Hi, - here are the lyrics from the CD booklet. You can get theCD from Folk-Legacy Records. Rick and Folk-Legacy could use the money.
-Joe Offer-
COMPANY TOWN
(Alan MacRae/Rick Fielding)
Dm
Bad news going 'round in the company town.
Hard-rock miner, your world's come a-tumbling down.
The company shares are six points down; city boys are talking.
Am Dm
Well, they're talking 'bout closing down your company town.
City boys never set foot in the company town.
Wouldn't know high-grade gold from a hole in the ground.
They're sitting mighty pretty, they've made a big killing; sold this town down the drain.
Can't you hear them old-timers a-turning in their graves?
Am Dm
Hard-rock miner, you got gold dust in your shoes.
Working on the graveyard, and you paid your dues.
You been sweating blood for a lousy, stinking dollar and change
Am Dm
To keep the tickertapes rolling on the stock exchange.
Company town, you were a-booming in the good old days.
You were on the road to riches; Lady Luck smiled your way.
Now when I go to join my friends on high, it's "So long, company town."
You'll be the hard-rock miner's burying ground.
You're gonna be the hard-rock miner's burying ground.
Company town, you're just a shadow of the days gone by.
The young can't wait to leave here; the old just wait to die.
And the only ones to mourn for you are the ghosts of miners gone.
Just a memory of another company town.
Hard-rock miner, you got gold dust...
Bad news going 'round in the company town.
Hard-rock miner, your world's come a-tumbling down.
The company shares are six points down; the city boys are talking.
Well, they're talking 'bout closing down your company town.
Just a memory of another company town.
You're gonna be the hard-rock miner's burying ground.
Rick's Notes: The first songwriter I ever met in the flesh was a stocky little Scotsman named Alan MacRae. He was irascible, irrepressible, irresponsible, and probably every thing else beginning with "ir." Alan wrote songs about his days as a gold miner in the far north, and would enjoy telling harrowing stories about his close calls and near-disasters underground. (I suspect that some of them may even have been true!) He left the mines eventually for the less life-threatening profession of the balladeer, but with Alan's excesses it was only marginally less dangerous. I've added a verse to "Company Town," but I'm sure his ghost approves. He was a truly unique man and I miss him greatly.