Dust Bowl

"In early 2014 I wrote a song called "Never Seen The Rain," with the idea to make a song about a drought. I remembered a little bit about the Dust Bowl from high school, and Steinbeck’s brilliant The Grapes of Wrath. So I started researching. Hours turned into days. I was fascinated by the history. Besides being the greatest environmental disaster in American history, it also led to heroes of mine like like Woody Guthrie spreading roots music far and wide. Proud farmers and regular folk lost everything. The Great Depression made matters immeasurably worse. Native peoples like the Choctaw suffered, too - as they had 100 years earlier during the Trail of Tears. There were so many intersections of fate. Red Oklahoma dirt tinged the snow that fell on east coast cities like New York and Boston. The whole continent was affected. But if the environment is the central character, the stories are ultimately personal ones. Taken together, the songs spell out an arc from the pastoral beginning, when wheat prices were high and times were good, through the darkest days of suffering and struggle, and ultimately to redemption - when finally the rain came down. Dust Bowl has been a labor of love for most of three years now. As much as I created these songs, they have changed me, too. I truly hope you enjoy it. Please let me know what you think."
~ Grant Maloy Smith

Scenic