RISK OF EXPLOSION

I’ve been passing this old industrial site for years and often wondered what it once was, and why the warning sign. When writing ‘The Singer-Songwriter’s Last Stand’ I asked people at local folk clubs. Someone told me they thought it was an old glass factory. Further research revealed that it was a specialist company, originally called ‘The Thermal Syndicate’, set up to exploit a process invented by Dr J F Bottomley for producing transluscent silica from high purity sand. Over the years the company changed its name and was merged with other companies and eventually closed down in the 1990s. Though some people recall occassional bangs from the site when it was still in production, the reasons were unclear and there seemed no danger to local residents or passers by.

The sign did give me an idea for a song however, partly based on Woody Guthrie’s composition ‘Lonesome Valley’ and also my own thoughts on the many dangers inherent in every human activity.

‘There’s a risk of explosion wherever you go,                                                                                         But the risk of going nowhere is the worst risk I know…’

This is the song I entered for the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma in 2010 and won third prize. I then travelled to the USA to play at the festival – a great experience (wish I could afford to go again one day).

Intro:
I am walking down this road there are tears in my eyes…
Trying to read a letter from my home.
If this train runs me right I’ll be home tomorrow night,
Coz I’m nine hundred miles from my home.

Woody Guthrie was a hard-travelling man,
Riding the rails with a guitar in his hand.
Saying, ‘This machine kills fascists just as sure as any gun.’
But his songs of liberation sure never harmed anyone.

C. Ooh ooh, can’t you hear that lonesome whistle blow?
Ooh ooh, still got a long, long way to go.

Woody Guthrie, was singing all the time,
This land is your land and this land is mine.
He sang up for the workers, the down-trodden and the poor.
And his songs of liberation still keep a-knocking down that door.

Woody Guthrie had his hard times too,
And grapes of wrath he sure tasted a few.
Never knew much fame or fortune as a dustbowl refugee,
But his songs of liberation, oh what a priceless legacy.

Woody passed away in Sixty-Seven,
He’s flat picking now way up in Okie heaven.
Yes, he’s bound for glory on that good old gospel train,
With his songs of liberation – let’s all hear them once again.

Link to track:

https://soundcloud.com/mauricebaker-1/hard-traveling-man