Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Let’s Hope This Act Never Grows Old

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

I’d never heard of the Church Sisters — Savannah and Sarah Church — until this week, when I read they were coming to play in Richmond. These young ladies who were raised in the heart of the Virginia coalfields, Dickenson County, and in Danville, meld Bluegrass and Gospel. The melody in this video, “Where We’ll Never Grow Old,” has a slow tempo but the twin sisters’ harmonies are lovely. (Skip through the first 30 seconds of the video to get straight to their performance.)

Southwest Virginia may be down and out economically, but the cultural traditions of Central Appalachia are as vibrant as ever. The twins have signed a record contract with Taylor Swift’s label, which could well push them into the big time.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

12 responses to “Let’s Hope This Act Never Grows Old”

  1. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    The birthplace of country music – Bristol Va / TN …

    https://www.birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/

    Gosh, I wonder which of those two states ended up capitalizing on country music?

    Amazon: Stop considering Virginia as a place for your East Coast Headquarters. The half-wits who run this state are incapable of getting anything right. They will ruin your employees’ lives if you locate here.

    1. UpAgnstTheWall Avatar
      UpAgnstTheWall

      Virginia Median Household Income: $61,486
      Tennessee Median Household Income: $47,330

      Virginia Poverty Rate: 11.2%
      Tennessee Poverty Rate: 16.7%

      Virginia Population: 8.4 Million
      Tennessee Population: 6.6 Million

      Virginia Percent Population With a Bachelors: 36.9
      Tennessee Percent Population With a Bachelors: 25.3

      But, yeah, Virginia sure is terrible because Nashville lucked into being the center of a music genre that became popular.

      1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
        Reed Fawell 3rd

        What is the point?

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Hey! Sound like you MISSED THIS:

    Richmond Named Among Top 5 Hippest Cities In U.S.

    Richmond is a hipster paradise thanks to the presence of oh-so-artsy Virginia Commonwealth University, row-house neighborhoods such as the Fan district with a bar or restaurant at seemingly every corner, the ever-eclectic shops in Carytown, the vibrancy of a revamped Shockoe Bottom and the crackling live music scene — among many other things. Virginia’s capital city recently was named by the travel/relocation website MoveHub as being one of the nation’s 20 “hippest cities.” In fact, Richmond checks in at No. 5.

    https://patch.com/virginia/fredericksburg/richmond-named-among-top-5-hippest-cities-u-s

    1. djrippert Avatar
      djrippert

      Being named the “hippest city” is probably the least important thing I can think of about a city. A bunch of dumb assed hipsters can ruin a good thing faster than just about anything else.

  3. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    Now, these Harrisonburg guys are really something … and their music video is just about as “real Virginia” as it gets. All that’s missing is a meth lab. Needless to say, the band relocated to Nashville as soon as they had some commercial success.

    https://youtu.be/1gX1EP6mG-E

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Great band, great song!

  4. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    hmm…. music is good…. but there seems to be something a little “extra”, eh?

  5. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    Well of course it’s a great song, a Nobel Laureate wrote it! Dylan truly is the great American poet of post-war America.

    DJ, to be a Virginian on my mother’s side with pre-Revolution roots is a wonderful thing to me. Sitting this morning with the first cup of coffee, listening to the music my Scots-Irish ancestors brought to these hills (thanks Jim), snow on the porch and the prospect of a blazing fire this afternoon – nirvana. Sadly, if Amazon does come, they’ll get the suburban sprawl and Yankee emigre values of Loudoun County. Ya’ll gotta come here to the Blue Ridge for the real Virginia. And with all its flaws it has been home now for 50 continuous years. Knowing all know, burdened by the history, damn if I wouldn’t be hard pressed to resist the call if Marse Robert rode down the street on Traveler and said, I need you again, boys.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      duno what Steve puts in his coffee… but dang it’s powerful!

  6. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    Ditto to all that.

    I have added the Church Sisters to my Pandora.

    And down there is where Amazon will go it they are smart. And they are smart.

  7. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Wherever Amazon goes – it’s less relevant than the changes Amazon is bringing to the country in the areas of bricks & mortar retail, local property and sales taxes, and newspapers. Those changes are nothing short of cataclysmic and Amazon has, by its success, encouraged other retailers to follow it’s lead in various variations.

    Walmart is now not only selling hard goods online – they’re now doing their own version of online grocery – reminiscent of the dot-com peapod fiasco but this time .. I’d not bet against them.

    Shopping centers far and wide are starting to have their share of empty spaces as a result. Many surviving stores remind me of the S&H Green stamp stores which had “display” items of stuff that could be ordered through their catalog…

    This new way of retailing has had significant impacts on sales and property taxes that localities rely on to pay for services..

    and local newspapers that have relied traditionally on advertising to pay their costs – are now shrinking to much smaller enterprises – physically and fiscally, some that had hundreds of employees.. now down to dozen or less.. with a concomitant reduction in publishing content.

    So .. some see the Amazon thing as a sort of lottery for some lucky place but what Amazon is doing to the country as a whole is nothing short of revolutionary… and local govts and news organizations are going to have to find different ways to continue to provide their “products.”

    Some have actually suggested that a “news” tax be put on all Amazon sales that would be distributed to all local news companies to allow them to continue to do things like cover local meetings and events…

    Amazon has even affected the way that Virginia funds transportation with the current sales tax on gasoline – predicated on Virginia being able to collect sales taxes from online retailers like Amazon.

    ” State lawmakers grappling with how to fund former governor Robert F. McDonnell’s landmark 2013 transportation bill included a fail-safe measure that would increase the state’s gas tax if Congress failed to deliver on online sales revenue by the start of 2015.

    The tax amounts to about 5 cents on every gallon of wholesale gas, all or part of which retailers may decide to pass on to consumers at the pump. With a few weeks to go, the lame-duck Congress is unlikely to act, making Virginia’s gas tax hike all but guaranteed.”

    so what we can count on – no matter where Amazon decides to locate – is the gargantuan impact that it is having on state and local funding of services and newspapers…

Leave a Reply

Read More