This album includes songs which Jeni Hankins and Alfred John Hickling wrote mainly via correspondence between March 2020 and August 2021 when collaboration in person was impossible due to coronavirus lockdowns in Britain. Jeni lives in Carnforth, Lancashire, and Crystal Palace in Southeast London. Alfred lives in York. They've been writing songs together since 2015 and collaborating on performances since their bands met in 2010.
Jeni and Alfred recorded most of these songs in the course of 72 hours around a single microphone in Jeni's studio in Carnforth. A few of them were recorded by correspondence where they sent each other ideas and then subsequently recorded their musical responses over each other's initial musical idea. The final song on the album is a special recording from their February 2021 appearance at Bromborough Folk Club on The Wirral. This was their last live show before lockdown and they weren't to perform again for 540 days.
This album also includes Jeni and Alfred's single mic, single take recording of songs from the Jeni & Billy catalog including "Miner's Reward,"" Tazewell Beauty Queen," and "Reckoning Day."
Includes unlimited streaming of I Fell Into the Fire
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
I ain’t seen the sun
in many long days.
Get up in the dark
and go home that-a-way.
‘Cept Sunday, thank God,
when my work is all done.
I wake in the morn
to the light of the sun.
My God, He is mighty,
as Exodus says.
My God, He is humble,
for me He chose death.
Though death will not spare me,
I’ll fear not the grave.
No mines up in Heaven,
just sunshine in spades.
No, I ain’t seen the sun
in many long days,
but I’ll see my reward
in Heaven some day.
Yes, I’ll see my reward
in Heaven some day.
Tazewell Beauty Queen
If you don’t mind the low seam,
and if you don’t mind the dark,
if you don’t mind the black face
that is every miner’s mark,
you can make a fortune
and you can buy a dream --
go cruisin’ in a Chevy
with the Tazewell Beauty Queen.
If you don’t mind the short fuse,
and if you don’t mind the smell,
if you don’t mind a summer
in a place as black as hell,
you can make a fortune
and you can buy a dream --
go cruisin’ in a Chevy
with the Tazewell Beauty Queen.
If you will make a gamble,
if you will bet your skin,
you can get your wish in
tires and chrome and fins.
You might be dusty now,
but you’ll be coming up so clean
just a-drivin’ in that Chevy
with your Tazewell Beauty Queen.
Goodnight, Tazewell Beauty Queen
for Edith Geneva Smith Mullins (1926-2020)
Goodnight, Tazewell Beauty Queen.
We pray you won’t go far.
You won’t need a diamond tiara
to shine among the stars.
Say you’ll trade your Chevy
for a glittering comet’s tail.
Ride the celestial rodeo
with meteors in your hair.
All the boys are lining up in Heaven
beside the photo booth
to have their picture taken
with the girl in the red shoes.
Come on, give us a smile,
before we turn the page
of you dressed like Cleopatra
just before she left the stage.
Goodnight, Tazewell Beauty Queen.
Say you’ll tell us a story
about your one true love.
How you wrote your names that time
in your sweat and blood.
How you survived it all, girl
no matter what life threw at you.
You just kept on riding
like you were taught to do.
Goodnight, Tazewell Beauty Queen.
You dealt us the perfect hand.
We’ll keep the ace you left behind
until we meet again.
Forever adored.
Forever our star.
We always look to you
to tell us who we are.
credits
from I Fell Into the Fire,
released December 13, 2022
Tazewell Beauty Queen and Goodnight, Tazewell Beauty Queen
Written by Jeni Hankins, Lulu Wall Music, BMI.
Miner's Reward
written by Jeni Hankins, Lulu Wall Music, BMI, and Billy Kemp, Willbilly Music, BMI.
Jeni Hankins – Vocals and Rhythm Guitar
Alfred John Hickling – Harmony Vocals and Lead Guitar
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
Edd Donovan's day job as a social worker brings a sense of empathy to his elegantly constructed political folk music. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 26, 2019
On “Meet Me By the River,” Dawn Landes’s self-described “Nashville record,” buoyant country melodies settle deep into lush instrumentation. Bandcamp New & Notable May 7, 2018
