he wildly waves each time he sees you come or go.
You can’t help but smile as you say good morning and he yodels back, “hello!”
Willie’s deliberate but just as eager, he says that his job is to keep ol’ Rog’ on the ball.
Nothing would please them more than a wheelchair race down the hall.
Chorus:
They may not be the lucky ones but they care for one another.
They may not have the bestof life but they do what they can do.
How would you like to find a friend who was so much like a brother
That when he saw you fall behind he came rolling back to you.
They never travel the beach or forest and they never fall in love,
Bodies too spastic and minds too clogged to waken lives they’re dreaming of,
Dinner with family on certain weekends, candy at birthdays and toys to keep them amused,
And though the child delights the man inside is confused.
One autumn morning when winds had scattered colored leaves across the ground,
I found them outside in their robes and chariots, to the whirlpool they were bound.
Roger got caught in some sidewalk rubble, Willie rolled back just to help his friend struggle free,
And with an arm around him said, “Rog, it’s just you and me.”
Chorus x 2
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4. |
Wilberg Mine
06:12
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Wilberg Mine
S.D. Williams
It was December nineteenth, ‘eighty-four.
Twenty-eight, working late, Wilberg Mine
A gang of men and one woman all pushin’ for more
Coal than had ever been long-walled before.
The boys in the office came down for the fun.
All getting’ anxious over what’s just about to be done,
Toppin’ any other crew for a one-day production.
Night shift, top speed, no one on the belt,
So the coal backs up and the bearings start to melt
Throwin’ sparks into black dust, then somebody yelled,
Chorus:
“Fire in the intake, smoke in the hole!”
Christmas lights above and the headlamps below.
Escape tunnel caved in six months ago.
Meant to get it cleared but there never was time
And now there’s twenty-seven trapped in the Wilberg Mine.
In a flash the mine’s a smoky black hell.
When they ran to find an exit it was too dark to tell,
Might’ve run sooner but there wasn’t a warning bell.
Methane, monoxide, panic and despair,
Blake, the foreman, led some others to the smell of night air
But he knew he was alone when he finally crawled out of there.
Chorus
Leroy Hersh was in his sixtieth year,
Forty years of breathin’ coal dust, chokin’ on his fear
That the roof would cave in or the flames would appear.
John Waldock, was only twenty-two,
Just a kid from Carbon County with nothin’ to do
Found he could make a lot of money goin’ down with the crew.
Nan Wheeler, the only woman to go down.
The rescue team was asked how they felt when she was found.
They said a woman’s just a miner when she’s dead underground.
Chorus
Two dozen others whose names are unsung,
They played the miner’s roulette even though they were young,
It takes you quick by disaster or slowly from your black lung
Now there are three-hundred miners out of work up above,
From the Wilberg, the Deer Creek, and the Little Dove,
Trapped between a thirty-year mortgage and the echoes of
Chorus
So East Mountain smolders and a town is bereft.
And there are twenty-seven houses with families that are left
With a frozen white living and a burning black death and it’s
Chorus
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