By Douglas John Imbrogno | WestVirginiaVille | april13.2025 |
Last night’s West Virginia Music Hall of Fame 2025 awards ceremony at the Culture Center in Charleston, WV, was surely the most offbeat musical event in America yesterday, if not perhaps the world. I mean, check this out.
The live music ranged from songs sung live by country hit monster Luke Bryan, dueting with new inductee Jeff Stevens, a West Virginia native and one of America’s most accomplished songwriters (with more than forty No. 1 country hits), who supercharged Bryan’s career after they began to co-write future chart-toppers; and Jeff Tweedy along with the harmonic convergence of his post-Wilco band; plus Ann Magnuson summing up West Virginia’s monster history in her single, “Ghost Cat”; and the hip, distaff musical lineage of the Womack Brothers and Sam Cooke in the form of The Womack Sisters, paying homage to the induction of The Valentinos into the Hall of Fame (formerly the Womack Brothers, from whom sprang the notable career of Bobby Womack); as well as Hall of Fame honoree Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel with its Paw Paw, W.Va., roots (certainly one of the few bands that has charted songs in four separate decades); plus Mason County’s own Lionel Cartwright and the multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien lending voice and instruments to several songs; and West Virginia native and past inductee John “Some Kind of Wonderful” Ellison still torching the mic as an 80-something; plus lots more musicality and fabulosity.
There was also a moving remembrance to the late Daniel Johnston, a new inductee introduced by Tweedy, who was extolled on video by ‘Simpson’s’ creator and Johnston fan Matt Groenig and recalled sweetly by two of his siblings. Johnston is a most unexpected musical figure and artist, whose lifelong wrestling with mental illness was the backdrop to the life of an artist who was sure that he was an artist despite his struggles, yet who wondered if anyone would ever remember him. And they have. The Music Hall of Fame awards also lift up not just front-of-house stars, but those who arrange, compose and record, so among this year’s impressive class of inductees was the multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and composer Cameron LaVelle Mullins.
I don’t have photo since I left my phone in my car, but I must lift up the gorgeous WVMHOF awards and their maker, since he was not noted from the stage. Ever since the Hall of Fame’s founding in 2005, my THROUGH the TREES bandmate Jim Probst has hand-crafted every one of these inductee awards, birthing them from cherry wood and glass (from Amanda’s Glass Art in Kanawha City, W.Va.). They are surely among the most singular pieces of artwork honoring fine artists in any awards shindig anywhere. And bravo to Hall of Fame founder Michael Lipton and crew in appreciation and admiration at the vast complexity of pulling off such a feat. Whomever captained the complex travel arrangements for all these acts and the serpentine stage configurations for all the artists deserves a year of Tudor’s Biscuit World (a West Virginia breakfast institution for you outside-the-staters).
Among the many cool surprises in the 3-hour-and-some-change event — I know the real fear of people leaving at intermissions, but you needed bladder control — was the video cameo by Dolly Parton, speaking in honor of Cam Mullens who did a bunch of arrangements for her music. Watch for the ceremony on WV Public West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Passport, public TV’s streaming service.
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