Aragon Mill

That remark became the heart of the song. The singer describes the mill chimney at the east end of town with no smoke rising from the stack, “for the mill has pulled out and it ain’t comin’ back.” The only sound left is the wind blowing through town, “weave and spin, weave and spin.” No children play in the empty streets, and since the looms stopped “it’s so quiet I can’t sleep.” The last verse speaks for the people left behind: “too old to change and too young to die,” with no place to go.

Kahn recorded it in Wise, Virginia, in 1974 for his first album, New Wood, issued by June Appal in 1975 with members of the Mountain Musicians’ Cooperative and reissued on CD by Philo in 1994. He came back to it often: on the Flying Fish double album Carry It On (1986) with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp, in concert in the Netherlands in 1993, and in 2013 with the German band the Looping Brothers, on an album titled Aragon Mill: The Bluegrass Sessions.

Hazel Dickens put it on her 1980 Rounder album Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People, singing over Norman Blake’s guitar, James Bryan’s fiddle and Nancy Blake’s cello. Two years later the Dry Branch Fire Squad opened Fannin’ the Flames (Rounder, 1982) with it, Ron Thomason singing lead. A later performance by the band, taped at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 13 April 1995 appeared on Live at Last (Rounder, 1996). Charles Sawtelle sang it on Music from Rancho DeVille for Acoustic Disc, with Tom Rozum and Mollie O’Brien on harmony and Darol Anger on fiddle. The song also crossed to Ireland: the Fureys and Davey Arthur recorded it as “Belfast Mill” on their 1982 album When You Were Sweet Sixteen.