| Am I Alone in This? Bill Bottrell in the January 2001 New Settler |
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windows on the streets/We got nowhere else to go. And it goes on to describe the chocolate Albion, which is the muddy Albion: the Albion turning muddy when it only rained slightly, a manmade mud, from logging roads and construction sites. And you keep whaling this message to Brother John, sometimes the logger, sometimes the Everyman . . . BILL: "Are you with me Brother John?/ How shall we respond to the Chocolate Albion, Brother John?" - There's the old folk song 'Brother John' [laughs] and I stole it from that. But what is in my mind is the idea of a community, a human community - Are you with me, Brother John? How shall we respond? Because the very next verse talks about the truck drivers coming down the ridge in the |
summertime, "Full of timber and dread/ The truckers keeping up the payments on their rigs/ God knows, the kids aren't overfed" - which may or may not be true, but it is a sentiment . . . Hey listen, we're out there, often at loggerheads with fallers: wrought, overworked, kids at home, at the edge, wanting to stay here no less than those of us defending the woods. BILL: As desperately as anybody. That's the point. And they show up at the Caspar when the Stokemen play. The phrase 'Brother John' tries to refer to all of us, that we've got to work on this. And that's how the song goes on. It ties the fishermen in, and their desperation, and their desperation, and the loggers and the environmentalists - Judi Bari by name - and then the phonies. It's got rock |