New tune: "Here in Gillette"

[dhanners623]

Awhile back I wrote a song called “Belle Ayr” about the big coal mine in Wyoming. Parts of it I was happy with but parts of it bugged me. I decided to take another stab at it yesterday. I kept the parts I liked (which amounted to one verse and another verse I rewrote and turned into a chorus) and refocused the song and wrote three new verses.

In the U.S., we have a romantic (?!?) view of coal miners being guys who spend all their time underground and have dirty faces and lamps on their hardhats. But the truth is that for the past half-century, most of the coal mined in the U.S. has come from large open-pit mines in the West, particularly in the Powder River Basin area of Wyoming. A seam known as the Wyodak-Anderson is rich in low-sulfur coal. The two biggest mines, Belle Ayr and Eagle Butte, are so big the crew of the ISS can see them with the naked eye.

More coal mines closed and more miners lost their jobs during the past four years than in the eight years before that. Despite political promises to “bring back coal,” there was no way, not even with exports, to reverse the trends in falling demand and the growth of cleaner forms of energy. And we’ve lost valuable time when we could’ve been retraining a skilled workforce.

So here’s a song about a guy who made great money driving about the biggest hauler on the planet, a Caterpillar 797, and how he’s now fortunate to be working part-time driving a shuttle van taking railroad crews to and from their job site. He’s old, tired and pissed.

It is still a work in progress and could change radically....

And, yeah, J-35s were built for songs like this.

 

Here in Gillette

© 2021 by David Hanners

 

Powder River Basin stretches from the Bighorns to the Black Hills

Workin’ the mine was steady and man, it paid the bills

I drove a Cat 797, twin V-12s made her run

Hauled 300 tons of coal per load from the Wyodak-Anderson

 

But times, they were changing, cut our pay and hours, too

Said demand was falling, nothing they could do

The day the layoffs came pierced like a bayonet

Left us standing in the cold, here in Gillette

 

(chorus)

Cowboys traded cutting horses for haulers and draglines

Stripped 120 feet of overburden to carve out these mines 

Fifty years ago these grasslands were still the Wild West

Then they started digging coal here in Gillette

 

This country kept the lights on with coal that we mined

Now me and everyone I know is getting left behind

I drive railroad crews back and forth in a van

It's part-time, no insurance, but I do the best I can

 

They say a storm is coming, we’ll get a foot or so

These grasslands used to look so calm under fresh-fallen snow

But now I want to go as far away as I can get

I’m too damn old to deal with snow here in Gillette

 

(chorus)

https://youtu.be/5deCMoVs6mA

        

Edited March 26, 2021 by dhanners623

[dhanners623]

Revised and rewrote the song:

 

[kelly campbell]

As good as usual...Thanks..Always tell good stories!