In the hectic swirl of New York City’s music scene, Annalyse McCoy keeps a steady hand on her east Kentucky roots.  She’s “metrobilly,” in a word. 

Fiery and smooth, rough and soothing, like a long pull of whiskey, her energetic songs can leave you feeling equally dizzied with euphoria and angst.

Through music and theatre, she is fighting an artistic battle of principle against the larceny of Appalachia, against mountaintop removal coal mining which threatens her home land. 

She and her band, 2/3 Goat, reside in Queens, and have started this new decade by imprinting themselves on that great city.

The air outside was mild for late January, in Greenwich Village.  Inside a warmly lit hearth of a club, McCoy’s band struck up strings and called the intimate room to order.

Out came the melody, gently at first, in a bluesy and ancestral voice, to the slow and forlorn accompaniment of a fiddle.  And the others crashed in…

“It really comes from the heart,” Annalyse said about their song, Stream of Conscience.  “We wanted to add our own voice, and we wanted to write sort of a call to arms song.”

Those bleary walls at The Bitter End had baked many a doughy young mind, pupils of Ginsberg and Dylan, into season dishes of dissent.  Now here came 2/3 Goat, singing, rappin’ about injustice in our own time, cooking up our generation’s revolution ‘zza!

Annalyse remarked on how little New Yorkers actually know about mountaintop removal.

“Such a cultured place, but I find that every time we play the song…they come up to us after the concert, they’re like ‘I loved that song…wait, people are bombing mountains?  What?!  Wh—I don’t—’ And then we talk to them more about it.”

In 2000, the Martin County sludge spill devastated Annalyse’s home town of Inez, Kentucky.  She was in high school back then.  On October 11, Massey Energy’s coal waste impoundment broke, releasing about 300 million gallons of black slurry into Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek, and contaminating the drinking water supply of the area.  Ten years later, McCoy said, they still don’t drink the water.

“Bottled water is, I do believe, the most popular item in the supermarket.”

Annalyse grew up with an ingrained love of the arts, and the environment.  Her mother and father, a biology teacher and drama teacher, helped cultivate in her a love of land and desire to share her rich culture with others. 

“I always keep a vision of home in my mind, because I love it so much…but going back, more and more…and seeing these mountains disappear, I feel like I need to keep an even keener vision of them in my mind…”

Through her formal education in music and theatre, Annalyse has only refined her Appalachian penchant for artistic expression, and for fighting to hold her ground.

“I think it’s in me…the Appalachian sound…it’s almost in the genes…it really can’t leave me.”

Annalyse McCoy and 2/3 Goat will be releasing their first album Up the Mountain, this summer.

Annalyse McCoy and 2/3 Goat