Fire and Steel    (Words & Music: Bob Pegritz & Seamus Kennedy)


With the call of the locks on the dark Allegheny
The riverman's life is a journey that's long;
Good-by to the wife and the kids gently sleeping
As he leaves for this icy-cold mistress at dawn

A riverman looks upon towns that are silent
In the still misty haze where the barges cut through
Passing places where fathers sweat blood making iron
As he navigates memories and joys of his youth

Chorus: So I sing of this place where our fathers before us
Sang songs as they worked in the mine and the mill
Where the Three Rivers meet, hear their legacy's chorus
In a place that was born out of fire and steel

The pit is a place where lamplight is sunshine
And the gold that is mined is the color of night.
Every mother's son's life has been played out in coal dust
And sent down the river in the clear morning light.

There's a place where the coal and the iron are mingled
And the roars of the city harmonize with the din
And the prayers of the men in this Bessemer cathedral
Are hot metal hymns singing out from within.

Chorus: So I sing of this place where our fathers before us
Sang songs as they worked in the mine and the mill
Where the Three Rivers meet, hear their legacy's chorus
In a place that was born out of fire and steel

There's Maz and Clemente and Mean Joe and Bettis,
Our heroes and legends who made Pittsburgh real;
The children of people who crossed the wide ocean
To make a new life in their City of Steel.

There's the North side, the South side, the Strip and there's Bloomfield,
Connected by bridges and history past;
So raise an Iron City to the people of Pittsburgh,
May their days run forever and their memories last.

Chorus: So I sing of this place where our fathers before us
Sang songs as they worked in the mine and the mill
Where the Three Rivers meet, hear their legacy's chorus
In a place that was born out of fire and steel.