It’s not unusual to get a bunch of hill folk together, and to discover that a few of them brought instruments for a hasty jam. 

Appalachians, in fact, carry their culture with them like a pocket knife.  They’re naked without it.  You can’t take a pocket knife into the halls of Congress, but you can’t go naked either. 

That’s why many of the coalfield residents who attended the 5th annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington decided to be their own salty selves. When the time comes to sing, it’s okay to sing your song a little out of tune. Even if the story was lost on the suits, the air would be a little fuller for the effort.

By the Lutheran church on Capitol Street, where the lobbyists has their command center, Rachel and Matt Parsons posted up with their instruments on a handmade log bench.  It was an uncannily Appalachian fixture, set in front of the wrought iron stoop of a home. 

With fiddle and guitar, respectively, they filled the old brick alleys of that south Capitol neighborhood with moaning old mountain tunes.  With their blessing, I turned on my recorder and sat back to take in the sounds of home, and the warm sun of a spring afternoon. 

The song they played, to Rachel’s knowledge, had not been recorded in a studio before, but was one of those that passed down through generations, through memory.  That added some charm.  I felt like an old-time song-catcher who was uncovering a gem of living heritage.

I wondered if, in the wee hours of a hapless night two-hundred years, earlier statesman had zig-zagged past that same forlorn fiddle sound, on that same row of houses, .

Rachel’s dark, malty voice was a perfect fit for the sorrow in the lyrics; her bow hand, trained since the age of four, knew exactly where to go.  The message couldn’t be half as eloquent in a congressional staff meeting, not with the best proof nor with the warmest sympathies. 

Matt, a preachin’ man of sixteen, made his fingers dance up and down the neck of his Martin.  The red bandana around his neck was his loudest remark.  He didn’t need a podium to share his soft, soulful harmonies.

The music required no lecture, no hysteria, and no standing on ceremony.  Yet it told the whole story, in less than three minutes.

Songs do that.

Rachel and Matt Parsons - Rachel and Matt Parsons perform for a night of revelry.