The Spoken Word Project: Old Country Prison Work Death Song (The Existential Hoedown)

by G. Jack Urso

From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel. Use full-screen mode to better view the lyric captions or click here for the transcription.

“Old Country Prison Work Death Song (The Existential Hoedown),” is a tribute of sorts to Depression-era songs about the impact of a collapsed economy on the most vulnerable among us. The start of the Depression was a time with few government social services, no welfare, no food stamps, and no health insurance for the unemployed (and barely any for the employed), so the broken often only had themselves and other broken people to rely on for help. This resulted in poverty, misery, and disease for millions, but provided those who survived with a keen understanding of the human condition — we are only as human as the humanity we extend to others.

This project attempts to create a “found artifact” of the past — as if someone discovered an old radio and instead of picking up one of today’s channels it reaches into the past and tunes into a low-power AM broadcast not of Nashville’s finest, but rather a couple old guys scrounging up a few bucks for performing on the local radio station. The sound is raw, and the vocals a bit off-key and not always in synch with the clanging washboard, yet the lyrics reflect a sentiment expressed in many songs from the era, such as “Brother, Have You Got a Dime?” and “Paper Moon.”

The recording was completed with a Shure SM58 microphone connected to a TASCAM digital audio recorder. Audacity was used to edit the recording and add some reverb. A low-volume amplifier sound was added in the background to emulate the hiss often accompanying these old radios and gives the audio some texture. The final version was assembled on Filmora.

Special thanks to Monty Von along with Poorer Richard on the washboard for their patient participation in the performance.

A full transcription of the lyrics is available at Aeolus 13 Umbra: Old Country Prison Work Death Song (aka The Existential Hoedown).

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Forgiveness and Redemption

by G. Jack Urso

A homeless woman's abandoned belongings, Albany, NY, Mar. 5, 2026. 

(photo by G. J. Urso).

It looks like a pile of garbage waiting to be tossed out, but it’s not. This is someone’s life — the entirety of all their belongings in this world.

At the beginning of the school year, I was transferred down to the inner-city, same block as “the projects.” I teach adult education and my students range from 18 on up. There was a woman who was a daily fixture. We knew she was homeless, about 40. We offered to hook her up with various services through our program, including free meals, but she already had her high school diploma. Not that it ever did her much good, but she didn’t like fronting for something she didn't think would be of use to her just to eat. Besides, that program was located in the next city over, which she didn’t know. This patch of asphalt she knew. She probably lived in the projects before she ended up on the streets.

She wrapped all her belongings up carefully in garbage bags, hauling them around in carts, finding a place to stash it. Ours was a safe place.

She passed the time away in the reception area and largely kept to herself but shared a friendly word and a smile if approached. She would get in as early as possible and use the bathroom to take a sponge bath. No one was bothered. There were other bathrooms and she always left it as clean as she found it. She had a tablet she would use to surf, looking at ads for apartments she could never afford. Looking at help wanted ads, but she could never get hired because if you don’t have an address, you’re not allowed a future.

Before you think “Well, if she can afford a tablet . . . ” — stop right there. Without computer access in this day and age, she may as well be blind, deaf, and mute. It was an old tablet, doubtful it would fetch much, certainly not enough to rent an apartment, but good enough to look at ads for apartments she could never afford and for jobs no one would hire her for.

Then, in November she disappeared. I came back from Thanksgiving Break and her belongings were neatly packed and arranged behind the bike rack no one ever uses, where she usually left them.

December, January, February came and went, but she never returned. Maintenance had every right to dump them into the garbage and take it out with the trash; however, no one did. Even after four months this woman’s belongings are still there. No one has the heart to remove them. She’ll be back, my students said, but the older among them know. They’ve seen it before. She’s not coming back.

I didn’t get to know her. Exchanged a few words, held open the door a few times, but I was busy with my students. I never even asked her name.

I hope she’s alive. I hope someone saved her and she just left her life in the streets with all her belongings behind. “I hope” — the emptiest phrase in the English language. 

We all have debts and bills and struggles with loneliness and anxiety or whatever, and the future looks bleak, but there’s a roof over my head and I knew one person who would have traded all her miseries for ours if it came with a roof and a home she could call her own.

Maybe she found the helping hand she needed. Maybe the odds caught up to her. Maybe there was nothing no one could do. Maybe there was one person who could have made a difference. Maybe that was me, probably not, but I was busy and we'll never know.

We continue to watch over her things. I still look for her as I drive through the city, but maybe I’m really looking for forgiveness and redemption. 

I hope someday to find both.

 

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