Jesus Is Just All Right, Part Two: The Trees Community

This is an article I wrote in the summer of 2008 as a sequel to this unexpectedly controversial article. It never got published, so I thought I'd trot it out here. The music is fantastic.

In the late 1960s, a TV production consultant named William "Shipen" Lebzelter "dropped out" of his life and moved into an abandoned fourth-floor loft in the East Village. Then, together with his close friend Phillip "Ariel" Dross, Shipen embarked on a spiritual quest, exploring disciplines like Kundalini Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism before, in his own words he was, "knocked by Christ off [his] horse."

Shipen's loft, already a meeting place for young village people caught up in the hippie commune vibes of the late 60's, soon became a center for born again Christians (sometimes as many as forty) to meet, pray and meditate.

Two regulars at the loft were Roger Gumbiner, a friend of Shipen's from his days working in television, and his wife Claudia, a ballerina who danced in the Harkness Ballet Company. Though the Gambiners spent a lot of time at the loft, they maintained an apartment on Manhattan's East Side and brought Claudia's enthusiasm for fitness and exercise and a passion for Roger's passion for playing the tables to the growing group.

Out of this loose-knit community came a hippie folk ensemble, first calling themselves the New York Tent City Symphony of Souls in Christ before settling on the simpler moniker, the Trees Community.

Besides Dross and the Gambiners, early members included British-born guitarist and tenor David Lynch, who wrote many of the group's songs and also played the flute; 17-year-old artist and percussionist David Evan Karasek; former Stomp cast member Stephen Gambill, his brother Bruce, his wife Patricia, and his cast mate on Stomp, 19-year-old Stephanie Arje, a convert for Judaism.

18-year-old Katheryn "Shishonee" Krupa, who played guitar as well as Venezuelan folk harp, would go on to write a number of songs for the group and, after unsuccessfully trying to create a new Trees Community in Michigan, became the group's archivist and historian.

With the eclecticism the characterized the era, the Trees Community forged their musical style using elements that included Balinese Gamelan, African percussion, Americana, Indian ragas, and the folk music of Scotland and Mexico. Over the course of its existence, the membership of the group fluctuated between seven and fourteen people, altogether using up to 80 instruments.

When the loft was up for demolition in May of 1971, the community took it as a sign from God and the Gumbiners used what money they had saved to buy a school bus so that the Trees Community could takes their monastic, communal life on the road.

The community's official affiliation was with New York City's Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, but they spent much of the next decade traveling throughout the US and Canada, playing at churches, monasteries, and spiritual retreats of all denominations.

The Gumbiners left to start a family after six months and other members came and went. Six years after he took the Trees on the road, founder Shipen was exhausted and returned to New York City to open an ice cream business, but what was left of the group continued to travel.

In 1975, the group released a nine-song album on Pomegranate Records called The Christ Tree that included lyrics from the Psalms, raga drones, and rhythmic chanting. Neofolk pioneer and Current 93 founder David Tibet describes the album, rather effusively, as, "a life-changing album born out of life-changing truths." Years later, the album would become a much sought-after collector's item for fans of psychedelic folk groups like Comus and The Incredible String Band.

In 2006, musician Timothy Renner discovered The Christ Tree and, with permission of the group's surviving members (Shipen having died a few years after returning to New York) released a four-CD collection of The Trees Community's music, including the Christ Tree, making a rarely-heard sound document of the Jesus People era widely available for the first time.

You can check out one of their songs here.