Artist: Tim Easton
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: “Old New Straitsville Blues” (alternate take)
Album: Paco & the Melodic Polaroids
Release Date: April 13, 2018
In Their Words: “New Straitsville is a small town in Southeast Ohio where they have a Moonshine Festival. Also, an infamous coal mining strike occurred there in 1884, when the miners gathered in a nearby cave to unionize … and probably drink a lot of moonshine. They ended up setting the mine on fire.
I went into that cave with Paco, my Black Gibson J45 acoustic guitar, and set out to write a historic coal mining tune, but then realized I knew nothing about coal mining, and just wrote verses that were truer to my own life.” — Tim Easton
Photo credit: Michael Weintrob