Seeking collaboration in instrumentation for this song, especially from fiddles, basses, banjos, and other traditional Appalachian instruments. My attempts at a clawhammer accompaniment didn't go well, so I'm still workshopping that. 

This song is in memory and protest of the arson attack against the Highlander Folk School. The arsonist left behind the Triple Cross, a symbol of the Romanian Iron Guard and a common symbol in use by the followers of Matthew Heimbach's Traditionalist Workers Party. The arson attack was a strike against the working class movement, the civil rights movement, and the cultural survival of the people of Appalachia. Its attackers revealed, once again, their allegiance to big capital that exploits Appalachia and the anti-working-class nature of their fascist politics.

Highlander Arson- bouzouki, mandolin, maybe banjo rolls?

Saw the smoke from the old arch bridge, there’s a fire starting on the ridge
Halfway from New Market to Woolardtown
First a spark and then a glow, room by room the fire grows
And the Highlander School’s burning down
A people’s past and stories, and a thousand union fights 
Swallowed in the smoke and carried off into the night
And sprayed across the wall, the fascist triple cross  
An arson by coward and attack dog for the boss 

G Bm 
Did you see the fire rising up from the mountain side?
G A 
And smell the smoke come falling through the pines? 
D A Bm 
Did you see a night rider moving white against the sky 
A Bm 
As he tore across the Jefferson county line? 
D A Bm 
From New Market, did you see the fire shine? 

Bm G 
With our eyes kept on the prize, we learned to strike and organize
A Bm 
And step by tired step we made the way
Bm G
Hand in hand to overcome, fears cast down and futures won
D A
Through the long nights, pulling for the day 
G Bm 
But there’s a glowing coal of hate down in the souls of bitter men
G Bm 
That’s nursed in jealous anger burning in the throat and then, 
A G
It’s breathed in brimstone fury hanging strange fruit from the trees 
 D A
By the men who only stands tall when another’s on his knees

Chorus

[Instrumental verse and chorus]

Dawn over the mountain broke and passed its fingers through the smoke
As it touched the fire so many times before
And in the place he set the spark, the night rider had left his mark, 
The crossed lines of a cause that lost its war 
There’s a hate that’s lurking underneath the shadows of the hills
That burns away the past so the future can be killed 
But deeper than the mountains, there’s a stronger love that rings
Rising from the ashes, lifting every voice to sing 

D G D D G D
We are not afraid, we are not afraid
D G D A
We are not afraid today
G D G Bm
Oh deep in my heart, I do believe, 
D G A Bm
We shall overcome some day

Highlander School Arson Demo 1

"Holding the Line, (Revolutionary)" is a rewrite, requested and commissioned by an organizer at the Red Pine collective in Northfield, of the song that Eugene Lerner and I co-wrote at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. While that song celebrated the resistance of ordinary people to the invasion, this song is a celebration of different revolutionary struggles around the world throughout the last century and the struggles of workers on the picket lines. The first verse celebrates the Makhnovshchina of revolutionary Ukraine and the CNT militias of revolutionary Spain, particularly the women of Mujeres Libre. The second verse is for the Zapatistas and the revolutionaries of Rojava and the rest of Kurdistan. The final verse is for all of us, reminding of us of the deadly daily consequences of allowing capitalism to continue, and of the world we hope to win and to build. 

D G D
Where the cavalry’s riding there’s partisans hiding 
D A
the  waiting in sends ice down their spine 
Bm G
but they’ve finally held land of their own in their hands 
D A D
And that’s why they’re holding the line 
Before she seized her gun, she got up ‘fore the Sun 
To sweat on the factory line 
Now She faces each dawn and vows no pasaran 
And that’s why she’s holding the line 

Chorus 
G D
We’ve seen it before, know they’d do it once more, 
G A
As they did to the people last time
Bm G
With guns, jails, and borders they impose their order
D A D
And that’s why we’re holding the line

Ever since the conquista the latifundista
Ruled over these lands and our kind
But we’ve broken their greed and weve won land and freedom 
And that’s why we’re holding the line 
The village is bright in the dead of the night
Where the flares and the rocket trails shine 
But her sisters and she in the mountains are free 
And that’s why they’re holding the line 

Chorus

Their wealth and their thrones are built over our bones 
Eating pheasant and drinking their wine 
While hunger takes toll of the kids on the dole 
And that’s why we’re holding the line 
When the struggle is won and the futures begun 
And we’ll leave not a worker behind 
We’ll share our new land and we’ll work hand in hand 
But first we must help hold the line 

Chorus 
Chorus

Holding The Line (Revolutionary)

Now Rest Us All, We Workingfolk

Now rest us all, we workingfolk, our tools we shall let lay
no more the master's profit will our labor serve this day
No more the boss's haughty power shall hold our might at bay
Oh tidings of freedom and joy, freedom and joy
Oh tidings of freedom and joy

In Early Modern Europe, great Capital arose
and spread its shadow o'er the world on every land imposed
But now through all our struggles it is in its dying throes
Oh tidings of freedom and joy, freedom and joy
oh tidings of freedom and joy

When first the odious gentry tried to seize the common land
then from the peasants there arose many a rebel band
The soldiers cut them down but still their spirit guides our hand
Oh tidings of freedom and joy, freedom and joy
Oh tidings of freedom and joy

Then in the fields and factories, and million darkened streets
we wage workers asserted that the bosses we must beat
and made the drum of unity our billion marching feet
Oh tidings of freedom and joy, freedom and joy
Oh tidings of freedom and joy

Oh bureaucrats and patriots have tried to lead astray
our dignity to compromise, our freedom to delay
but the bells of revolution will grow louder every day
Oh tidings of freedom and joy, freedom and joy
Oh tidings of freedom and joy

Then meet in field and factory our barricades to hold
and build a new and better world in ashes of the old,
our shackles, we will shatter them our destiny unfold
Oh tidings of freedom and joy, freedom and joy
Oh tidings of freedom and joy

Now Rest Us All We Working Folk

Our cover of "Wait So Long" - Available for free download!

Produced by Jon Fried (facebook.com/againstforever)

Wait So Long

History Is Made In The Fight

Your voice is on the clock 
It senselessly rots
Haunting shadows
Forming patterns

Your nights never end
Fishing for a friend on your valleys
Under bed sheets

The attitude you wear so well
It's so secure, it's so French
It's bitter and I can throw it the trench

Count your blessings and I’ll count mine
It’s the cruelest thing you can do

But your days are gone

Friend Fishing (rough cut)

Over You (prod.14th Avenue)

Marcie Smith, and adjunct lecturer in economics at Jon Jay (CUNY) questions the sanctification of Gene Sharp, who has been called the "Machiavelli of nonviolence," and portrayed as apolitical. Smith talks to me about her recent piece, published on NonSite called "Change Agent: Gene Sharp's Noeliberal Nonviolence", which looks at Sharp's noeliberal ideology and his role as a defense state intellectual and Cold War champion. This I play the audio of a book talk I attended by Max Blumenthal about his latest book The Management of Savagery How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump.

209- Desanctifying the Defense State with Marcie Smith and Max Blumenthal

Special Trillbillies correspondent Shaylan Clark (@316shaylan), a journalist and student at Berea College, talked to miners, family members, and supporters at the Harlan County Coal Blockade in her hometown of Cumberland, Kentucky. We're presenting these voices to you, as a glimpse into what direct action looks like in the mountains.

Photo by Sylvia Ryerson

If you'd like to support the miners you can donate here: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/79d3da4c086bc1598eb1f50b70f98bba9acabcd3?hash=340f6b1f35483f3a493882f9640809ce

P.S. We will be taking the week off from our regularly scheduled episode this week, as we are all either very busy or still recovering from touring. We will have a Patreon episode this weekend, and be back on our regular schedule next week. Thank you for your patience!!!

Bonus Episode: Voices of the Harlan County Coal Blockade

folky lefty stuff. Please enjoy as we sparsely populate this page with music.  

Or be stuck listening the Cliffs high school band floot platune.

Wait So Long

The Liberty Orchestra

Related tracks