HE DON'T KNOW — Release Date: COMING SOON
What We Make
of the Dead
The story behind “In the County” and the beginning of a larger musical project.
There are places that seem to hold on to their stories long after the people who lived them are gone.
You can feel it in the empty storefronts, the way the fog sits heavy in the valleys, and the silence that hangs over towns that were once buzzing with the sound of machinery and progress. It’s as if the geography itself has a memory, layered with generations of work, struggle, and family.
For me, that place is McDowell County, West Virginia.
My grandmother, Barbara Jean, grew up in a coal camp in a little place called Marytown, West Virginia. She eventually moved to Welch, where she and my grandfather, Paris, raised their four children as McDowell County's once-thriving communities began to decline.
By the time I came along, they had joined the thousands of families who had left the county in search of a place where businesses weren't closing their doors and opportunities weren't disappearing quite so quickly.
But even after she left, the stories of her childhood never left her. And in many ways, they became part of my story, too.
I grew up listening to my grandmother describe the harsh beauty of her upbringing. She told me about her father, who nearly died after becoming entangled in a cable while working in the mines and spoke in little more than a whisper for the rest of his life.
There were stories of finding a dead man in the river, of walking across a railroad trestle to get to school, and of the years before she was finally allowed to attend.
Some stories were frightening. Others were funny, heartbreaking, or almost impossible for me to imagine. But she told them all with the familiarity of someone who had simply lived them.
To me, they were extraordinary. To her, they were memories.
And as I grew older, I began to realize that the life she had lived was one I would never fully be able to comprehend, no matter how many times I heard her tell it.
I’ve always loved the idea that we inherit more than our names or our features. We inherit the questions our ancestors didn’t answer, the dreams they didn’t quite reach, and the resilience it took to keep going despite everything. I think we carry those things in our blood, like a melody we’ve known since before we were born.
And sometimes, if we’re paying attention, those things become stories worth telling.
In the County is where I’ve chosen to begin telling mine.
I’ve Always Been a Storyteller
Long before I began writing my own music, I was a theatre kid. Then I spent years as a professional actor getting into the skin of other people, trying to understand their motivations, their fears, and the moments that defined them. It was a playground for empathy, and it taught me that no one is just one thing. We are all contradictions and buried histories.
When I started seriously writing songs, that impulse didn’t go away; it just shifted focus. Instead of portraying a character on stage, I started trying to find the characters hidden in my own family tree and in the landscape I call home. I realized that the story of West Virginia wasn’t just about the coal industry or loss or poverty, as it is so often portrayed. It was about the people who stayed, the people who left, and the quiet dignity of a life lived with purpose, even when the world wasn’t looking.
To the generations of people whose lives were every bit as complicated and compelling as the characters I’d spent years portraying.
A County That Once Held Nearly 100,000 People
98,887 → 17,000
McDowell County Population: 1950 vs Today
In 1950, McDowell County was home to 98,887 people. Today, fewer than 17,000 remain. Those population figures tell a deeper story of migration, uncertainty, and the slow quiet that settles over a place when its primary heartbeat is silenced.
I think a lot about the people who were part of that first number. About the families who crowded into those coal camps, shared meals, and built lives in the shadow of the mines. And about the dreams they carried, whether or not they ever had the opportunity to pursue them.
For generations, southern West Virginia helped power the country. The coal that came out of these hills fueled the factories, heated the homes, and built the steel that made the American century possible. There is a profound sense of pride in that history, but it is a pride braided with a hard reality: the world moved on, but the mountains and it's people were left behind.
More Than What We’ve Lost
I know West Virginia has its struggles. The headlines often focus on the economic decline, the opioid crisis, or the environmental impact of industry. And while those things are real and deserve our attention, they aren’t the whole story. If we only look at what has been lost, we miss out on everything that remains: the creativity, the community, the deep connection to the land, and the stubborn hope of the people who live here.
When I write about this place, I want to capture the whole picture. I want to write about the joy along with the sorrow, the growth along with the decay. There is a vibrancy here that doesn’t show up in a statistics report - a way of being that is rooted in something much deeper than any industry. And I think that deserves just as much attention.
You Can Leave a Place Without Leaving It Behind
One of my favorite parts of In the County comes near the end. It speaks to the realization that no matter how far we travel, the places we come from remain a part of who we are.
Whether your story begins in McDowell County, somewhere else in Appalachia, or on the other side of the world, we all have roots that reach further back than we can trace. They connect us to places we've never seen, people we'll never meet, and lives that unfolded long before our own.
I think there's something extraordinary about that. For all the things that make our experiences different, we share this one deeply human connection: we are all, in some way, a continuation of someone else's story.
In the County is the first song in what I hope will become a much larger collection of stories. It’s my way of starting a conversation with my history, my family, and this beautiful, complicated place. I don’t have all the answers, but I have a lot of questions and I’ve found that songs are often the best way to ask them.
Thank you for listening, and for joining me at the beginning of this project. There are so many more stories waiting to be told, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share them with you.
— Brianna Jean