WestVirginiaVille

In honor of their CD release concert at the Empty Glass, take a listen to the Carpenter Ants version of “He Saved My Soul,” by Claude Jeter of the Swan Silvertones.

I like to start every new year off with a woodland walk. While out in Barboursville Park this Jan. 1, 2012, I was transfixed by the whisper of wind through the trees and as a train whipped by it seemed like a good time for the first video of the year.

Putting up original video on the web is a lesson in humility. You labor for hours, days, fashioning some esoteric, cool, artistic, aesthetic, fabuloso thing, and then a chubby kid acts like a Jedi Knight and gets a quadrillion hits.

West Virginia, for those who haven’t been, is a curious place, full of curious nooks, crannies and people. Here is Part 1 of a survey of some of the more interesting video encounters around the state in 2011.

So, this week a bunch of us headed out to the weekly Thursday night open mic at Boulevard Tavern in downtown Charleston, W.Va., hosted by Lou Argento. Who should show up to play open mic but Santa, armed with a harp.

Davi and Pixie Della Fiamma play with fire. Davi breathes it, Pixie dances with it. This past Saturday night in a backyard in Poca, West Virginia, they put on a fiery show.

The sun’s long gone, it’s dead dark now. Heading east on U.S. Route 60, I look to the left. What is that over there? Lights. Hundreds of small lights. No, thousands of them.

OK, the headline is a bald-faced lie. Dean Martin, Glen Campbell and I have never ever hung out together, at least in person. But actually, we did spend a lot of time together, which is when I fell in love with singing.

A video of a stirring murmuration, a map that shows there are no nuclear warheads in my backyard and why the number 88 is important to Neo-Nazis: Things Learned on the Web last week.

TheWebTheater of WestVirginiaVille.com, presents “Saint Stephen’s Dream: a Space Opera.” Coming Soon To A Computer Near You. Spring, say. Or maybe Summer.

The roadway warriors of PickUp America wrap up their season in Colorado. Davey Rogner updates the group’s legendary trek plus a look-back to their time in West Virginia.

It’s last year’s Milton corn maze but it’s fun to watch a wise-cracking Bill Lynch get confused and a corn maze is a corn maze. This video will give you an idea of what to expect at this year’s maze.

The day every dictator fears. A song for the day after in Libya: “Dictator’s Day” by The Silent Gondoliers, official instrumental band of the Free State of WestVirginiaVille.

My favorite sculpture in all of West Virginia sits outside the Huntington Museum of Art. The slightest breath of wind sends this exquisitely balanced sculpture into motion as seen in a music video for a friend who has moved on unexpectedly.

Roller Derby cuts into Annie Knuckles knitting time, but she’s cool with that. A Q-and-A with the co-captains of the Chemical Valley Roller Girls, whose first home bout takes place Saturday at Charleston Civic Center.

Changes are afoot for Lewisburg-based Jessica Levine, who describes herself as a contemporary Appalachian environmental artist in this ‘Artist at Work’ video profile.

This ‘Jam of the Day’ video from the recently concluded High Land Jam in Elkins, W.Va., is convincing evidence to head that way next summer when the 10th annual jam takes place the last weekend of August 2012.

WestVirginiaVille News received a reassuring phone message from Charleston, W.Va., sculptor P. Joseph Mullins as the region picks up its lawn chairs and recovers from the earthquake that recently rattled Charleston.

Video clips of the Chemical Valley Roller Girls practicing for their first bout in Charleston; Greenbrier County artist Jessica Levine’s multifarious work and Dreama Denver on living with “Gilligan” once he got off that island.