Demo Page
All songs on this page ©2003-2004 by Jim Savarino
This page is where you'll find occasional home recorded demos of Jim's songs, lyrics etc. Comments are welcome! (email Jim from the main page)
Matewan. The song is 2.48 M in size.
Lyrics
My childhood in West Virginia was tightly bound to unions, steel. All my family, and the families of my friends, worked in steel mills or coal mines, and all were union workers. Recently I saw the John Sayles movie "Matewan" about the coal wars in the early 1900's. The movie led me to read several books such as "Bloodletting in Appalachia" by Howard B. Lee and "Thunder in the Mountains" by Lon Savage. The movie also led me to write this song.
Appalachian Fall. The song is 3.24 M in size.
Lyrics
This song grew from a Town Hall Meeting with (then) Governor Wise in Wheeling, WV in the summer of 2003. I told the Govornor I had returned to West Virginia
after many years in California. While away, I'd always held to visions of the natural beauty of West Virginia, the woods and streams, and my childhood memories
of playing in the hills. I said that it was a shock to hear about "mountaintop removal mining" and the effects on the environment and natural beauty of our land.
Govornor Wise said that really, all that was happening was that the coal companies were making room for people to live, by providing level areas of land.
This was not comforting news. After the meeting, several people in the audience approached me and said that what the Governor said was not true, that the mining sites were in remote locations with little population, and the practice was destroying the mountains and streams of our state. I asked the Governor's environmental secretary, Stephanie R. Timmermeyer, if she agreed with the Governor's words and she said yes. I asked Ms. Timmermeyer if environmental impact studies had been done before the mining began. She replied that no studies had been done, but they might be performed in the future. Strange words from the head of the state agency "committed to protecting and improving the environmental quality of life for all of West Virginia's citizens".
As I write this, two does and a fawn are grazing in my back yard. West Virginia is still
beautiful! Anyway, I did what any songwriter would do. I wrote a song. The song is called
"Appalachian Fall". The title represents the decline of our beautiful land as it falls
under the machinery of people who have no regard for the nature they are destroying.
Morning Glory. The song is 2.49 M in size. Lyrics
I was reading "The Story of Civilization" by Will Durant. Actually, so far all I've covered was the first book, "Our Oriental Heritage", and that took me several years. Whoever
said "history repeats itself" was right! I got dizzy with the repeating historical themes. Chapter XXIII of the book describes Chinese civilization. That's where I found out that Kung
Fu Tse (Confucius is the latinized name) was a collector of songs. His compilation of verse, called the "Shi-Jing" or "Book of Odes" brings us verse from three thousand years
ago. One that struck me most was:
The morning glory climbs above my head,
Pale flowers of white and purple, blue and red.
I am disquieted.
Down in the withered grasses something stirred;
I thought it was her footfall that I heard.
Then a grasshopper chirred.
I climbed the hill just as the new moon showed,
I saw her coming on the southern road,
My heart lays down its load.
I noticed that if I left out every third line, the verse sounded like Bluegrass to me! At first I was reluctant to add anything to the poem, until I realized that the translator had a lot to do with what I had seen in Durant's book... By the way, feel free to take issue with the above translation and let me know your thoughts. Even working with a Chinese scholar of the Shi-Jing, I wasn't able to find which Ode the verse came from - narrowed it down to a couple, I think.
Note: If the file doesn't begin playing after you click on the link, you can download it by right-clicking the link and saving the file.