We live on unwanted real estate
No ships, no sea of fish or corn
We grow young soldiers for your wars
Fuel for your factories and your scorn
Chorus
We are the other America
Our rednecks have been beat
Black and blue
We are the other America
Too tired to hate the likes of you
Hardtimes brought us to these hills
Guilty for the natives that we've killed
Pawns in a colonial game
And still today we bear that (your)
shame
Mr. Penn sent us to protect your ass (backs)
And yet you call us poor white trash
If mountain folks are such a savage lot
Explain your slavery auctions blocks
In 1994 when I moved back to the hills from 14 years in Columbus, I was quite ready to start healing the damage that flatland living had done to my soul. My marriage was in shreds and I was wrestling with and would continue to wrestle with the whiskey bottle for another two years. But living among the sheltering hills was a first step. Because I had been studying Appalachian culture and history for the past three years my homesickness was like an open wound that I kept picking at. I certainly couldn't go back to my former life where I just pretended that I didn't have a past. I don't think I could have survived had I not been back home in the hills.
The first song I wrote on getting back and only the second song I had written without my buddy Ken was The Other America. During my studies I had come to the realization that both the North (Blue) and the South (Red) had ill used us mountain folks and now their regional offspring had the nerve to look on us as savages. We have done and continue to do their dirty work and our thanks is to be a living punchline.
This recording was made sometime between 1995 and 1996 live at the Empty Glass in Charleston, West Virginia with the band Bletherskate. To my knowledge Pat Arnold was the sound man that night and I thank him for making my tortured vocals much less tortured.
The band at that time was:
Stan Bumgardner: Fiddle (Stan is also a writer of history books)
Don Williams: Bass (Don is the grandson of legendary Appalachian advocate Don West)
Tom Kirk: Drums
Kevin Duffer: Guitar, backing vocals
MTR: Lead Vocals
http://myspace.com/cwstoneking
check out cw stoneking
the greatest yet-to-be-discovered purveyor of hillbilly blues
his grandparents hail from fairmont and grafton wva and southern pennsylvania
Posted by: William Marshall | February 16, 2009 at 04:04 AM