Words & Images by Douglas John Imbrogno | theSTORYistheTHING.com | sept1.2024
Heading Hellward
Other Worlds
“There is another world, but it is in this one.”
‘KID AT DUSK’ | Barboursville Park Lake, Barboursville WV | ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ Photo Bureau of theSTORYistheTHING.com | august2024
Me & Some Trees
‘Though produced in one soil
and moistened by the same rain,
see how different
are all these plants and trees.’
All of a sudden, I am in a band again. My last membership in the floating, vexing, sometimes deeply satisfying minstrel show that is a band was the The Brother Sisters. We called it quits in Spring 2018 after several years of eclectic quartet concerts. There remains a handful of CDs evidencing our existence — literally, just a handful left of the 100 or so we printed, plus precious few audiovisual clips. At our best, we were a killer three- and four-part harmony folk ensemble.
There remains more evidence of my first go-round in manifesting my tunes with the CD “Saint Stephen’s Dream,” by the ‘garagecow ensemble.’ This wasn’t a band, but an assemblage of some of West Virginia’s finest musicians, including one of its most excellent producers, Bob Webb, whom I hired and called into service to interpret a clutch of my original songs. (The ‘garagecow‘ in the name pays homage to the cow my father’s family kept in their garage as striving immigrants come to America in the 1920s through Ellis Island, arriving in Lorain, Ohio from the Calabrian hillside where my Dad was born.) Hear the album on Spotify, or find it on Apple Music and Amazon in the odd ways of our interconnected world, even for us trifling weekend troubadours in America’s way-the-hell outback.
Earlier this Summer I got invited to join ‘Through the Trees,’ whose sound I ambitiously dub ‘folk chamber music.’ It’s a line borrowed from an old Washington Post review of a seminal band I adored in my 20s called Trapezoid. Our trio features Jim Probst on ethereal, handmade lap dulcimer; Rashawn ‘Ray’ Garnett on stirring violin and viola; and myself on hot-wired Guild classical guitar, keyboard, and vocals. Our emerging mission is to re-imagine and reinvent old standards and new classics, while showcasing the band’s original lyrical and instrumental tunes. Below is a taste from our debut gig August 30, 2024, at Coal River Coffee Company in St. Albans, W.Va., at whose Thursday open mics the three of us came into harmonic convergence. This is our initial take on the Johnny Cash classic “Long Black Veil,” which belongs in ‘The Top 10 Saddest Folk Songs Ever Composed.’
‘LONG BLACK VEIL’ by Through the Trees | Click to listen
Don’t Invite Doom Over For Tea
“One thing you must know about science and technology. No science, no technology, is superior to nature. To assume otherwise is to invite doom.”
~ Abhijit Naskar, ‘Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability’
‘THE ART OF WATER’ | Barboursville Park, Barboursville WV | ‘Stop & Look Down’ Photo Bureau of theSTORYistheTHING.com | august2024
I have not seen a Box Turtle in many a year in my yard or walks in the woods. So, why is it all of a sudden I’ve had close encounters with about ten in the last 30 days? I am a regular turtle rescuer, halting my vehicle to pluck them off West Virginia roads and interstates to ferry them to woodland safety. (While learning along the way not to remove them too far, since they generally live their lives within a half-mile radius of where they were turtle birthed.) Here, by the way, is an account of the very first time I ever met a Box Turtle at about age 9, holding it up for my Mom’s inspection “like the priest holds high the holy Host at Sunday Mass at Holy Spirit Church in Columbus,” a place I did some growing up. In any case, I just learned that turtles like watermelon after casting some chopped up rinds off my deck into our compost rectangle in our sideyard. Who knew?!?
‘TURTLEMELON’ | Click to view
P.S.
“Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame, Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.”
~ Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Sioux (1863-1950)
‘TURTLE TOLL’ | A turtle’s eye view of the woodlands. | Barboursville Park, Barboursville, WV | august2024 | ‘Turtles All the Way Down’ Photo Bureau of theSTORYistheTHING.substack.com
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