Nashville Artist's Music Mines Region's History

The song's story may be fictional in terms of the disaster at the Muddy mine, but the sentiment certainly is real for the coal mines of that era. Also, the photographs in the video come from the Saline County Historical Society in Harrisburg.

The singer-songwriter behind this is Rocky Alvey, a Saline County native who's now the assistant director at Vanderbilt's Dyer Observatory just outside Nashville, Tennessee.

He's got more of these Southern Illinois songs, including Hardin County Line, Shawneetown and Grand Pier Creek, just to name a view. All are on his latest album, Blackberry Jam. Listen to some of the songs on his MySpace page.

If Blackberry Jam focuses on Southern Illinois places, his next project mines the history of the region's bloody 1920s history. Although the title song hasn't been released publicly, it's really good I can tell you. He's also getting good reviews on it from others in the Nashville music industry.

In the video below he talks about the Muddy song.