The Boomerangs
Let's see. Urbations, Watusis, Stomprockets, Navarones, the Shanks, and a half dozen other Marshall-amp-charged garage bands I've forgotten the names of, none with a snowball's chance in hell of ever becoming...
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Drew Nelson
I was sitting in a downtown coffee shop, coasting merrily along as Drew Nelson sang "Lovely Day" — his paean to the simple joys of spring, love, friendship, and impending fishing — when it struck me: this...
Read MoreEasy Street Swingtet
While listening to Paul Klinger's Easy Street Swingtet at the Firefly recently, I overheard someone say, "You'd pay big money to hear music like this in New York . . . but the band would be better dressed."...
Read MoreCostello & Toussaint
Does anyone remember the New Orleans flood — remember not just the death and destruction, the pain and loss, but the directives given at the time by federal, state, and local government leaders? Does anyone remember that...
Read MoreThe John Cowan Band
The last time I heard John Cowan live was in 1988, at the last Ann Arbor concert of the New Grass Revival, of which he was the lead singer. It was just before the band broke up, and its supremely talented individual performers...
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Pat Martino
Players and admirers of jazz guitar tend to be a cliquish lot. Even more than saxophonists, they love the instrument as much as the music it produces. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that, contrary to popular opinion, the...
Read MorePreservation Hall Jazz Band
Preservation Hall’s iron gates open to a hallway that leads to a single room. Built in 1750, the building has been left to age, plaster cracks unrepaired, windows unwashed. There’s no air-conditioning and almost no...
Read MoreSara Gruen
Do kids still dream about running away to join the circus? Is that still an option, at least in imagination? Forty years ago it still seemed to be one of my choices. The circus was going to be a real one, too, with clowns and...
Read MoreA Life in the Theater
A Life in the Theater, an early (1977) play by David Mamet, is a funny, gentle, and too-quickly-passing ninety-minute tribute to the craft of acting and the bond between actors. In twenty-six short scenes, David Wolber and Loren...
Read MoreThe Academy of Early Music
What exactly is early music, anyway? It depends on what you mean by “early.” Early Rolling Stones is one thing, but early Muddy Waters is something else again — something played with a different bat and ball but in...
Read MoreLaugh, dance, whirl
When I call to ask whether or not my six-year-old can do these dances, the woman on the other end of the phone laughs. “My daughter’s been doing them since she was about four,” she says. “They’ll...
Read MoreThe Late Great Henry Boyle
This year the Purple Rose seems to be celebrating the misunderstood keepers of high culture. Purple Rose founder Jeff Daniels, playing way against type, delivered an ace performance in movie theaters this winter in The Squid and...
Read MoreJerry Harmon
Jerry Harmon's great-great-great-grandfather Council Harmon, born in 1803 and deceased in 1896, brought the Jack Tales to the United States from England. "Jack and the Beanstalk" is the only one of these most of us...
Read MoreJessica Williams
Jazz musicians from the West Coast are often not given the appreciation they deserve. There are vibrant musical scenes in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and other Pacific Rim cities, but not enough players from these areas...
Read MoreThe Eastman Collection at UMMA
Before its June 24 move to temporary quarters during its renovation, the U-M Museum of Art is giving itself a blowout sendoff with a sweeping survey of the history of photography, opening April 22. The exhibition Rethinking the...
Read MoreRainer Maria
Three years ago, the DJs on my favorite college radio station fell in love with a song that had a beautiful, obsessive chorus. "I wanted to be sweet/So you won't disappoint me," a woman sang with such pain and rage...
Read MoreRichard Russo on Fiction and Film
Among his many other qualities, Richard Russo is our contemporary master of the fictional small town, and particularly of the small-town diner. His novels, though set in small places, are big and sprawling, in the best sense....
Read MoreThe Sirens
Seeing is believing. You can listen to the fast and fuzzy glam-rock sound of the Sirens on their 2004 self-titled CD, and the musical performance will probably sound more impressive than at a live show. But the key to this...
Read MoreGoing to town
After a surfeit of sad, pretty, reflective, brainy, wordy, sarcastic, traditional, way-out, and heartfelt folk songs, the Holmes Brothers simply took their places onstage at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival, opened their mouths, and...
Read MoreBolcom and Morris
When vocalist Joan Morris and pianist Bill Bolcom take the stage in the Kerrytown Concert House on Friday, April 21, they won't be performing excerpts from Bolcom's award-winning setting of Blake's Songs of Innocence...
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