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Heart of the Mountain

from Heart of the Mountain by Jeni & Billy

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    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 via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 26 Jeni Hankins releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of String Unraveller Demo May 2021, The American Dream (Harlis and Freda), Voice Memo Demo, I'm Letting Go of You – Kitchen Single, The Wondarium: Songs For Kids, A Body is a Delicate House, I Fell Into the Fire, The Loneliest Snowman, I Fell Into The Fire – Limited Edition Handprinted, and 18 more. , and , .

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about

A song challenging mountain-top removal.

lyrics

The Heart of the Mountain
© Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp, 2015

I stood down by the weigh station
watched the coal trucks rumble in
full of the heart of our mountain
that won’t be coming back again

Those dusty black diamonds
Held the souls of every man
Who cut them from the mountain
that won’t be coming back again

There ain't nothing in a rock 
But the death of a thousand things
Pressed on by the ages
Pushed into a cold and lifeless dream
We mine it, we crush it,
we burn it up ’til it's nothing but a song 
And the man moves the mountain
’til the heart of the mountain is gone

I stood down by the weigh station
the diesels humming like a friend
the last day on my job
that won’t be coming back again

We all shook our heads
‘cause we knew we had reached the end
the mountain was gone
and it won’t be coming back again

credits

from Heart of the Mountain, track released May 1, 2016
Jeni Hankins, vocals
Billy Kemp, vocals, guitar, harmonica
Craig Eastman, fiddle, mandolin, mandola

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Jeni Hankins London, UK

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.”
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