Lauded roots singer and Jean Ritchie scholar, Susie Glaze, writes in her review of "Heart of the Mountain" for Folkworks, "During and after a good hearing of this great new CD project, you’ll feel like you’ve spent a fine long visit in the mountains with this family, remembering the generations, and that they’re all new friends of yours."
Comes in a eco-friendly paper envelope with artwork by Jeni Hankins and her father, Greg Hankins. Includes CD with 27 tracks, fully illustrated lyric booklet, and a newspaper including the spoken word selections from the CD as well as a recipe for Aunt Erma's Gingerbread, poems, and essays.
Includes unlimited streaming of Heart of the Mountain
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Streaming + Download
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Aunt Erma witnessed the murder of John Rufus Smith on Smith Ridge in 1936. This song talks about her life and her legendary gingerbread.
lyrics
Aunt Erma stands by the fence.
Uncle Frazier rests his hand upon her shoulder
– a picture of a pretty young girl
who witnessed Grandad’s murder.
Never saw the gun, just heard the shot
that stopped a heart so fair,
while Grandad fell like a mountain
with the killer standing there.
Aunt Erma sat in the car.
Baby Charley pressed his face into her shoulder.
She watched the killer flee the scene
while Grandad just grew colder.
She called for help, ran to his side,
the neighbors heard her cry.
While his blood made a shadow on the mountain,
Aunt Erma said goodbye.
Hundreds from the mountains,
valleys rimmed with coal,
came bearing flowers
to sing Grandad home, on home, on home.
Aunt Erma stands by the stove
Baby Charley throws a smile over her shoulder –
carmel sauce and gingerbread –
our Charley’s one year older.
I sift the flour, just like she said.
She stirs the pot and laughs
while spring winds her flowers ‘round the mountain
and Grandma sits in black.
Hundreds from the mountains,
valleys rimmed with coal,
came bearing flowers
to sing Grandad home, on home, on home.
Aunt Erma lies on the hill.
Now Jesus wraps his arms around her shoulders –
a miner’s wife, a little known life,
so sweet and then it’s over.
Her little white house, has gone to dust
‘neath the crawling vine,
but our blood flows like coal through these mountains
and I see her hand in mine.
Hundreds from the mountains,
valleys rimmed with coal,
came bearing flowers
to sing Grandad home, on home, on home.
Kinfolk from the mountains,
valleys rimmed with coal,
came bearing flowers
to sing Aunt Erma home,
on home, on home, on Home.
credits
from Heart of the Mountain,
track released May 1, 2016
Jeni Hankins, vocals. Billy Kemp, vocals, guitar, and National Resophonic guitar. Based on stories told to Jeni by Mawmaw Ann and Janet Addington and from newspaper accounts.
Jeni Hankins grew up in the coalfields of Appalachian in Southwest Virginia among a family of miners, moonshiners, and
journalists. Her writing pulls the grit, gumption, and keen sense of observation out of that heritage like drawing water from her grandmother’s well.
In every song, Jeni’s “true sense of place shines through – old as the hills, but brand new at the same time.”...more
For me, this is the best of folk music, what it's all meant to be. After years of listening to Rebecca & Ken, I still get shivers up my spine when I hear them together. Jeni Hankins
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