A roadtrip scrapbook in search of some light, from willowy mountains & evangelical buses, to midnight abstractions & Heather Hannah kicking it live at the Purple Fiddle. | july30.2025
by DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO | westvirginiaville.substack.com | july 30, 2025
How do you start a post ranging from sweeping daytime mountainscapes and arty-farty midnight abstractions, to an encounter with a rattletrap religious schoolbus and clips of a killer band ripping it up in Thomas, W.Va.?
I mean to say: How do I profess to share aesthetic offerings and artful encounters when a broken man and his succubus supplicants continue to break America in fresh, inventive ways daily? As someone who routinely pitches his photography, documentaries, music, and other work into public spaces, I think about this question a lot. And often here in America, Version 2025, I am flummoxed into inaction or become a tepid puddle of despair, feeling my tiny megaphone is not up to the moment.
Yet it must be our task in these dismal days of the Trump Ascendancy to figure out what we do best and to bring that to the fight, to the table, to the barricades. To the moment. Light displaces darkness, after all. And joy, creativity, music, and art are also part of the resistance to the trolls, orcs, and wannabe Nazifiers now openly roaming the country, baying for iron and blood.
LIGHT SHOW No. 1: The View from on High. | Tucker County, W.Va. | Click to enlarge.
LIGHT OUT FOR THE COUNTRY’ | Some views from Fred Long Centennial Park in Tucker County, W.Va. | westvirginiaville.substack.com | july2025
A key task in an America gone off the rails is to keep our wits, morals, and equilibrium about us so we can help get it back on track. It is worth reflecting on Hemingway’s line from “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (below) since it underlines how the many who still rally round Trump have discovered who they really are. Or, maybe, who they’re willing to become in their ravenous eagerness to draw close to the atomic glow of raw power:
“There are many who do not know they are fascists, but will find it out when the time comes.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
I don’t mean just the utterly contemptible types like mealy little Marco Rubio or that repugnant heir of Rasputin and Nosferatu named Stephen Miller. I mean those with lesser perches more than willing to turn into ghoulish gulag tourists, such as West Virginia’s Congressional reps Carol Miller and that latest detestable issuance of the Moore-Capito lineage, Riley Moore.
I also don’t mean to consign to perdition all who voted for Trump or who didn’t vote at all and, thus, helped to bring him back. If it is still possible to reclaim Constitutional America (it feels a little touch-and-go, right?) we need some of the nearly 90 million of you who couldn’t be bothered to vote to get back in the game. (‘How you like him now?’) We also need a chunk of hangers-on in Trump-loving families, communities, and churches—people disturbed by the clanging four-alarm fires and big hurts raging across the land and who are now willing to quietly vote otherwise in full-on objection.
So, thank you for coming to my talk today! Now, can I show you my photos of a surprise art-show featuring frazzled yellow paint and avante-garde text mounted on a retired, religious school bus down a West Virginia backroad?
LIGHT SHOW No. 2: Final Resting Place. | Along Douglas Road in Tucker County, W.Va. | Click to enlarge.
‘BUSCAPADE’ | Four variations on an evangelical schoolbus now put out to pasture. | Near Thomas, W.Va. | westvirginiaville.substack.com photo | july2025 | CLICK TO ENLARGE
So, a confession. In past decades, I spent maybe $15,000 on high-end cameras, trying to up my shooter game while dreaming of joining that holy pantheon signified by the word ‘photographer.’ It was all for naught since these too-sophisticated devices befuddled me into ‘I need a nap …’ submission. The rise of smart phones and their easy-peasy clicks and photo settings hasn’t yet let me christen myself a photographer, but I will accept the sobriquet of ‘iPhoneographer.’
I especially enjoy seeing what my iPhone produces under challenging lighting situations. Sometimes it’s drek. Yet sometimes what results is surprising and evocative, in the way that abstract art can cause you to pause and ponder: ‘What’s up with that?’ (Your mileage may vary if your drek tolerance is set way low.) Below are four shots taken while standing in blessed solitude near midnight this past Sunday, out at a favorite West Virginia scenic overlook in the midst of the Mount Storm wind farm range. The shot with red dots marks some wind turbines in the far distance, while the centipedal shapes framed in orange are also windmills. The white light saber and milky pools are vehicles coming and going in their drivers’ nighttime lives.
LIGHT SHOW No. 3: Light in the Darkness. | Tucker County, W.Va., scenic overlook. | Click to enlarge.
‘LIGHT in the DARKNESS’ | A scenic overlook after hours in Tucker County, W.Va. | westvirginiaville.substack.com photos | july2025 | CLICK TO ENLARGE
If you spend any time lounging around Thomas, W.Va., especially after the drive-by tourist deluge dwindles of folks come to sample the tiny mountain town’s art/funky vibe, you will likely encounter Heather Hannah’s name. I witnessed a set by the beloved performer years ago at one of the town’s back-of-Front-Street, non-tourist happenings that are a real gift to experience. I was taken by her smoky, fierce, and yet sweet Appalachian gothic style, which also channels the kick-ass nutritiousness of Dolly Parton’s fearless songwriting and twang of truth.
‘NOTED.’ | Heather Hannah and bass player Kyle Vass look this way on the Purple Fiddle stage. | westvirginiaville.substack.com photo | Thomas, W.Va. | july2025
I was pleased to be passing through the area when a new band configuration helmed by Hannah took to the esteemed Purple Fiddle stage this past Sunday. This tasteful, suave troupe also features Rebecca Wudarski on drums and guitar; Ben Denny on banjo and mandolin, and Kyle Vass on upright and electric bass and guitar. I’d tell you the name of the band, but it doesn’t have one yet.
All I will say is this—and please understand I don’t feel I am overstating the case one iota. West Virginia is usually and unfairly sneered at nationally on so many particulars regarding it culture and people. Yet at this moment in the space-time continuum of American music, two of its most interesting singer-songwriters and performers—Sierra Ferrell and Tyler Childers—hail from this Appalachian region, drawing succulent songs from time spent in these old, worn hills. Heather Hannah and her Band With No Name (Yet), deserves to be the third leg of an Appalachian musical triumvirate, featuring world-class skill, coolness, and songs that tell a story worth hearing.
LIGHT SHOW No. 4: Heather Hannah and friends at the Fiddle. | Thomas, W.Va.
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P.S. Keep the Light On
‘EVENING HAS BROKEN’ | Capon Springs, W.Va. | westvirginiaville.substack.com photo | july2025
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A view of life based in the hills of West Virginia, yet often ranging well beyond its borders in space and in time. | A multimedia web-magazine edited by DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO with guest contributors.
