The Life of a Miner is Musician’s Focus
Tom Breiding (Photo by Art Limann)
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Miners' Traveling Museum
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Miners' Traveling Museum
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Tom Breiding’s songwriting has always been influenced by Wheeling, where the now Pittsburgh-based musician grew up. With images of mills, bridges and railroads, Breiding said his memories of Wheeling at its height still stick with him.
“Growing up there, it was a big, vibrant city,” he said. “By the time I got to high school, it was all gone.”
Using his memories as well as extensive research on the coal industry and its history in the Mountain State, Breiding created an album, “Unbroken Circle: Songs of the West Virginia Coalfields.”
The songs, many in the Appalachian folk style, touch on a number of topics, including early life in the coalfields and the struggles of the miners to earn a fair wage.
Breiding performs songs from that album for students around the tri-state area in a program that also features mining artifacts and a traveling museum. He said he hopes to educate young students on the importance of knowing one’s heritage.
“I want to introduce kids to the sacrifices the laborers before us made when building this country,” he said. “This whole region is responsible for building the rest of the country.”
Because their gran parents and, in some cases, great-grandparents may have worked in those mills and mines, Breiding said it is important for a younger generation to understand those contributions and realize that though the region may be struggling now, it was and still is a place of which to be proud.
“I want to instill in them a real sense of where they come from and let them know that even though the region is a shadow of what it used to be, they should be proud of where they are from,” he said.
Breiding recently filmed the program for the Pennsylvania Cable Network, which broadcast his songs and stories to nearly 3 million homes across the state. In the coming months, his songs will be used in a film that focuses on the declining steel and coal industries.
“The film is really about the disappearance of Main Street USA and small town America,” he said.
Though he is branching out to other areas of the country, Breiding said his roots in Wheeling and West Virginia will always have a major impact on his songwriting and life.
“You can’t grow up in West Virginia, not even in its Northern Panhandle, without feeling some connection to the coal mining industry and its history,” he said.
— By J.W. Johnson, Jr., The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register
To stop by Tom Breiding’s website, CLICK HERE
