As Southern mountaineers and farmers moved into an industrialized era of coal mines and weaving mills their rural songs evolved to express the confrontation with new modes of life and the ensuing conflicts. This album chronicles just that through songs originating in the 1920s and 1930s demonstrating a mix of styles and influences brought to older folk modes with modern subject matters (machines, cars etc.). Producer John Cohen says in the liner notes: "The study of folklore is not simply to preserve the past, but to make the present more comprehensible."