18 timeless tales of clanging Hammers and pounding Shovels—from wry, dry working-stiff diatribes to bare-chested exclamations—Birth / Work / Death maps the human work experience from anger to joy, poverty to riches. From the muck-crusted mines to late-night jukeboxes—backwoods outsiders and Nashville icons alike waxed odes to the entwined necessities of Work and Money, Status and Competition, Survival and Servitude. Harrowing laments of dank deaths underground, fevered hymns to Mammon, snide ripostes to debt-bondage and exuberant celebrations of family and sustenance. Most originally waxed on private press labels and distributed in tiny amounts, these town criers and tavern-bound troubadours sing of golden highways, slothful byways, factory-floor drudgery and fallow, heartbreaking fields. Edition of 500 copies packaged in gatefold jackets.