CLICK TO HEAR AUDIO

THE THROUGH THE TREES viola/violin master-in-training Ray Garnett is now expanding his already notable chops and repertoire studying viola at West Virginia University, limiting his ability to gig. So, fellow Trees Jim Probst (lap dulcimer) and Douglas John Imbrogno (lead vocals & guitar) have spun off a side project called THE UNDERSTORY to perform other tunes in other manifestations.

Above is a rehearsal recording of the two of them playing one of the most sublime tunes in the traditional canon, ‘Scarborough Faire.’ Be gentle: this is part of an occasional sharing of song drafts not perfectly recorded and mastered (with even a cough included). In this case, it's a living room recording to iPhone via via a small Audigo recorder, then slightly tweaked in Garageband. This may be only the third time Jim and Doug have ever played the tune through. We look forward to nailing a studio version (which we’d love to do someday with Ray!). Yet this raw one has its own rough-hewn charms.

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By DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO | March 10, 2026

AT LEAST IN MY EXPERIENCE, I have not come upon too many bands that cover the exceptional Rolling Stones rock ballad ‘Wild Horses,’ by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Please permit our electric folk-chamber ensemble, THROUGH THE TREES, to remedy that here in our neck of the World-Wide Woods, with a fresh version and companion music video featuring some very special guest trees. (Click video above to view or watch it at the Trees YouTube channel.)

‘Wild Horses’ comes from the Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers and was ranked number 334 in Rolling Stone magazine’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time,’ and then leapt to 193 in a 2021 update, according to the tune’s Wikipedia page. Interestingly, given the final tune’s lyrics about what sounds like a very complicated relationship, its melody began life as a lullaby that Keith Richards was writing for his newborn son, while experimenting with open tunings on a 12-string guitar.

“If there is a classic way of Mick and me working together this is it,” Richards later said of the song. “I had the riff and chorus line, Mick got stuck into the verses. Just like ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Wild Horses’ was about the usual thing of not wanting to be on the road, being a million miles from where you want to be.”

Upon its release, Record World magazine proclaimed of ‘Wild Horses’ that “this beautiful stylistic shift of gears will go directly to top.” It got pretty close. Released as a single in June 1971, it reached number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

THE STONES RECORDED their version over three days in December 1969, at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. THROUGH THE TREES recorded ours in a single live take (after many dry runs, of course) at Hear! Here! Studios in Saint Albans, West Virginia, which studio maestro Logan Gambill then mixed and mastered. In addition to The Trees core ensemble—Ray Garnett on viola, Jim Probst on lap dulcimer and Douglas John Imbrogno on lead vocals and guitar—the song features some lithe and fabulous harmony vocals by Anne Melton and a sinuous harmonica line and solo by Ron Sowell, leader of the Mountain Stage band and a long-time accomplished singer-songwriter.

Given that Ray is now studying viola at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va., and Anne is training in the Virginia hills to be a wilderness shaman for young people, as well as an outdoor first responder, getting these two wildly talented twenty-somethings back into the same city to record us all playing ‘Wild Horses’ for the purposes of a music video, proved too quixotic. Instead, I was lucky to have enough still photography from the studio recording session and from all of us playing out at other shows, to go a different direction as you’ll see in the video. See the credits below for more on the song and let us know what you think. Feel free to pass the link on to other folk who might like to take a ride on this fresh serving of ‘Wild Horses.’

‘WILD HORSES’ by THROUGH THE TREES

RECORDED LIVE by THROUGH THE TREES On Dec. 27, 2025, at ‘Hear! Here! Studios’ in Saint Albans, W.Va., and mixed & mastered by Logan Gambill.

LEAD VOCALS & GUITAR | Douglas John Imbrogno
GUEST HARMONY VOCALS | Anne Melton
VIOLA | Ray Garnett
LAP DULCIMER | Jim Probst
GUEST HARMONICA | Ron Sowell

IMAGERY | Live horse footage from MotionArray.com licensed footage
PHOTOGRAPHY | Artified photos of band and guests artists are from ‘Wild Horses’ recording session at Hear! Here Studios and live concerts. PHOTO CREDITS: Logan Gambill; Jozlend Tucker; Douglas John Imbrogno; and Randy Melton.
VIDEO PRODUCTION | By AmpMediaProject.com & Douglas John Imbrogno

OFFICIAL BAND WEBSITE | ThroughtheTreesgroup.com
TREES YOUTUBE CHANNEL | youtube.com/@throughthetreesgroup
TREES on INSTAGRAM | instagram.com/throughthetreesgroup

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VIDEO & AUDIO FOOTAGE: Jozlend Tucker and Randy Melton. VIDEO EDITING: Douglas John Imbrogno and AmpMediaProject. | NOTE: You can also view at YouTube.

IT WAS OUR ENCORE, the last song of the night for THROUGH THE TREES, at its Jan. 10, 2026, ‘Branching Out’ showcase concert in West Virginia’s capital city of Charleston, a show that featured some very special musical guests. The founding member of the TREES — Ray Garnett (viola, violin); Jim Probst (lap dulcimer, cajone); and Douglas John Imbrogno (guitar, lead vocals) — were joined on stage at Unity of Kanawha Valley by guests Colleen Anderson (vocals); Jeff Haught (electric piano); Robin Kessinger (flatpick guitar, Ron Sowell (harmonica, vocals); and Kyle Vass (upright bass, vocals). The video above features an excerpt from the last song of the night, ‘AMAZING GRACE,’ which has had a long and, well, pretty amazing life as a tune that took birth in the Christian tradition yet has had multiple lives from crossing over into the secular world.

TREES lead singer Douglas John Imbrogno mused about the significance and resonance of the song in a post at his web journal, WestVirginiaVille.substack.com. Below is an excerpt from that piece on the roots of a song sung many millions of times a year, according to the biographer of the man who wrote its lyrics, John Newton.

CLICK TO READ ‘AN ‘AMAZING THING’ at WestVirginiaVille.substack.com

An ‘Amazing Grace’ Primer

Source Material from this Wikipedia page.

• “Amazing Grace“ is a Christian hymn written in 1772 and published in 1779 by English Anglican clergyman, abolitionist, and poet John Newton. It is possibly the most sung and most recorded hymn in the world.

• Newton was pressed into service with the Royal Navy, and after leaving the service, he became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel off the coast of County Donegal, Ireland, so severely that he called out to God for mercy. While this moment marked his spiritual conversion, he continued slave trading until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether. Newton began studying Christian theology and later became an abolitionist.

• Ordained in the Church of England in 1764 … he began to write hymns with poet William Cowper. “Amazing Grace” was written to illustrate a sermon on New Year’s Day of 1773. It is unknown if there was any music accompanying the verses; it may have been chanted by the congregation. It debuted in print in 1779 in Newton’s and Cowper’s Olney Hymns, but settled into relative obscurity in England.

• In the United States, “Amazing Grace” became a popular song used by Baptist and Methodist preachers as part of their evangelizing, especially in the American South of the early 19th century. It has been associated with more than 20 melodies. In 1835, American composer William Walker set it to the tune known as “New Britain“ in a shape note format; this is the version most frequently sung today.

• American historian Gilbert Chase writes that [‘Amazing Grace’] is “without a doubt the most famous of all the folk hymns” and Jonathan Aitken, a Newton biographer, estimates that the song is performed about 10 million times annually.It has had particular influence in folk music, and has become an emblematic Black spiritual.

• [The song’s] universal message has been a significant factor in its crossover into secular music. “Amazing Grace” became newly popular during the 1960s revival of American folk music, and it has been recorded thousands of times during and since the 20th century.

VIDEO | Jozlend Tucker
AUDIO | Randy Melton
VIDEO EDITING | Douglas John Imbrogno

YOU CAN ALSO FIND TREES MUSIC & NEWS AT:

YOUTUBE CHANNEL: youtube.com/@throughthetreesgroup
……………..
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/throughthetreesgroup

VIDEO | Jozlend Tucker
AUDIO | Randy Melton
VIDEO EDITING | Douglas John Imbrogno

VIDEO | Jozlend Tucker
AUDIO | Randy Melton
VIDEO EDITING | Douglas John Imbrogno

YOU CAN ALSO FIND TREES MUSIC & NEWS AT:

YOUTUBE CHANNEL: youtube.com/@throughthetreesgroup
……………..
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/throughthetreesgroup

As the Wikipedia page for ‘Motherless Child’ notes:

The song is an expression of pain and despair as the singer compares their hopelessness to that of a child who has been torn from its parents. Under one interpretation, the repetition of the word “sometimes” offers a measure of hope, as it suggests that at least “sometimes” the singer does not feel like a motherless child.

“I first wrote and added my contemporary lyrics to ‘Motherless Child’ in the first Trump administration, angered and moved by images of young people in detention centers, ripped and separated from their parents,” notes Imbrogno. “Of course, everything has gotten far worse in 2025 with the wannabe-autocracy of Trump 2.0. He has super-sized the repression with the injection of more than a billion dollars for his personal junta security force, via the many violent, roving bands of free-range ICE bullies, overseen by Donald’s ready-for-her-closeup factotum Kristi Noem.”

As the singer and writer’s recent ‘Transcontinental Impressions’ essay in his web journal WestVirginiaVille notes: ‘Here’s a not-so-fun fact: ICE’s billion-dollar budget is now so large it is ‘bigger than most of the world’s militaries.’

“You do what you can in resisting such awfulness,” he continues. “Protest songs of objection, solidarity, and raising awareness have always been a small, yet significant part of any movement of resistance.”

NOTES: (1) The live version of the song in the Empty Glass video above differs slightly in some of the singer’s phrasings from the May 24, 2025-dated song-sheet below. (2) Any native and/or superior speakers of Spanish are welcome to suggest a more colloquial take of Doug’s translation into Spanish of the refrain seen below. (3) Finally, THROUGH the TREES sends a thousand thanks to Jozlend Tucker for filming this performance and sharing the footage, which now includes added cuts and transitions. We’d thought our performance lost in the tides of time!

_/\_

P.S. | Hear the Trees ‘Branch Out’ on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026

Hear THROUGH the TREES perform ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Mother Child’ live, along with many other tunes, as the electric, eclectic folk-chamber ensemble hosts the evening concert ‘BRANCHING OUT,’ from 7 to 9 p.m., SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2026, in the UNITY of KANAWHA VALLEY upstairs sanctuary, 804 Myrtle Road, Charleston, W.Va., 25314. The concert features ensemble founding members Ray Garnett, Jim Probst, and Douglas John Imbrogno, plus special guest appearances by Ron Sowell, Robin Kessinger, Kyle Vass, and Jeff Haught.

ADMISSION IS BY DONATIONS AT THE DOOR. Support live performance and local musicians! HEAR MORE MUSIC AT: throughthetreesgroup.com

In case you didn’t know, our eclectic, electric folk-chamber ensemble THROUGH the TREES now has a dedicated YouTube music and music-video channel. Check it out and free subscribe at: www.youtube.com/@THROUGHtheTREESgroup

The improv features RAY GARNETT on viola; DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO on classical guitar; and JIM PROBST on lap dulcimer. You can also hear it on Youtube at this link. And, no, we most certainly did not intend the Youtube upload to run at the exact time of 4:20. Some of us don’t celebrate the famous cannabis culture shoutout anymore, yet we offer up “Euphonia” up as the soundtrack to whatever you are doing right now or at 4:20 p.m. or 4:20 a.m. today

HEAR MORE MUSIC and see more music videos by our eclectic, electric folk-chamber ensemble by free subscribing to: THROUGHtheTREESgroup.com

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COMPOSITION & LAP DULCIMER: Jim Probst
VIOLA: Ray Garnett
RECORDING: THROUGH the TREES original instrumental, recorded at HEAR! HERE! Studios, Saint Albans, West Virginia | January 2025
VIDEO: Production & Original Footage by Douglas John Imbrogno
MORE MUSIC & VIDEOS: THROUGHtheTREESgroup.com

HERE IS WHAT Jim Probst, a THROUGH the TREES founding member, has to say about his original composition heard in the music video above:

“For me, the first few notes point a song in a particular direction. Attempts to stray from the path just don’t work and force you to find your way back again. Once completed, I found this piece to be melancholic, celebratory, and hopeful and a title came into view. ‘Day After Tomorrow (I Hope You’re Still Here).’”

HEAR AN EXQUISITE 2-minute excerpt (CLICK VIDEO ABOVE) from a sweet and soaring Jim Probst instrumental on lap dulcimer titled “Day After Tomorrow,” performed with Ray Garnett on viola. He and Ray played this lovely piece during a THROUGH the TREES showcase at a first-rate night of art, photography, poetry, and music at the July 11, 2025, debut of the exhibit 'BLOOMING' at the The Dream Bean in the Mercer Street Grassroots District in Princeton, West Virginia.

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THE DREAM BEAN IS A SWEET SPACE. You enter off Mercer Street into a small coffeeshop in the outer room and continue into a large performance and exhibition room with a small stage in a back corner. The performance space is that nirvana sought by all serious musicians who play nuanced live music, from quiet to rocking. A listening room. We three Trees were coming off a lousy experience at a recent open-air event in a city elsewhere in West Virginia. There was no soundboard and most of audience directed their attention everywhere but to our playing. (Except for the clapping of a spousal unit and her best friend—always get at least one clapper to come!) Besides which, most of those in front of us were vendors awaiting customers, who showed up in listless numbers and also barely tuned into our tuneage.

So, to have an actual listening audience at the Dream Bean—the room filled up with more folks after the early numbers seen in the clip above—was restorative. Via his iPad Millenium Falcon command module at the back of the room, Robert Blankenship (aka ‘The Wizard of Mercer Street’) dialed in such a crisp, balanced, welcoming sound. But, then, he’s a recording engineer of some achievement, plus an accomplished musician in the world beat band Option 22. (And the only musician I know in Appalachia with serious chops on the didgeridoo.)

Lori McKinney, lead vocalist and muse for Option 22, hosted the evening’s opening of 'BLOOMING.’ She and Robert have been instrumental in the creative, artistic, and entrepreneurial revival along Mercer Street in Princeton in the past decade, in an area now dubbed the Mercer Street Grassroots District.

THE NIGHT ALSO INCLUDED live painting by Leah Towler, a West Virginia-based artist who began the evening with a blank canvas and walked away with the finished work seen below. (Note her working at the back of the room in the video clip above.) Since Leah once live painted during a performance by my son, Lucas Imbrogno, at Lori and Robert’s Culturefest World Music and Arts Festival—he’s an electronic music composer, DJ and performer who goes by Lucas the Flow—she now earns a Dad-and-Son live painting blue ribbon from my family.

UPCOMING THROUGH the TREES shows

AUGUST 9, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.:

The Big Ugly Community Center will mark its 30th anniversary with a wide-ranging celebration on Saturday, Aug. 9, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the center at 15 Rosewood Road in Harts, West Virginia. Among the events will be a live taping of the Wallace Horn Friendly Neighbor Show and among the musical acts to be recored live that day is THROUGH the TREES. The radio show has been continuously broadcast on West Virginia airwaves since 1967. As the show’s Facebook page notes, its mission is to present: ‘West Virginia music by folks coming together lifting up West Virginia, featuring West Virginia artists.’ The program has a cool backstory, as noted in the excerpt below from a Goldenseal magazine profile of Wallace Horn while he was still alive.
MORE INFO: Here’s the invite page for the event. And if you’re amused by and wonder how Big Ugly got its name—which has inspired a decades-long skein of jokes and puns—click this link.

AUGUST 30, 7 to 10 p.m.:

THROUGH the TREES is delighted to be opening for The Ron Sowell Band on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, at Pumzi’s, 813 Hunt Avenue, on the West Side of Charleston, West Virginia. This is another wonderful listening room space—keep them coming, Universe—launched by singer-songwriter Sean Richardson and crew, which they describe as “a sober-curious, all-ages space.”
MORE INFO: Pumzi’s Facebook page. | Pumzi’s Instagram.

P.S.

SPEAKING OF RON SOWELL, the singer-songwriter extraordinaire and leader of the Mountain Stage house band is producing and performing on a THROUGH the TREES cover of Woody Guthrie great song, “Deportee,” a process now underway in Logan Gambill’s Hear! Here! Studios in Saint Albans, West Virginia.. View a short video montage of the band (BELOW) aying down some initial tracks.

Woody’s tune, alas, is as timely as ever more than 75 years after its initial creation in 1948, as the current out-of-control regime in Washington. D.C., stokes racial aniumus and rabid hatefulness from sea to shining sea. Jim Probst and I have made use of our up-to-date artistic licenses, adding a couple contemporary-facing lyrics to the Trees version of the song. Stay tuned for the final version, to be released as both a single and a music video, by free subscribng below.

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‘Deportee’ first saw life in 1948 as ‘Plane Wreck at Los Gatos’ (it is known by both names), and which Guthrie first wrote as a poem he chanted to music. A song version by Pete Seeger popularized Guthrie’s creative and maybe seriously pissed off, yet deeply empathic, response to a news account of a terrible plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon in California. A Jan. 28, 1948, New York Times story where the performer apparently learned of the crash listed the names of four dead white Americans, yet as to the deaths, as well, of 28 immigrants on the plane being shipped back to Mexico the story lumped them together namelessly as ‘deportees.’

We will have more to say about this significant piece of impassionaed creativity once THROUGH the TREES has its own interpretation to share in music video form on this site. The Trees version includes a fresh set of timely new quatrains added at the end by Jim and Doug. FREE SUBSCRIBE for an email heads up to know when the music video goes live.

Suffice it to say that more than 75 years after Guthrie’s creative op-ed against the dehumanization of immigrant workers, things appear just as bad, if not far worse. ‘Deportee’ feels like headline news in the increasingly dystopian birthing of a wannabe empathy-free America sought by Donald Trump and his eager, morality-free minions. We feel glad and blessed—we Trees, friends, and fellow travelers—to be able to respond harmonically to the news of the day in 2025, channeling and augmenting the inspiring, fearless spirits of folks like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Keep listening.

THE TREES at THE DREAM BEAN

You can listen to THROUGH the TREES live when we perform from 6 to 9 p.m., Friday, July 11, in the fabulous listening room space at the back of The Dream Bean coffeeshop at 860 Mercer St, Princeton, WV, 24740. We are featured as part of an evening of art and live music dubbed ‘BLOOMING,’ brought to you by the RiffRaff Arts Collective and Dream Bean. Click the link for more details.

‘Bob Dylan's songs are rooted in American folk music traditions and are influenced by the poets of modernism and the beatnik movement. Early on, Dylan's lyrics incorporated social struggles and political protest. Love and religion are other important themes in his songs. His writing is often characterized by refined rhymes and it paints surprising, sometimes surreal imagery ...’

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I cite these encomiums for Dylan’s legendary and influential career to make a point about the THROUGH the TREES cover (above) of ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere.’ We all have favorites Dylan lines. What’s yours? (Put them in the comments below.) Mine is: ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,’ from Dylan’s 1967 song "Subterranean Homesick Blues.’ Borrowing from the line, a far-left Marxist faction of Students for a Democratic Society took as their name ‘The Weathermen’ (which came to be known officially as The Weather Underground Organization), and they were intent on blowing things up and overthrowing the U.S. government. That didn’t quite work out. (And here, all they needed were two dorks named Donald and Elon.) Yet it goes to show you how back in the day—and to this day—how so many folks train a keen ear on what Dylan has had to say. Even bombthrowers. (For the deepest of dives into a single Dylan lyric, check out the following essay from “The Dylan Review,’ titled ‘Bob Dylan and the Weatherman Paradox.’ Being as, you know, ‘a forum for rigorous intellectual and creative exploration of Bob Dylan’s art.’)

That gets me to my roundabout point concerning ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere.’ This is a song with a goofy, often surreal set of lyrics. They are not at all what you might think that a weighty Nobel Prize-winning author might be chewing over. A Wikipedia page about the song notes that it was written in 1967 in Woodstock, New York, during Dylan’s ‘self-imposed exile from public appearances following his July 29, 1966 motorcycle accident.’ As the page notes, almost as if trying to parse the tune for sense, it features lyrics ‘that allude to the singer waiting for his bride to arrive and, possibly, a final premarital fling.^’ Author and Dylanologist Clinton Heylin calls it "one of those songs where Dylan never quite settled on a single set of lyrics."

Different iterations feature a flow of absurdist lyrics. Although he recorded it initially in 1967, he didn’t release an official version until 1971's ‘Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II’ album. By then, he had tinkered with the original lyrics from the initial ‘Basement Tapes’ version which THOUGH the TREES covers, adding the lines: "Buy me some rings and a gun that sings/A flute that toots and a bee that stings/ A sky that cries and a bird that flies/ A fish that walks and a dog that talks." The Dylanologist author above describes such couplets as "riddles, wisely expounded.” Meh. I prefer to think of them as Dylan goofing around and having fun. Even a Nobel laureate deserves a chance to let his hair down—along with his deep allusions and cosmic significance— and just be a little silly, namechecking, for example, Ghengis Kahn and his sheep-distribution issues. (SEE FULL LYRICS BELOW)

As the official TREES singer of this song, I can attest to how fun it is to sing. If you have ever been blessed with being on the back of a loping, cantering horse—a delightful experience, indeed—that is what it feels like to ride this song, from start to finish, with a killer band. ~ Douglas John Imbrogno

‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere’ by Bob Dylan

Clouds so swift, rain won’t lift
Gate won’t close, the railing’s froze
Get your mind off-a wintertime
You ain’t goin' no-where

CHORUS | Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day my bride’s gonna come
Oh-wee, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

I don’t care how many letters they sent
Morning came and morning went
Pick up your money and pack up your tent
You ain’t going nowhere

CHORUS | Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day my bride’s gonna come
Oh-wee, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

Buy me a flute and a gun that shoots
Tailgates and substitutes
Strap yourself to the tree with roots
You ain’t going nowhere

CHORUS | Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day my bride’s gonna come
Oh-wee, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

Genghis Khan, he could not keep
All his kings supplied with sheep
We’ll climb that hill no matter how steep
When we get up to it

CHORUS | Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day my bride’s gonna come
Oh-wee, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

MORE MUSIC & VIDEOS

MUSIC VIDEO | A rip-roaring interpretation by THROUGH the TREES of the classic tune 'Shady Grove' | april25.2025

MUSIC VIDEO | A soothing duet between Jim Probst and Ray Garnett, evoking the timeless calm of spending quality time with a creek. | may13.2025

MUSIC VIDEO | A THROUGH the TREES interpretation of a classic tune from the Americas, of a love affair between a wandering trapper and a native woman.

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“Creekside doesn’t have much of a story to tell. I live next to a flowing creek. The song was written sitting on my deck next to the creek. I hope it evokes a sense of being next to that creek for the listener.”

For visual interest, we’ve added more than a few creeks and streams for your delectation, as the video’s still-imagery pans through woods and woodlands and this quite gorgeous song unfolds, performed by Jim on lap dulcimer and Ray Garnett on viola.

‘CREEKSIDE’ by Jim Probst

JIM PROBST: Lap dulcimer
RAY GARNETT: Viola
RECORDING and MIXING: Recorded live by Logan Gambill, at Hear! Here! Studios, in St. Albans, West Virginia, on January 27, 2025

RELATED

INSTRUMENTAL: 'Casa Rubio': A duet between Jim Probst and Ray Garnett born of pelicans, stormy seas, and the calm that finally comes. | april26.2025

NOTE:  I play my songs for Ray Garnett and he adds to them as he sees fit. He is an amazing musician to play with and I don’t attempt to dictate what he brings to the tunes. I love what he brings to the mix. 

‘CASA RUBIO’ by Jim Probst

JIM PROBST: Lap dulcimer
RAY GARNETT: Viola
RECORDING and MIXING: Recorded live by Logan Gambill, at Hear! Here! Studios, in St. Albans, West Virginia, on January 27, 2025

'SHADY GROVE' | Recorded March 29, 2025 in St. Albans, West Virginia

RAY GARNETT: Violin
JIM PROBST: Lap dulcimer
DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO: Vocals and acoustic guitar
………….
PERFORMANCE FOOTAGE: Logan Gambill
VIDEO PRODUCTION: Douglas John Imbrogno

A ‘SHADY’ LYRICAL EXPLOSION

If you sang on stage all the performed or published variations of the lyrics to “Shady Grove, “ you would be at it a looooooong time. As this Wikipedia page notes:

"Shady Grove" is a traditional Appalachian folk song, believed to have originated in eastern Kentucky around the beginning the 20th century. The song was popular among old-time musicians of the Cumberlands before being widely adopted in the bluegrass repertoire.^. Many variants of "Shady Grove" exist (up to 300 stanzas by the early 21st century) ...^”

So, any performer or band wishing to cover the song has a smorgasbord of lyrics from which to choose. Being the quatrain-picker for this TREES cover, I picked the ones that sounded like colorful paragraphs from a short story or are just plain fun to sing.

I must also lift up for your consideration as you listen: Ray Garnett’s muscular, yet nuanced interpretation o f 'Shady Grove’ is a master class in ‘folk chamber’ violin and a tour-de-force journey through multiple genres and timbres. Ray quotes and cross-references styles ranging from classical to Celtic to old-time, to a kind of high-intensity, violin-version of Django Reinhardt’s unconventional, bohemian guitar phrasings.

In creating this placeholder music video (we’d love to craft a storytelling short film to go with our ‘Shady Grove’, if a sugar-daddy or momma arts patron might like to step up), I have listened to the song umpteen times. I remain delighted by Logan’s crystalline recording and mix. And also by—if I do say so, myself—the interplay and sum total of Ray’s violin, Jim Probst’s finger-dancing dulcimer, and my own contributions in unison with them. A musical mentor of mine remarked at how surprised he was by the breadth and depth of sound produced by just three instruments and one voice.

Plus—and this is ever key—one great old song.

The Big Ugly Community Center will mark its 30th anniversary with a wide-ranging celebration on Saturday, Aug. 9, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the center at 15 Rosewood Road in Harts, West Virginia. Among the events will be a live taping of the Wallace Horn Friendly Neighbor Show and among the musical acts to be recored live that day is THROUGH the TREES. The radio show has been continuously broadcast on West Virginia airwaves since 1967. As the show’s Facebook page notes, its mission is to present: ‘West Virginia music by folks coming together lifting up West Virginia, featuring West Virginia artists.’ The program has a cool backstory, as noted in the excerpt below from a Goldenseal magazine profile of Wallace Horn while he was still alive.
MORE INFO: Here’s the invite page for the event. And if you’re amused by and wonder how Big Ugly got its name—which has inspired a decades-long skein of jokes and puns—click this link.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 7 to 10 p.m.: PUMZI’S in Charleston, WV

THROUGH the TREES is delighted to be opening for The Ron Sowell Band on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, at Pumzi’s, 813 Hunt Avenue, on the West Side of Charleston, West Virginia. This is another wonderful listening room space—keep them coming, Universe—launched by singer-songwriter Sean Richardson and crew, which they describe as “a sober-curious, all-ages space.”
MORE INFO: Pumzi’s Facebook page. | Pumzi’s Instagram.

FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2025: Huntington Art Walk

DETAILS: THROUGH the TREES brings its electrified folk-chamber sound to the ArtWalk in Huntington, West Virginia, from 5 to 8 p.m., FRIDAY, JUNE 20. We will perform in the gazebo at Heritage Station at 210 Eleventh St., right across from the floodwall and Ohio River and within sight of the great black parked locomotive that recalls Huntington’s olden days as an end-of-the-line railroad burg. Come on out an take a listen and then a stroll to other spots of arts, culture and music along the Art Walk.

SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2025: Coal River Songwriters Festival

DETAILS: THROUGH the TREES will perform two original songs as part of a packed lineup at the closing concert of the 3rd Annual Coal River Songwriters’ Festival, which starts 7 p.m., Saturday May 3, 2025, , on the Alban Theater stage at the Alban Arts Center at 65 Olde Main Plaza, Saint Albans, WV.

Ray Garnett is a wide-ranging viola and violin player, who effortlessly switches among styles and genres in live performance and in the studio, gliding from classical to Celtic, old-time to Old-World riffs. He began his multi-instrumental ways with alto saxophone at age 12 and says: “I switched to my beloved viola when I was fourteen, never looking back.” In the classical realm, his favorite composers are Bach and Schubert. Expect to hear him on keyboards while adding his singing voice to future Trees shows and recordings. He is a native of Charleston, W.Va., and a 2017 Capital High School graduate. In Fall 2025, he will enter the bachelor’s program in viola at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va.

DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO is a lifelong storyteller in words, song, pictures, and moving imagery. He worked 30 years as an editor, feature writer, and video producer for The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia and his prose, poetry, songs, videos, and documentaries have been published, heard, and screened widely. Listen to his first album of singer-songwriter music and original tunes, interpreted by a host of West Virginia’s finest musicians, on Apple Music and Spotify, titled ‘Saint Stephen’s Dream’ by garagecow ensemble. He released a second album some years ago, “You Can’t Be Lost,” with his former band The BrotherSisters. He did most of his growing up in Columbus and Cincinnati Ohio, arriving in West Virginia in his early 20s as a cub reporter and as they say in the state: “I got here as soon as I could.”

JIM PROBST is a semi-retired furniture maker and furniture designer with a career spanning 45 years. He lives in rural Lincoln County, West Virginia, where he spends his time gardening; taking care of his deeply wooded property; spending time with his family; and engaged in building one project or another. Recently completed projects have included: an electric solid-body dulcimer; a homemade version of a cajón, the box-shaped Peruvian percussion instrument; and a teardrop camper (for trips around the countryside—a different kind of playing around). Jim has played the dulcimer for decades, but has doubled down into serious playing, performing out, and recording in recent years, including his own original compositions. He also literally ‘sits in’ on occasional percussion atop that cajón he concocted. Jim is a transplant from Indiana and arrived with the first wave of back-to-the-landers to West Virginia in the 1970s.

"Oh Shenandoah" (as this link notes) has also been called “Across the Wide Missouri," "Rolling River,” and “World of Misery" and is a traditional folk tune “sung in the Americas of uncertain origin, dating to the early 19th century.”:

The song "Shenandoah" appears to have originated with American and Canadian voyageurs or fur traders traveling down the Missouri River in canoes and has developed several different sets of lyrics. Some lyrics refer to the Oneida chief Shenandoah and a canoe-going trader who wants to marry his daughter. By the mid 1800s versions of the song had become a sea shanty heard or sung by sailors in various parts of the world … "Shanadore" was printed as part of William L. Alden's article "Sailor Songs" in the July 1882 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.

Interestingly (to us song-sourcing nerds, anyway) in a 1930s letter to a British newspaper, a former sailor who worked aboard clipper ships between Australia and Great Britain in the 1880s said he thought the song ‘had originated as an African American spiritual which developed into a work song.’

As ever with old songs, there are multiple variations in lyrics. So, you often must choose the variations that work for your interpretation of a tune. I had long thought the Shenandoah River was at the heart of this tune (reflected in the map and imagery I used in the video). But the Missouri River, too, vies for that starring role. And in the quickie music-video I threw together above to share our freshly recorded take, I nod to the tradition that the song recollects a likely doomed love affair between a ‘voyageur’ (what a fine word) and native American Indian lover. As the link above notes, the life of such traders and voyagers into native lands was an arduous, lonely one. I imagine that finding and losing a true love out in the rolling hills and along the tumbling riverways accounts for the keening and longing which, to my ear, courses through '‘Oh, Shenandoah.’ And here is a grace note to that long-ago era in the Americas:

“The canoe-going fur-trading voyageurs were great singers, and songs were an important part of their culture.”

Just as songs remain to this day. Important to my, to our, to your and to anyone’s culture, whichever you may inhabit. Researching this tune, too, opens it out into some welcome cross-cultural currents and encounters between different peoples, from the world’s riverways to its ocean waves. One might long, also, to hear the other side of this relationship turned into song, as well. ~ Douglas John Imbrogno

‘OH, SHENADOAH’ Music Vdeo by THROUGH the TREES| Spring 2025

JIM PROBST: Lap Dulcimer
RAY GARNETT: Viola
DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO: Vocals and acoustic guitar

BAND FOOTAGE: Logan Gambill
VIDEO PRODUCTION: Douglas John Imbrogno
STILL IMAGERY of SHENANDOAH RIVER: southernspaces.org/2004/shenandoah-valley

Greetings and welcome to the official website of THROUGH the TREES, a folk-chamber music group based in West Virginia. Our core trio features Jim Probst on multifingered lap dulcimer; Ray Garnett on stratospheric viola and violin; and Douglas John Imbrogno on vocals and a plugged-in, jacked-up Guild classical guitar. We perform what we call ‘folk chamber music,’ interpreting and re-interpreting songs old and new, plus some of our own originals.

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