We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

The Hardest Hard Time

from Down to Our Last Dollar (EP) by Bryan Kirschner

/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

about

Inspired by this photo: Highway City, California. Near Fresno. Family from Oklahoma U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs LC-USF34- 019549-E . Additional information: There are approximately one hundred such homes, each with about an acre at Highway City, California, which show various degrees of ability in self resettlement. Nearly all are on Works Progress Administration (WPA)

This song was also inspired by Timothy Egan’s exceptional history of the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

lyrics

The hardest hard time that we’d ever known
Took all that we had, killed all that we’d sown
The hardest hard time that we’d ever seen
Made ashes and dust out of all that’d been green

I never thought all I’d got be undone by the weather
Or how I’d come to hate the sight of the sun in the sky
Or that things could get bad and then worse and then never get better–
We all learned something new muddling through these hardest hard times

The dust boiled up till it towered the height of a mountain
The clouds tore through town like breath from the Devil’s own throat
Couldn’t pay the mortgage for so many months I stopped countin’–
‘Till the Bankerman came to foreclose sir and that’s all she wrote

WPA in California
Is providing four walls and three square
It’s far our from home in Oklahoma—
But at least here we’re breathing clean air
At least here we're breathing clean air

Now I’m haunted by visions of all that I’d seen in Muskogee
Like a little baby coughing up dust ‘till her tiny ribs broke
And every grave that we dug to bury the body
Of another poor Duster whose dreams had all gone up in smoke
In these hardest hard times

credits

from Down to Our Last Dollar (EP), released September 5, 2016

license

tags

about

Bryan Kirschner image

Bryan Kirschner Seattle, Washington

I write songs that tell stories about love and fear, resignation and resurgence, in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen.

Hard Times Hundred & One--of which this is a part--is my project to create 101 songs inspired by photos from the Great Depression. ... more

contact / help

Contact Bryan Kirschner

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Bryan Kirschner, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring interviews with LA music scene pillar Kamasi Washington, and new London-based duo Mrcy.

listen now