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Jodi Jones was raised under the roof of the house her great-great grandfather built in a small former textile mill town in the foothills of Western Pennsylvania. She possesses an intimate familiarity of the region’s past and present, and is guided by hopes for its future. Her songwriting acts as a mirror for contemporary life in the historically underrepresented Alleghany coal country and its surrounding regions whose old-time traditions serve as her paint brush.
In the titular track from her freshman solo record, Rust Belt Refugee, Jones builds on Woody Guthrie’s historic song Dust Bowl Refugee to tell the story of a worker from the decaying industrial centers of Northern Appalachia who chooses to leave their home rather than continue to endure the conditions of the region’s post-industrial decline – a reflection of her own life story.