I saw the movie ‘Harlan County, USA’ a little while back, about the 1973 United Mine Workers strike at the Brookside mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, and the John Sayles movie ‘Matewan’, about a more violent struggle for unionization in the West Virginia town of Matewan back in 1920. Though don’t think I’ve ever even seen a coal mine, let alone been inside one, it did impress me how similar those strikes were to all the United Auto Workers strikes that I’d see on the news growing up in the Detroit area. Different industries, different times, same problems. Maybe because the name Harlan County makes me think of famed country songwriter Harlan Howard (born in Detroit, by the way - the Detroit-Nashville connection is strong) it somehow all made its way into a country blues piano song that came to me one cold winter day. Probably where all the reverb comes from too.