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The Yellow Springs NewsFrom the print archive page • The Yellow Springs News

  • Gaunt Park Pool in Yellow Springs celebrates 70 years
  • Holt hired as new Village planning and zoning admin
  • Yellow Springs to celebrate July 4
  • Roots and Wings youth camp returns to Antioch
  • Summer beats with Tronee Threat and Extraordinary Twins
  • Atop Yellow Springs’ highest point is a little oasis.

    Head over to Gaunt Park on some sweltering day and you’re bound to hear the sounds of summer: a chorus of kiddos squealing in delight to a whole symphony of splashes. Here and there, the tweet of a whistle (“No running!”) and the rattling thwang of a board.

    Such is the music of Gaunt Park Pool — the county’s only public pool — which turns 70 years old this summer.

    In speaking with the News earlier this month, Village Parks and Rec Supervisor Sam Stewart said she and her team of 23 teenage staffers are wading into one of the pool’s busiest seasons in recent memory.

    Barely a month past opening day on Memorial Day, more than 750 passes have been sold, forcing Stewart to frantically make more. 

    “We sold out last year, but definitely not this fast,” Stewart said.

    Several hundred villagers and out-of-towners converged on the Gaunt Park pool on Monday, a sweltering hot Memorial Day. The pool was recently upgraded with $80,000 worth of repairs, according to Village Public Works Director Johnnie Burns. The Yellow Springs pool is now the only operating municipal swimming pool in Greene County. (Photo by Diane Chiddister)

    Several hundred villagers and out-of-towners converged on the Gaunt Park pool on Monday, a sweltering hot Memorial Day in 2018. (News archive photo by Diane Chiddister)

    Owing to the predicted hotter-than-ever days ahead, Stewart said this summer will likely outpace last year’s numbers — an average of 95 visitors a day, with the busiest day bringing in 318 pool-goers.

    “I think these numbers really show that people still value this pool — that it’s only getting to be more important than ever before,” Stewart said. “We get so much positive energy from not just people who live here, but people in other communities.”

    Stewart is especially grateful for Village Council’s support.

    As she noted, Gaunt Park Pool has never been a money-maker for the Village, nor will it likely ever be.

    According to past News reporting, it loses an average of more than $50,000 per year, mostly owing to the ever-rising costs of chemicals — about $1,000 a week to chlorinate the 225,000-gallon big pool and the 2,500-gallon baby pool — as well as staff wages.

    “I don’t think we’re ever going to make any money. This is a labor of love that thankfully so many people see as worth it,” Stewart said.

    Summer-saults: Even though the temperature rose to a lethargy-inducing 96° last Thursday, July 5, jumpers rose to the occasion to show off for the camera at Gaunt Park pool’s deep end. Pool officials cited heavy use during the heat, and a record attendance that Friday. (Photos by Suzanne Ehalt)

    Summer-saults: Jumpers rose to the occasion to show off for the camera at Gaunt Park pool’s deep end in 2012. (News archive photos by Suzanne Szempruch)

    Despite the pool’s annual deficit, Council continues appropriating funds to keep it filled and functional. For 2026, Council built in $147,033 to the general fund for the pool — $77,508 of which cover personnel costs.

    Some of Gaunt Park Pool’s financial losses are incurred charitably: the “Swimming for All” program offers half-price passes to money-strapped Yellow Springs residents.

    “Just come with some paperwork that shows you’re getting some kind of assistance — from the county or any governmental organization — and you’re eligible,” Stewart said. “And it’s not just for families with kids. Seniors are absolutely eligible. Please come swim. We can help you!”

    Ongoing maintenance costs are also no drop in the bucket. Stewart said that a new coat of paint on the pool costs $26,000. Though a $9,000 grant from the Community Foundation helped offset some of that this year, the Village was essentially obligated to cover the rest.

    Greg King, above, appeared to plunge from the heavens into the pool in 2009. (YS News archive photo)

    “There was no way we were going to get this pool open through the Greene County Health Department if we didn’t get a new coat of paint on. It just had to be done,” she said, noting that the last time it had been done was eight years ago — just beyond the expected lifespan of pool paint.

    Stewart also thanked a few others for keeping the pool afloat this year: Dustie Pitstick, of Lucky Bunny Tattoo Club, and Don Beard, of Peach’s Grill, chipped in to cover all the costs of certifying and recertifying the 15 lifeguards for the season.

    One such lifeguard is 16-year-old and rising Yellow Springs junior Matteo Chaiten, who’s returning to his all-seeing chair for the second year.

    “These can be life or death situations,” Chaiten said, adding with a slight sigh of relief that he’s yet to encounter any worst case scenario. “But we try to focus on avoiding them. We make sure people follow the rules — that they don’t do anything stupid.”

    Petra Nieberding, another 16-year-old and upcoming junior, takes her job just as seriously.

    “People need to feel safe, they need to know that someone is able to help them if they need it,” she said. “These rules are here for your safety.”

    Stewart beamed with pride at her lifeguards.

    “My staff know what they’re doing,” she said. “Their job is to make sure people don’t get seriously injured. And that can be stressful.”

    She continued: “That’s maybe one of the biggest struggles of the job — it can be hard to get the respect they’re owed. Being so young, they’re not always listened to. So, they very quickly learn how to be assertive, but professionally, and not being rude.”

    This is the first year since 2016 — when Stewart first started managing the pool on the Village’s behalf — that she’s overseen this many new staffers at once. But she expects that’ll be different next year — “Kids tend to stick around here. It’s a good job,” she said.

    A drawing of potential recreation activities on West South College Street. (YS News archives, 1955)

    A new pool, from the ground up

    In the early 1950s Gaunt Park wasn’t a park at all — it was the town dump.

    Nearly all of the trash from the 3,000-some Yellow Springs residents of those days wound up on those 9.5 acres along West South College Street — the same land that the formerly enslaved entrepreneur Wheeling Gaunt had donated to the Village half a century before.

    But sometime around the end of 1954, quite a few village residents began thinking about a different use for the land.

    Per YS News archives, the Village Planning Commission conducted a villagewide survey to gauge interest in expanding recreation in town. The results couldn’t be ignored: Yellow Springs needed more of it.

    Heeding the call was then-Village Manager Howard Kahoe who spearheaded the efforts to level out the land and install one “hardball” and another softball field. There were other proposals to install tennis courts, enough parking for 160 cars, a volleyball sandpit, a children’s playground and a shuffleboard court.

    Suffice it to say, not all of those ideas manifested, but the “Wheeling Gaunt Recreational Area” still began to take form. 

    Read Viemeister’s vision of a pool at the Wheeling Gaunt Recreation Area. (YS News archives, 1956)

    The biggest priority among the survey’s respondents was the creation of a community pool — one where “all-day, any-day swimming could be provided to all Yellow Springs and Miami Township residents.”

    Taking up that mantle was a local group called the Jaycees, or the JCs for Junior Chamber, a civic group of young to middle-aged local residents and entrepreneurs bent on fostering development. That group committed to fundraising the needed $60,000 to build a 180,000-gallon, “L”-shaped pool.

    From an early 1955 issue of the News: “To raise this sum of such magnitude will require the cooperation and generosity of every business and every citizen … it can be done if there’s will to do it.”

    Was there ever.

    The yearlong pool drive kicked off in early summer with a truly massive parade that wound through the village to build enthusiasm and raise more dollars.

    A massive parade through Yellow Springs in May 1956 raised many thousands of dollars for the construction of the pool. (YS News archives, 1956)


    Music acts in the incredible cavalcade were: the color guard of the Central State ROTC, the Central State band, the Bryan High School band, the elementary school band and the Dixieland Rhythm Kings. Local organizations represented in the march were: Morris Bean Foundry, Vernay Laboratories, DeWine and Hamma, Fels Foundation, Kettering Foundation, the Yellow Springs school board, Antioch College, Village Council members, Community Council representatives and several YS churches.

    “Gaily uniformed Cub  Scouts and Brownies manfully strode to keep up with the larger Boy  Scouts and Girl Scouts, whose steps were paced by a happy but unrehearsed bicycle brigade and a local horse troop.”

    The column was punctuated by a barrage of balloons, Miami Township firetrucks and a jeep-drawn Conestoga wagon from the Antioch School.

    The parade began at the Wheeling Gaunt Recreational Area where, at the top of the hill, there were around a dozen town leaders ready to cut the ribbon on the pool project, say a few words and set the marchers marchi

    “Arthur E. Morgan speaks at the brief meeting Sunday morning that kicked off the local campaign for funds to build a swim pool. On the platform with Mr. Morgan are, left to right, Ben Pinkston, Dr. Buckley S. Rude, Arthur Lithgow, school superintendent R. E. Augspurger, Russell Hay, Village Council President William Beatty, James D. Mitchell, A.C. Hoffman, Village Councilman Ted Hamilton, Mr. Morgan, Kenneth Coffman, Antioch College President Samuel Gould, school board president Bruce McPhaden, Stanley Garn, Village Manager Howard Kahoe, Donald Waetchter, Rev. Edward Miller. (YS News archive photo, 1956)

    Arthur Morgan declared that the building of a new pool would help Yellow Springs become “a good town to live in, a good town to come to, instead of a good town to go away from.”

    Over the course of that year, hundreds of individuals, dozens of businesses, a handful of organizations and even youth-led collections contributed to the pool fund. Farmers donated equipment and tractors to offset costs. By the middle of 1955, village kids had raised more than $150 in pennies. 

    All told, community-driven efforts raised more than $70,000 — enough to build a pool, and dollars that were turned over to Village government to do as such.

    To the dismay of some eager swimmers, the project took longer than expected to complete. It wasn’t ready by the end of the summer of 1955. The delay did, however, give villagers more time to debate — or bicker, as some News letter-writers characterized — about pool rules, policies and hours.

    Contractors worked swiftly in the early months of the year to get the pool ready for the first-ever swim at Gaunt Park, which happened en masse one sunny day in late June. The street pictured running left to right behind the pool is West South College Street. (YS News archives, 1956)


    Unlike elsewhere in the country at that time, furrow-browed villagers weren’t concerned about race or any matter discriminatory, but when to restrict hours to adults only, if a family pass could cover five children or if $1.50 per day was too much for a pass.

    Eventually, those issues were smoothed out — the pool opened to great fanfare at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 30, 1956.

    The News reported that 50 adults and children dove en masse into the Gaunt Park Pool to initiate a full day of free swimming. By 8 p.m. that day, it had been enjoyed by 828 swimmers. In less than a week, 2,500 folks had taken a dip.

    About a decade before pools throughout the country became a desegregation flashpoint in the Civil Rights movement, Black and white children regularly splashed and played together in the Gaunt Park Pool, which this year turns 70 years old. Building the pool was a years-long community-led effort — one that’s still appreciated today. (YS News archive, 1956)

    More from the News about the first pool-goers:

    “Rikky Appleberry, off Hyde Road, arrived at 9:15 a.m., and despite his lack of eye witnesses, maintains that he was the first in the pool.

    “A more valid record, 55 high dives was set by Freddy Marba, 309 E. Whiteman St., who summed up his opinions of the pool with ‘this is what the town’s been needing for a long time.’

    “The wading pool was not so eagerly filled by uncertain tots unable to believe it was not a  bath. Soon, however, they were splashing with the best of them.”

    To learn more about Gaunt Park Pool — its hours of operation, rules and rates — go to http://www.yellowsprings.gov or call 937-319-1440. The pool is located at 500 W. South College St.

    It’s been about a month since the Village of Yellow Springs welcomed its newest staffer — Nía Holt has stepped in as the new planning and zoning administrator.

    The Dayton-based planner fills a vacancy left open since last November when former planning admin Meg Leatherman left the Village for the private sector to work as a planning and construction manager for Premier Health Partners.

    Still getting settled in her Bryan Center office, Holt’s already gotten an earful from village residents — that we need more downtown parking, that we need less, bikes should be better accommodated, rentals are too expensive and the for-sale homes are in bad shape.

    “I definitely want to hear from people and learn from each person’s perspective, but be patient with me as I’m learning,” Holt said in an interview with the News earlier this week. “I know there are going to be competing points of view, but there’s also going to be some overlap. How can we work together to find that?”

    Holt comes to the Village with more than a decade of professional planning and economic development experience.

    For nearly four years following grad school, she worked as a planner for the Louisville Metro Government. There, Holt helped the city meet some of the charges of a recent housing report.  Along with others, she conducted a major review of Louisville’s zoning code and made adjustments to such provisions as minimum lot sizes that made new build costs prohibitive.

    “It was a balance in preserving the character of neighborhoods, but also allowing those who live there to get additional income,” Holt explained.

    Then, in late 2020, she returned to her hometown of Dayton to reunite with her family, and served as the City of Riverside’s zoning administrator for three years. After that stint, she ascended to the role of the city’s community development director.

    When she got to Riverside, the city had just updated its land use plan. Holt was tasked with facilitating a change in the way the city enforces its property maintenance rules — what she described as a swing from proactive enforcement to an approach that was more resident-friendly.

    Holt said that meant giving homeowners a little grace — as opposed to imposing an immediate penalty — on cutting their overgrown grass or painting their homes if they could show they were at least working toward a solution.

    The best part of her job as Riverside’s planner: “Engaging with people and the community — having open houses, going to schools to talk to students about zoning.”

    The latter bit included reading the children’s book “Ava Tanner the City Planner,” by Corrin Wendell, at all four Riverside elementary schools to get kids jazzed about the wondrous world of municipal design. Holt said that something like that could be possible here in Yellow Springs, but cautioned that it took a great deal of work and coordination.

    When she became the community development director of Riverside — overseeing the planning department — she focused more on the city’s economy writ large: business retention, connecting residents to development grants and more.

    Though Holt said she’s still parsing out the nuances between approaches to urban and rural planning, she sees a number of parallels between her past experiences and what’s ahead of her here in Yellow Springs.

    “People want to be heard,” Holt said. “And you can’t just hear what someone said and move on. You need to actually respond to their concerns. Does a project need traffic mitigation? OK, would speed bumps work? A different traffic pattern?”

    She continued: “That was a lesson from a neighborhood plan I helped with in Walnut Hills community [in Dayton]. It’s the people who live in and have an understanding of a neighborhood who are the experts about their community. You need to get Grandma Josephine and the small businesses and the developer and the neighbors to come together to make decisions and come to a consensus. Then you can move forward on a plan.”

    And a lot of plans are in motion here in Yellow Springs that will soon call for Holt’s scrutiny:

    There’s Columbus-based real estate developer Windsor Companies’ intentions to build more than 100 apartment units on properties formerly associated with Antioch College; the final plat plans for those apartments are anticipated to be submitted within the year.

    In the northwest quadrant of the village, there may soon be a 190-unit subdivision expansion to Spring Meadows, involving the proposed construction of 120 attached single-family units — 12 condos with 10 dwelling units in each — and 70 detached single-family homes. Planning Commission approved a preliminary plat application for those plans in November.

    In the western-most part of Yellow Springs is the 35-acre Center for Business and Education — a good majority of which is unoccupied, and which the Village has sought to commercially develop for more than a decade.

    Empty storefronts, Airbnbs, vacant homes, costly rentals and accessibility are also not infrequent topics brought before Planning Commission and Village staffers.

    Holt will make her first stab at helping the current Village Council address some of Yellow Springs’ housing-related ambitions at a day-long retreat on Thursday, June 25 — which had not yet occurred by press time, but will be covered for next week’s issue of the News.

    According to documents made available before Thursday’s housing retreat, Holt will give a “SWOT analysis” of the Village zoning code — honing in on the code’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

    “Basically seeing what in the code is salvageable,” Holt said.

    In a memo to Council for the group’s consideration on Thursday, she wrote, “Several modest amendments to the zoning code could address housing attainability without fundamentally changing the village’s development character.”

    She continued: “Examples of potential amendments include permitting accessory dwelling units by right when objective standards are met, reducing or eliminating parking requirements for smaller housing types and mixed-use developments [as well as] allowing greater flexibility for pocket neighborhood developments.”

    As Holt suggested, these amendments would heed the recommendations outlined in the Village’s last Comprehensive Land Use Plan updates in 2020 — many of which called for additional housing, and few of which have been fully addressed.

    “Making more housing a reality was up front in every interview with the Village I had,” Holt said. “I’m excited to get back into that realm.”

    How best to do that, Holt believes, is to focus on in-fill — “probably the better way for Yellow Springs to grow and grow responsibly.”

    Yellow Springs will host a “July 4 Community Celebration” with traditional activities during the day and evening that Saturday.

    The annual parade through town will step off at noon, with the lineup beginning at 11 a.m. behind the Miami Township fire station. Individuals, families, groups and organizations are welcome to join the festivities; no registration required. The parade route is down Xenia Avenue from the fire station, through downtown, concluding at Corry Street.

    The evening celebration will begin at 6 p.m. at Gaunt Park. Food trucks will be on hand, and the Community Band will perform. The annual fireworks display will begin after dark.

    Last summer, one of the things Mira Carpe brought home from Antioch College’s Roots and Wings day camp was a recipe. The campers had made what she called “monster ball things,” rolled together from M&M’s, peanut butter, honey, oats and chocolate chips.

    “You just roll them up into a ball and then put them in the freezer,” she said. “And then you get to eat them.”

    Carpe said cooking was one of the parts of camp that surprised her; she already liked the idea of learning to cook, but “liked it a lot more” than she thought she would.

    This summer, Carpe will return to Roots and Wings for five weekdays filled with yoga, crafts, games, farm time, campus walks — and another helping of snacks made in the Antioch kitchens.

    Roots and Wings day camp will be held Monday–Friday, July 6–10, 9 a.m.–4 p.m. The day camp, now in its second year and recommended for rising second through sixth graders, aims to bring young campers into its educational hubs — including the Wellness Center, farm, kitchens and the Coretta Scott King Center — for varied activities that touch on movement, arts, cuisine, agriculture and social awareness, within a connective web of cross-camp collaboration.

    Wellness Center Director Kathy Kern Ross, who leads the camp, said Roots and Wings began as its own kind of collaboration among Antioch’s hubs as a way to connect more deeply with the village: “The College wanted to outreach to the youth in the community,” Ross said.

    Ross has experience with event management and youth camps, and previously worked as a waterfront director at YMCA Camp High Rock in the Berkshire Mountains, where she helped oversee watersports and arts and crafts activities for hundreds of campers each week. At Antioch, though the registration numbers are smaller, the days are still filled with activity, she said.

    “We’ve tried to have some structure that we repeat for the campers each day, so that they have a schedule they can get used to,” Ross said.

    Each day begins with yoga, led by philosophy professor Lara Mitias, who Ross said often builds each session around a story or theme. After a morning snack, the day opens up, with rotating activities; this year, it might be a Black history walking tour led by history professor Kevin McGruder, or campers might get a visit from Miami Township Fire-Rescue and learn about fire safety.

    Next comes lunch, which campers bring from home, and then recreational time — ping-pong, gym play, pickleball, board games — before heading into afternoon activities. Depending on the day, those might include heading to the Coretta Scott King Center to work with faculty member and center Director Queen Zabriskie on social development activities, interactive games, crafts and collaborative work.

    Or students might visit the Antioch kitchen, led by Dawn Richter, to meet staff and learn new recipes. Last year, in addition to the “monster balls” Carpe remembered, campers also made pickles, strawberry jam, and yogurt bark — and if campers didn’t finish their treats on-site, they could carry them home at the end of the day.

    “They loved that part,” Ross said.

    The camp also includes time at the Antioch Farm, led by Farm Manager Bruce Linebaugh. Ross said campers enjoyed visiting the farm’s chickens, watering plants, making crafts with seeds and tasting fresh carrots and tomatoes.

    Moving between spaces is part of the experience, too; Ross said staff try to turn walks across campus into nature walks, where they might notice deer, squirrels, plants and other wildlife. And one of those trips across campus yielded a lesson in American Sign Language, or ASL, from Antioch College President Jane Fernandes — a detail Mira Carpe’s mom, Kelly Carpe, remembered with some surprise.

    “She came home one day and said, ‘Oh, I was learning sign language — we learned it from some lady named Jane,’” Kelly Carpe said with a laugh.

    And nearly a year later, Mira Carpe said, she still remembers part of the ASL alphabet.

    Roots and Wings also features a performing arts component, which brings another piece of Ross’s background into the camp: “I’m actually a professional clown,” she said.

    Last year, under Ross’s professional clown eye, campers tried juggling scarves and bean bags, miming and interactive games. This year, Ross said, she may add balloon twisting and spinning plates to the curriculum.

    The camp is staffed in part by Wellness Center lifeguards, who act as counselors. Ross said the arrangement gives campers attentive support and gives the lifeguards a chance to work with children in a different capacity. This year, Roots and Wings is also adding a counselor-in-training role after one camper aged out of the program but wanted to return.

    Kelly Carpe said the camp appealed to her first on a practical level; last year, she was working full time, and as a single parent, she was looking for somewhere enriching where young Mira could spend part of her summer. Roots and Wings stood out, she said, because it was nearby and offered a range of activities in an atypical setting.

    “When you’re a working parent and have limited options, it’s nice to know there’s an option at Antioch,” she said. “And after the camp was over, I felt like, because there weren’t so many kids there, she got a lot of attention and learned a lot. She came home with a lot of crafts that she wanted to show me, and she was just always in a good mood when she got home.”

    This year, Kelly Carpe said she’s teaching and has the summer off — but Mira still wanted to return.

    “She’s still going back because she liked it a lot,” she said. “I think it’s a really good way for Antioch to do more outreach to the community.”

    Ross said what she ultimately hopes all campers will take home after the week of Roots and Wings is, of course, memories of the fun they had participating in movement, art, cooking, history and outdoor time.

    But the larger goal, she said, is helping children develop “life skills” within a community setting. In that way, she said, the camp offers youth a kind of early introduction to the values of a liberal arts education: hands-on learning, collaboration, social awareness and moving between different kinds of inquiry over the course of a single day.

    “You need those team-building, social life skills, no matter what you do later in life,” Ross said.

    Registration for Roots and Wings is requested by Tuesday, July 1; scholarships are available. For more information, or to register, go to http://www.antiochcollege.edu/event/roots-wings-youth-camp-2

    When we go to the theater, we all know the drill — we keep quiet and we stay in our seats.

    Little Art Theatre patrons in the mood for some music might just be tempted to ignore those typical guidelines during an upcoming double-bill performance from electronic duo Extraordinary Twins and local rapper and artist Tronee Threat.

    The show, billed as “A Multimedia Extravaganza!” is set for Wednesday, July 1, beginning at 7 p.m., and will feature visual elements, including a light show, and a pair of acts who are joining forces based on a shared vibe rather than a shared genre.

    Tronee Threat — Guy “Tron” Banks — has been making music in and around the village for four years, and is well-known about town for dealing in vibrant hip-hop, with lyrics that often lean into political and social justice themes.

    Extraordinary Twins — Caleab Wyant and Andrew Halsey — with long pedigrees in the Dayton music scene, held their first live show as a duo in April at Dayton’s Tooth Lodge, debuting a danceable electronic sound rooted in nu-disco and what Halsey called “that old ancient bloghouse stuff” of the mid-to-late 2000s, and older “French house stuff,” as Wyant said.

    Wyant, who manages the Little Art, has been booking live music at the theater for the last couple of years, with help and curation from Dayton-area musician Kyleen Downes. When Extraordinary Twins was looking for someone with whom to share the bill for their second-ever show, Downes suggested Tronee Threat.

    “As soon as she suggested him, I was like, ‘Of course,’ because it’s super high-energy — thick beats, and loud — and really perfect in combo with what we’re doing,” Wyant said.

    After Tronee heard a sample of the Twins’ work, he said, he was on board, too: “The hip-hop and the EDM feel with that bass is gonna hit, and then for the theater itself, with that cinematic vibe, we’ll be creating that cinematic type of energy.”

    In other words: Folks should expect a good show, and if they’re able, they should get ready to move.

    Extraordinary Twins’ live setup is part musical performance, part technical choreography. Halsey triggers tracks and sequences live, while Wyant plays synthesizer; the two have worked to make their equipment speak to each other, so that changing a song or section can automatically cue synth tones, presets and lights. Halsey said that, though the duo has only performed live once thus far, they’ve spent a couple of years honing their sounds and sequences.

    “We’re trying to come out of the gate and have something slightly more polished, rather than feeling like we’re just kind of winging it,” he said, adding with a laugh: “I’m tired of winging it for my first shows.”

    Wyant and Halsey became friends by way of the Dayton music scene; Wyant, who has lived in Yellow Springs for 17 years, was part of the punk-prog-electronica outfit He Laughs He Learns He Loves, while Daytonian Halsey was, at the time, part of the prog-punk band Abertooth Lincoln.

    The two later worked together when Halsey helped produce an early album for YIKES! (A Band), another of Wyant’s earlier projects. They started working on Extraordinary Twins in earnest in 2023, building on what Wyant described as overlapping tastes with just enough difference in approach to keep the collaboration interesting.

    “I have more of a background in songwriting, and he has way more experience with recording and sound design,” Wyant said. “We complement different parts of each other — but I also feel like I’m learning more about the production side of things, and he’s been bringing in a tremendous amount of the writing stuff. So it’s all started to blend together.”

    The upcoming show marks the Twins’ village debut; at the same time, Tronee Threat has become a familiar presence in town within the span of just a few years — though he said that stretch feels longer just because “it’s been eventful.”

    To that end, Tronee has performed widely in the village and surrounding area, dropping new music regularly via online platforms. Earlier this year, he debuted a music-driven film project, “In the Bluff,” a meditative, dream-like short filmed in the historically Black Oak Bluffs community on Martha’s Vineyard.

    With so much exposure in and around town, Tronee said he aims not to repeat himself; around the time of his interview with the News, he said he was gearing up for performances at Herndon Gallery and the Levitt Pavilion in Dayton and a Juneteenth show at the Bryan Center, and none of them will feature the same set.

    “If somebody wants me to be with them in community in the spirit of music, I already made a promise that if I can do it, I’m going to say ‘yes’ to it,” he said. “And the good thing about my creativity is that I’m going to do all of those shows, and you’re not going to hear or see the same thing.”

    He said his forthcoming album, “Hero Villain,” will delve into heavier material — including the way his own stage name references both affection and perceived menace. Taken from his middle name, Latron, he said “Tronee” was the nickname his grandmother called him “out of love.” “Threat” was initially meant in the same way one might use the term “triple threat” to mean multitalented — “but when I said it, everybody took it in a negative way,” he said, and he was led to explore why.

    “So later, it became more about how people see me as a Black man in America — a threat, right?” he said. “So [“Hero Villain”] arises from my day-to-day experience, and talking about that.”

    For the Little Art show, however, he said he’ll be in what he called “Summertime Tronee” mode — lighter, playful, a little bit of release.

    “Summertime Tronee is all light, because it’s gonna get real heavy when his album comes out,” he said. “This is a trying time, and we have a lot of serious work we gotta do, so this is kind of like my summer vacation from the serious work.”

    He added: “It’s like taking a quick breath, and I’m gonna do that through the music.”

    That breath will still likely be loud, Tronee said — his Little Art set will include on-screen visuals, and he said he hopes to make audience members feel like they’re watching a movie. Wyant said the Twins have a similar goal, and that the theater lends itself to that kind of performance — focused, cinematic and big.

    “It will be loud, but loud in the way that a movie is loud,” he said. “And it’ll sound good, too.”

    The performers said they hope audiences come with an open mind — and perhaps a willingness to participate in the Yellow Springs way. Tronee described local audiences as ready to participate, but not pushy about it.

    “They will if you ask,” he said. “And they won’t if you don’t, but it doesn’t mean they don’t like it.”

    Wyant said he hopes the show opens the door for more like it: high-energy collabs based on shared feeling, but with a diversity of sound — acts that are game to team up and see what happens.

    “I would argue that what we’re doing and what he’s doing is more compatible than the punk bands we would traditionally have played with,” he said. “I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun.”

    Tickets for “A Multimedia Extravaganza!” with Extraordinary Twins and Tronee Threat at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 1, are $15 in advance and $20 at the door; for advance tickets, go to http://www.littleart.com

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