04 The Cruel Mother (Blackbirds Bonus Track, Recorded 2011)

Live At The Freight & Salvage 2/6/12

November 2015 - Idlewild

Dancing With The Beast

Disappearing Act

Wichita

Arguing With Ghosts

Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, and activist. She helped coordinate major strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World.
She lost her husband and four children to yellow fever, and shortly after, lost her worldly possessions in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. She could easily have given up. Instead she became an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers union. In 1902, she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, to protest the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a children's march from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York. She spent many nights in jail, including one stint at age 80.

She lived to be 100, and is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois, alongside miners who died in the 1898 Battle of Virden, whom she called “her boys”. They called her “The Miner’s Angel”. 
I was proud to be asked to contribute a song to a commemorative tribute to Mother Jones at the rededication of her grave site in Mt. Olive. To say she is an inspiration doesn’t begin to cover it. 
Happy Labor Day.

Circus Girl  (Best Of Gretchen Peters) Deluxe Edition Disk 2

Mother (for Mother Jones) - master (2008)

For over two decades, Gretchen Peters has been one of Nashville's most beloved and respected artists. "If Peters never delivers another tune as achingly beautiful as 'On A Bus To St. Cloud,'" People Magazine wrote, "she has already earned herself a spot among country's upper echelon of contemporary composers.” Inducted into the Nash- ville Songwriters Hall of Fame in October 2014 by singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell, who called her "both a songwriter and a poet (who) sings as beautifully as she writes,” and said her song “The Matador”, "moved me so greatly, I cried from the soles of my feet”, Peters has accumulated accolades as a songwriter for artists as diverse as Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, The Neville Brothers, Patty Loveless, George Strait, Bryan Adams and Faith Hill. Her song “Independence Day”, recorded by Martina McBride, won a CMA Song of the Year award in 1995. She has been nominated for 2 Grammys (“Indepen- dence Day/Martina McBride, “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am”/Patty Loveless), a Gold- en Globe (“Here I Am”/Bryan Adams), and numerous other awards. Her 2015 album, Blackbirds was awarded International Album of the Year and Song of the Year by the UK Americana Association. In 2015, The Telegraph named her one of the greatest 60 fe- male singer-songwriters of all time. In 2021 she was awarded The Poets Award by the Academy of Country Music. This year Peters is releasing a live album, recorded while on tour in the UK in 2019 with her band and an all-female Scottish string quartet. The Show: Live from the UK will be released 19 August 2022.

gretchenpeters

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