Nuggets and High Grade
In addition to being a musician and songwriter, David K. Joyce has is also a mineral collector and dealer! In the last number of years, David has, for some unfathomable reason, written increasing numbers of songs about mining and mineral collecting! By popular demand, he decided it was about time to do something with them.
David’s album Nuggets and High Grade contains amusing, technically correct, field collecting-oriented songs about mineral collecting, geology and mineralogy. You’ll be able to tell right away by the titles that these are not ordinary songs: “Agate Lickers”, “Crystal Systems”, “The Mineral Dealer”, “Diggin’ in a Hole” and “The Crystals That I’ve known” all give a hint that these songs were written BY a mineral collector FOR mineral collectors. Who else would write them!?
“Size counts in tourmalines
and dinner plate sized sphenes
Apatites that look like logs
Zircons the size of dogs”
From “Crystals that I’ve Known”
Unlike many mining songs, most of David’s mining songs are upbeat songs about mining life. The “Packsack Miner”, is a tribute to the “tramp miners” that were prevalent during the days of small mines in North America. “Highway 17” is a poignant song about life and travails in a mining town where the mine has shut down. “Miner’s Home Tavern” is a ditty that immortalizes the old drinking hole at Cobalt, Ontario where generations of miners have gathered to tell stories. David spent happy hours there when he attended the Haileybury School of Mines, just a few minutes away!
“The tavern’s filled with lots of guys,
telling tales, swapping lies
Only the truth is told today
of giant blasts and bonus pay”
from “Miner’s Home Tavern”
To learn more about the songs, the musicians featured on the album, and to buy your own copy, visit David’s mineral website.
