Jorma Kaukonen
Pete Townshend famously wrote, at age twenty, that he hoped he’d die before he got old (he has gotten encroaching deafness instead), and indeed, few musicians from rock’s classic era have carried vital careers into...
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Jerry Dennis
In 2010 Jerry Dennis’s The Living Great Lakes was the selection for Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads. When Dennis came to town to do his presentation, more than 500 people came to Washtenaw Community College to celebrate the...
Read MoreMultiple Impressions
If you took “Chinese” out of the subtitle of the current exhibit at UMMA, you might not recognize the exhibit as such. Yes, all the artists in Multiple Impressions: Contemporary Chinese Woodblock Prints are from...
Read MoreGhost Writers
v Keith Taylor usually reviews books here, but he also writes them, mostly poetry and short fiction. He and fellow poet and fiction writer Laura Kasischke gathered together some Michigan writers and asked each to contribute a...
Read MoreThe Wayward Sisters
There are precious few things worth spending a spectacularly beautiful Sunday afternoon indoors for, and if you’d told me that one of them would be a recital by the Wayward Sisters of a program called “Ashes, Ashes:...
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Franz Wright
When I knew I would write about Franz Wright’s new collection of prose poems, Kindertotenwald, I wrote to my German friend Thilo von Debschitz, whose English is decidedly better than my German, to ask him how he understood...
Read MoreMikrokolektyw
Over the last half-century, jazz has flourished in Central Europe, especially in Poland. Banned by the Stalinist postwar government, it emerged from the underground in the late Fifties to become an important component of...
Read MoreThe Ravens Club Reviewed
From the wordless image of a black bird out front to the cozy circular booths in the back, the new Ravens Club on Main conjures the vibe of a speakeasy from a century gone by–though these days in Michigan, the only...
Read MoreHomegrown Festival
The rain poured down on us throughout my son Little Brother’s entire soccer game at Northside Elementary School. Adults huddled under umbrellas, kids wore raincoats under their jerseys, and even the boys on the sidelines...
Read MoreAlejandra O’Leary
Welcome to Alejandra O’Leary version 2.0. In early April, the young singer-songwriter introduced a new wrinkle to her already impressive musical repertoire–a backing band. Flanked by Jeremy Frey on bass and Jamie...
Read MoreThe Fishtank Ensemble
The Fishtank Ensemble takes its name from a club called the Fishtank in Oakland, California. When they come to the Ark September 1 (see Nightspots), they’ll be bringing a style of music that hasn’t been heard much in...
Read MoreSaxophonist Janelle Reichman
When the Detroit News named her one of the top twenty high school graduates in the arts in all of Michigan a decade ago, the young saxophone player Janelle Reichman gave her career plans simply as “musician.” By then...
Read MoreEllen Baker
Ellen Baker’s first novel, Keeping the House, has had the kind of success that’s not supposed to be possible anymore. Since it was published in 2007–to good, if occasionally mixed, reviews–its reputation...
Read MorePaul Burch
The songs of Paul Burch are subtle takes on older country music, mostly in its swing- and rockabilly-flavored varieties. They strip traditional country down to its bones, turn it inside out, and build on it anew, asking in the...
Read MoreDude, Where’s My Play?
As the curtain rose on Consider the Oyster, on two men in football jerseys raptly watching a TV football broadcast, I was suddenly struck–in a way that made me want to cartoonishly smack myself on the forehead–by the...
Read MoreDragon Wagon
Every summer there’s one band that seems to appear everywhere around Washtenaw County, and if you wanted to track the youth zeitgeist you could start by making a list of them. Right now an old bluegrasser like me can take...
Read MoreJehovah’s Witness…
The Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program has a great band name–and knows how to have a good time. The Ypsilanti duo, featuring Anthony Anonymous on guitar and vocals and Jehan Dough on drums (those are their...
Read MoreBonnie Jo Campbell
Two years ago, after a couple of decades of hard work, Bonnie Jo Campbell hit it big with American Salvage, a collection of tough stories placed in rural western Michigan–and published by a small university press (Wayne...
Read MoreGeorge Bedard 2011
Guitarist George Bedard is a pure local treasure. The unveiling of his new all-instrumental album, Pickin’ Apart the Past, at Top of the Park on July 10 ought to be accorded local holiday status, but he’ll be happy...
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