​I'm Going to be a Diamond Someday
Jeremy Drummond & David Poolman // Never Met A Stranger
26:30 Minutes, Color/Sound, Super 8/4K/HD Video, 2025 (forthcoming)

Frank Newsome was born in Pike County, KY in 1942 and was one of twenty-two children who grew-up in the Old Regular Baptist Church. Following in the footsteps of his father, Frank worked as a coal miner and after almost two decades in the mines, contracted black lung and was forced to retire.

I’m Going to be a Diamond Someday combines an intimate interview with Frank Newsome with footage captured throughout the towns and coalfields of central Appalachian; both before, and after the catastrophic floods of 2022. Issues of family, faith, community, and politics are explored through the realities of economics, industry, and climate change. 

Frank Newsome is a highly celebrated preacher and singer of traditional lined-out hymns who lives in Haysi, VA. He is an elder in the Little David Old Regular Baptist Church in Vansant, VA and performs regularly at venues such as the Richmond Folk Festival in Richmond, VA. In 2006, John Lohman and Jim Lauderdale recorded his album Gone Away with a Friend and in 2011, was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A field recording and extensive interview with Frank Newsome is included in Never Met A Stranger's book/2xCD, As Has It (2022) -- a collection of interviews, photographs, and field recordings captured throughout central Appalachia between May 2015 and July 2019.