Pickin' Oot The Stones

Here is a collection of songs accompanied by a narrative referencing the coal mining history of the Durham and Northumberland coalfields. I've chosen to sing them 'a capella' as did the singers I first heard them from. I grew up surrounded by the culture and the legacy of coal mining in north-west Durham. My grandfather was a coal miner as was my father for a short while after leaving school at fourteen. I remember vividly the exhausted looking faces of miners sitting at the back of a Venture bus returning from their shift under a notice that read, "Spitting Prohibited".