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Listener supported WNYC Studios. How are your hands are a little cold, but I can outrun everybody. It's Chad, Dolly Parton's America. We are currently editing the final episode of the series.

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It will drop a week from today. In the meantime, I want to wish you all a very happy holidays.

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And as a holiday offering and a token of our appreciation for listening to the series, spreading the word, I want to share with you a little more music that we gathered along the way.

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I mean, we were super lucky on this project.

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We got to work with some incredible musicians who performed some songs for us, shared with us some of their own work. In this bonus EP, you're going to hear two different performers, singer songwriters, starting with the musician Nora Brown.

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This is it's afrosphere, OK?

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Nora is a very wise, very old soul who is actually only 14 years old, already well established in the old time music scene where he has an album. We'll link to it from our website. We recorded her at this beautiful church in Brooklyn called St. Augustine Church, really big domed ceilings. And we sat sort of right in front of the altar and she got out her banjo and played a song. How did you even learn to play this?

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Well, I. I started with this man named Shlomo Pesco, and he's based out of Brooklyn. And he he started teaching me Old-Time Music when I was six, but not on the banjo. Oh, wow. And then he he passed away and then I started playing banjo. I just began to learn the banjo before he died. But I didn't really get much crap when I started like some other people.

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Wow.

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The song she played for us is called The Very Day I'm Gone, which was written by the late ballad singer Eddy Graham, nor first heard it off an album of 80 Graham songs performed on that record by the duet Anna and Elizabeth. Here's Nora's version. I just can't stop playing the song. You know, you saw. Under U.S. law. With my money says. Oh, no. Sandra Bland joining. Sausan Jackline is sidetracked by. In my memory, my memory warming on that and warming.

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Actually, I saw moderniser. Is your. I mean, they bring in. That's beautiful. Wow. Let's give you a high five. You'll hear more of Norah in the next episode.

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She assisted us in creating a scene from childhood.

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Next musician that we want to play for you is a woman named Amethyst's KIYA, who's based in Johnson City, Tennessee, not too far from Knoxville. Amethyst recently collaborated with Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell and Leyla McCalla. They formed the group, Our Native Daughters, and just released an album called Songs of Our Native Daughter's critically acclaimed album. And we initially contacted Amethyst and asked her if she'd be willing to play an old mine workers labor organizing song from West Virginia that told the story of some of the violence that occurred in those labor camps.

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We didn't end up using that song because we cut the whole scene from Episode seven. But in the course of things, Amethyst ended up performing an original song of hers that, like the last one from Norah, just stuck so deep in my head.

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The song is called Firewater. Melancholy always seem to work for me, wistful and untenably.

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Strange you they'll see. He goes down the whole chain in the room. How many spirits does it take to lift the spirits? I don't know. I don't know. I believe in spirit and I'm still praying on the floor. On the floor. So can you just make. Maybe being drenched by water won't save me. I'll take the path of film and see. Steve, maybe. The only crowds I've ever seen, so in the dark, I find the answers that I been.

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City lights, all the only stars I ever see. How many nights? And you can read. Experience does take to lift the spirits, but on those. Zibo Davis spirit, and I'm still crying on the floor. In pesticide water, Nancy. How bad the film feels. Steve, can you just leave? That was Amethyst KiOR for the song Fire Water at the Willow Tree Coffee House in Johnson City. Thanks to Terry Dozier for lending us that space to record in.

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And thank you to James Nappily for recording. And thanks to Justin Hildur, bluegrass player from our first bonus EP who really connected us to Norah and Amethyst.

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And thanks also to Sam Gleaves for doing the research and performing that mining song, really bringing it to light for all of us. You can find out more about Amethyst and Nora on our website, Dolly Parton's America Dog. We will be back in one week with the final episode. In the meantime, happy holidays, everybody.