Big Kenny from Big and Rich Says Mountaintop Mining a Big Mistake (Interview)

"May the day never come we should worry about the things we could have done."

So goes a line in a song called "Wake Up," from Big Kenny, one half of the country-rock duo Big and Rich. The song is from Kenny's latest solo album, called "The Quiet Times of a Rock and Roll Farm Boy."

It's more than just a lyric to the Big man. While flying back to the farm in his home state of Virginia a few years ago, Kenny looked down to see the environmental harm left behind by mountaintop removal coal mining. It made him sick, he says, and he's vowed to put a stop to it. He's not sure exactly how, but says he's not going to shut up about the practice until something is done.

Kenny recently teamed up with other artists including Randy Travis, Dierks Bentley and Kid Rock, and music executives, to sound the alarm about mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachian Mountains. The "Music Saves Mountains" campaign is being conducted in conjunction with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Gibson Foundation (the guitar people).

For the uninitiated, mountaintop removal is an extreme form of strip mining that extracts coal by using explosives to literally blow up ridgelines to provide easy access to thin coal seams below. The leftover rock, rubble and mining waste are dumped into valley streams. To date, some 500 Appalachian peaks have been flattened, leaving behind scarred moonscapes, polluted water and shell-shocked communities, according to the NRDC.

Planet Green recently caught up with Kenny, on his way to a show in Wisconsin, and could barely get a word in edgewise as he railed against what's wrong with this picture.

Courtesy of Rob Perks, NRDC

Planet Green: So I'm interested in this Music Saves Mountains project ...

Big Kenny: I was just heading home to the farm here a few years ago. I had to get from Nashville up to the farm and I needed to get up there quick to help my dad out with something. My bus driver's also a pilot and that was the first time that I had flown low enough to see this.

What I saw, it just blew my mind. It looked like a war zone, a complete decimation of forest ... It was scary. And I started asking questions.

I have a heart for my fans and I don't want to see anybody hurt. In no way am I sitting here saying that we're not supposed to be mining coal, I just think there's a right and a wrong way to do it.

PG: And you've been on the ground to see the destruction first hand?

BK: Yes, in Charleston (West Virginia). I went back there ... on the ground, and started driving.

I was born in Virginia. The Appalachian Mountains mean a lot to me. It's the birthplace of bluegrass music, country music and some of the best moonshine in the world ... It's a lifestyle and they're poor. These are people that are far away from what we know as the growth of America. They've sustained that lifestyle there for ages.

I met one man. He was trying to save his piece of property that had been in his family for generations ... The property has been decimated. He had no more water. He couldn't get water from the sky because the air's so contaminated from all the blasting.

I thought the Appalachians were like national forests. I see no need for us to decimate the oldest, most beautiful part of our environment and forests to do that. There's other ways to mine that will even give them more jobs. We've been doing underground mining for years.

PG: But mountaintop removal is cheaper for companies ...

BK: It's a cheap way to get the coal out so it makes more money for the big guys ...

I consider myself a citizen of the world, man, and anywhere I see something that is that definitely wrong for the people, then I'm going to say something about it.

PG: Can you believe this is happening in America?

BK: No! And it would not be happening in Colorado, Oregon, Washington state. It would not be happening anywhere else they've got mountains like that. They wouldn't allow it. People are poor here and they can't fight it.

PG: What can a bunch of country and rock folks do?

BK: Just educate themselves and tell the truth. We have a great voice to the world ...

This is not the America I grew up in. We are smart enough to solve simple problems like this. Ninety-nine square miles of solar panels in any desert would power this whole country.

I would be doing my country, my world, a disservice by not telling the truth of what I see and I don't think everybody gets to see stuff like this. When you find some success in the entertainment business, you're in front of a lot of people. It puts you in a place of awareness.

PG: So you're on the road promoting your new album?

BK: Yes ... and it's 100 percent green packaging. It's music that grows. You can take the music out, and play it, and it will fill up your heart. You can take the package, there's a sheet inside of it, and the whole thing is 100 percent biodegradable.

The sheet contains 26 varieties of my favorite perennial wildflowers. (Fans) can be like Johnny Appleseed. Instead of destructing, we can create. We can reuse resources. It's just a way of thinking we've got to get into. I'd rather see my way paved in flowers rather than I would be walking through the war zone.

PG: And flowers need clean water.

BK: Water is such a need. Without it, you don't have life ... When I think of anything we're doing in our country that is exploiting the quality of our water, it's unacceptable. I can't do that to my kids and I can't do that to my fans' kids.

It looks like we can knowingly see that we're destroying our environment in a very harmful way. We've got to do something about it.

When I was a kid, I remember growing up and hearing about the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency and all that stuff. When I was in the construction business in Virginia, back in the day before I moved to Nashville, I saw more of the EPA than what seems to be showing up around these mountaintop removal sites.

PG: What can people do about this?

BK: I don't know, man. I don't know the answer. I just know I've got to tell everybody.

We've got to do something to change it. It's 'We the People.' We got ourselves in this mess by allowing it as a country and we've got to stop it. The quicker it happens, the more lives will be saved in the long run.

On the Music Saves Mountains web site, visitors are urged to learn more about mountaintop removal and write their legislators to help end the practice.

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