“West Virginia My Home” was written by Hazel Dickens and recorded by Dickens on a 1980 Rounder release. Dickens, the West Virginia–born singer and songwriter who became one of the most consequential figures in the post-1960s bluegrass and labour-folk movements, wrote the song as a direct response to the coal-mining decline that had emptied her home country through the post-war decades.
The lyric is a homesick-and-displaced narrator piece: the singer recalling the West Virginia she left behind, the small communities and the mountain country, and the conviction that no matter how far she travels, the place is still home. The song belongs to Dickens’s broader catalogue of Appalachian-labour-and-loss texts that includes “Black Lung” and “Mannington Mine Disaster.”
Dickens’s hard-edged lead vocal — one of the most distinctive in 20th-century American folk and bluegrass — carries the lyric’s quiet pride and grief without melodrama. The song became a constant of her live sets and has been covered by Tim O’Brien, the Lonesome River Band, the Steeldrivers, and a long list of acoustic and bluegrass acts. It works as a moderate-tempo vocal feature in G or A with a strong chorus harmony slot.
