THE ART of DREAMING
A few notes from a recent Trees showcase, plus the art of the listening room at the Dream Bean in Princeton, West Virginia. | July 13, 2025
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.
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.
Our first adventure to The Dream Bean, and what a terrific and talented trio we were introduced to! We look forward to more visits there, and to see Through the Trees' talents again in the future out and about in the state.