Britain’s Blue Lass, a bluegrass trio using clawhammer banjo and three part harmony to present original music, has a single from their debut EP, Skylines & Coal Mines.
It’s one written by their banjo player, Ruth Eliza, titled Between the Coal Mines, which she says has a complicated back story about her childhood, as she explains some of the imagery found in the lyrics.
“I wrote Between The Coal Mines as an attempt to process the struggle with my emotions about the place I come from, an ex-mining town in the midlands called Swadlincote. I left when I was 18, as soon as I could really, I don’t think I was ever comfortable there. As an adult I’ve gone back to visit as my dad still lives in the home I partly grew up in (my parents were separated), and my brother and some friends live nearby. But no matter how hard I tried it always seemed to make me feel pretty miserable. And so I did a lot of reflecting, including in the form of writing, and part of me realied it perhaps was a hard community to grow up in since it was still feeling the effects of the closures of the mines. I remember my dad going on the miners’ strikes. People had lost their jobs and the fairly well paid mining roles were replaced with factory work.</p?
But also I started to daydream a bit about the nature of the land, and was thinking about how some places just make you feel good and some seem to just make you feel bad. This led me to think about how the land was broken – ‘carved out, cast open’ refers to the opencast mines, there were two in the area when I was growing up. ‘Where night black rock breaks through the eye of the earth’ refers to the land out the back of my dad’s house, which is the main location if this song was a film! It was an old coal tip, made into a field. ‘Rusted water burning in a stream under the house’ is the bright orange stream we had to jump across as kids to get from the back garden into the field. We had it drilled into us that it was poisonous and not to touch it!
The bridge is about how the area is now known as the Heart of the National Forest. As a child I dreamed I would wake up one day and be living in a beautiful forest, but of course that was not to be – ‘and now there’s a forest, a forest for the nation, but not for me.”
Also appearing on the track are bandmates Abbey Thomas on mandolin and Holly Wheeldon on acoustic guitar, with guests Jay Bradberry on fiddle and Steph Doe on bass. Abbey and Holly also sing harmony.
Between the Coal Mines makes for a very interesting listen, especially with Ruth’s explication in mind.
Have a listen…
Between the Coal Mines, and the full Skylines & Coal Mines EP, are available from popular download and streaming services online, or directly from Blue Lass at bandcamp.
