"See You in My Dreams" Cover Art from the Sunny's Bluegrass Jam Archive

For fifteen years, Tim Davis (aka Timmy Ivories) has been the late-shift pianist at Tone Johanson’s weekly Bluegrass jam at Sunny’s Bar. From his seat behind the piano, he has recorded nearly every session, sharing the music the next day with fellow musicians. Together, these recordings have grown into a living archive.

Each week, the night ends with the room singing “Goodnight Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams.” Afterward, Tim returns home and creates a digital photo composite to serve as cover art for that week’s recording. Using images from the jam layered with fragments of his daily life, in order to capture the feeling of the room that night—and the world beyond it.

As musicians came and went, and as the jam moved outdoors during the pandemic (where it has remained  during the summer months), the archive expanded to more than 90,000 minutes across 1,150 recordings.

This exhibition is  a selection of those images, transformed into fine art prints by Supreme Digital in Bushwick. Each work is paired with a QR code linking to its corresponding recording, inviting viewers to listen back and step into the moment in time when it was created.