Sunday picking: I set out to write about Alzheimer's, then the song took on an environmental bent after I read a chapter in a Wilma Dykeman book called, "The Beleaguered Mountaineer." The rolling mills line is from George Landers on the album "High Atmosphere." I'm double C tuned capo 2.
The Beleaguered Mountaineer
In a deep East Tennessee hollow
There's a homeplace that's held very dear
To an old man who stares
From an old cane bottom chair
And they call him the beleaguered mountaineer
His hands are all withered and calloused
As he frails an old fretless banjo
Though his memories are almost gone
He still sings songs about his home
Sad tales of a time he used to know
Chorus:
And the spruce pines are dying on the mountain
And the rivers no longer run clear
And the rolling mills are burning down down down to the ground
And the fruit trees bear less and less each year
That's the song of the beleaguered mountaineer
He sings to the loved ones beside him
But to most he'd appear all alone
Though his eyes have grown dim
He still welcomes his friends
Who have long since passed over home
Chorus
His songs are of promises broken
They're stories that never will be told
Till he sings them again
On that glittering strand
In a land where he'll never grow old
In a land where we'll never grow old