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Chorus
I am the neighborhood moonshiner the pride of the tenement block
I you want some more come find my door and give it a triple knock
If I’m ever caught I’m sure to rot behind the prison wall
But unt […]

D phrygian chords on GDAD bouzouki
Dm, Eb (0111), F (3444 or 5303), Gm, Ad (2141), Bb (3353 or 3310), Cm (0131)

Dm  Cm Dm
What’s that banner like smoke over the desert?
Dm  Gm A

the devouring mac […]

Em G
Came back to Austin after the war, been on the line since ‘74,
D Em
working on the killing floor, to make Hormel its spam
Every year the line gets quicker, dollar’s cheaper, talk gets slicker
Some guy […]

(tune of Farmer Michael Hayes; chorus to the tune of Follow me Up to Carlow)

Em G Bm
In Kelly’s bush I’ll rest my feet, just to watch to morning pass
Em G Bm
Above the harbour’s noises, where […]

Dorian, bluesy, ¾

Dm F C Dm
There’s an order to the world in the mills of Caroline
Dm C G Am
When the white worker’s above the black, it keeps ‘em both in line
Dm Am F G
and under the sh […]

G C
These hollers carry echoes from the ghosts of Matewan
G D
And the graves of the coal miners, who rolled the union on-
G C
You can clear away a hillside with a dozer and a blast
G D
But these hills […]

It’s high up on the scaffold I stand, hemp on my neck and hemp on my hands
Wait for the hangman to get the command, and swing us off of the wood
But sure I’ve no fear to be underground, whether to heaven or […]

I’ll put on my harness and strap on my hooks
And plot out a path in the crannies and nooks
To scale up the sky, hand over leg
Try to cook up the world without busting my egg
But it’s been in my blood sin […]

Em Am

They named us all redundancies
B7 Em

The new machines and cheaper lands
Em Am 

Shipped the plant over the seas
Am B7

They took the hammers from our hands 

The hospital where you were b […]

D G

Hello again, your Honor- I think you know me well
D A D

My name is Richard Carlile, and the truth to you I’ll tell
D G

My charge is sedition and libel in the press- 

D G A […]

As we go to the table, we will bargain for your pay
But management prerogative, we always shall obey
for the management’s our milk cow and we’re drinking from the udder
For the bosses hear us sing […]

 Reggae beat

The newsman was explaining that it isn’t really raining
That’s the trickle down that lands on me and you
From Santiago up to Queens, it’s the same crooks who own the means
Their gang colors […]

Now Johnny old friend, you ain’t wrote in too long
Or if you did, nothing from you’d come through
Did you get the last package the boys and I sent
To you and the rest of your crew?
By Christ you […]

Way up that piney mountain’s a place we cut a hole
To go into the rocks below to wrestle out the coal
And winding through the hollers that single line of rail
To take that dusty rock to the ri […]

That oil train is three miles long, coming down the track
Its wheels are pitted iron and its barrels long and black
Those barrel cars are long as night and blacker than the crow
Riding from Alberta to the […]

Last night as I lay in the depth of my sleep
I had an unsettling dream
Of cinder and fear and a river of tears
I fell through the smoke and and when I awoke
My thoughts with my memories filled
And I’ll s […]

To the tune of “Death of the Bear”, by Ronnie Drew

There’s many the vagrant the ocean to sail

The shoals of the herring the lonely old whale

And the hull of the liner that’s tossed on the gale […]

Great big sand truck rolls right by my door
Wakes me up each morning with a rattle and a roar
When I get up to go to town that sand truck damn near runs me down 
Great big sand truck rolls right by my […]

Where the Mississippi Water rolls along to meet the Sauk

And the river bank slopes down over the gray and rosy rock

Granite City said the sign; granite was the prison wall

But I scarcely met a […]

Chords are alternating Dm, F, and C, in standard Irish-style ballad

When i was a young man, a free man of twenty 

I traveled all over the land

And the rails I did ride until Union Carbide

Put a […]