When my brother Laz and I moved from Rochester, New York, to Ann Arbor in July 1973, we knew only a handful of things about the city. We knew about the university because Helen, Laz’s wife-to-be, was planning to start grad school there. We’d heard that Ann Arbor was the “Dope Capital of the Midwest.” And as aspiring musicians, we knew it was home to the Ark. Then located in a massive gray mansion on Hill St., it already had a national reputation in folk circles.
Wednesday was hootenanny night, when anyone could show up and play. We went to our first hoot just a few days after we moved into our West Side apartment. We didn’t own a car, so we walked across town, lugging our electric guitars and a small amplifier. When we arrived a little before nine o’clock, a few people were strumming guitars and banjos on the huge lawn and the front porch.
We introduced ourselves to Linda Siglin, who along with her husband David managed the Ark. We told her that we called our duo Gemini, and that we’d come to play. Musicians got in free. Everyone else paid a dollar to hear twenty to thirty performers play three songs each.
Performers stood or sat in front of an unused fireplace in what had been the house’s living room. Most of the audience sat on cushions on the wooden floor. Two adjacent rooms, with wide doorways, held chairs for the rest of the crowd.
Linda waved us toward the “green room” across the hall. It was crowded with musicians nervously waiting to perform. We put our cases down, went back to the living room, and watched and listened from a doorway.
We introduced ourselves to Linda Siglin, who along with her husband David managed the Ark. We told her that we called our duo Gemini, and that we’d come to play.
It seemed like most of the thirty or so people in the audience had come to see their friends perform—every singer was greeted with raucous enthusiasm by a few people and polite applause from everyone else. Over the next hour the audience gradually grew and the music got better, the performances more polished.
The musicians ranged from novices like us, who’d been playing guitar for two years and had hardly ever performed before, to veterans of the local bar scene eager to try out some of their quieter songs in front of an audience that listened. Perhaps in part because coffee was the strongest drink available, Ark crowds were attentive, almost reverential.
Peter Madcat Ruth closed the first set. Linda introduced him with obvious respect, and he received an affectionate welcome as he picked his way through the crowd, carrying a colorful metal lunch box filled with harmonicas. Setting it on a stool before the fireplace, he selected a harp and launched into his first tune without saying a word.
I was riveted. Madcat stomped his feet and his long blond hair streamed as he swayed to the music. He blew intricate rhythm patterns, bent notes impossibly far, and wove whoops and hollers into his playing. His lyrics ranged from the hilarious to the profound, his melodies from softly meditative to driving, and the audience roared its appreciation. Laz and I were too shy to approach him that night, but in the next few years we became good friends. Madcat has since joined us for many shows and has played on nearly all our recordings.
After a twenty-minute break for coffee and popcorn, the music resumed. Over the course of the next hour the audience gradually dwindled, and there were few people left when Linda introduced us. There was an awkward silence while we set up our amplifier and plugged in our guitars, then a screeching howl of feedback when one of us played a test note.
Linda came rushing back to the stage and, with obvious irritation, suggested that maybe we had the amp turned up too high. Our meager confidence badly shaken, we somehow struggled through three songs and slunk out as soon as we were done.
We never again brought our electric guitars to the Ark, but it was many months before Linda’s first impression of us faded. She always put us on stage near the end of the evening.
Hers was not a democratic, or first-come-first-served, or blind-luck-lottery system. She orchestrated the hoots to put the best performers on stage when the crowd was largest. Several times we left without playing when we saw how late it was getting, how many musicians were still left, and how studiously Linda seemed to be avoiding us.
But we came back, week after week, because it was our only chance to play in front of an audience, and because we were learning a great deal from playing our three songs and by watching the other musicians. Besides Madcat, we heard Dick Siegel, Jay Stielstra with John Nordlinger, Mustard’s Retreat (David Tamulevich and Michael Hough), Cheryl Dawdy (who later joined Grace Morand and Connie Huber to form the Chenille Sisters), David Menefee, Randy Tessier, La’Ron Williams, Michael Smith, Sarah Keller, and Matt Heumann. There were others, like Sally Rogers, Barry O’Neill, Sally Potter, Martha Burns, and David Kahn, who’ve moved away and, sadly, some, like Percy “Mr. Bones” Danforth, Craig Johnson, and Charlie Weaver, who have passed on.
Laz and I knew we’d finally arrived when one night, months after we first started coming, Linda invited us to finish the first set. Soon thereafter, she and Dave booked us to play our first show at the Ark on March 14, 1974. We split the bill that Thursday night with the duo of Todd Kabza and John Bian, both excellent local musicians. We invited Ned Duke, the owner of Mr. Flood’s Party, to the show, hoping he’d book us into his very popular downtown bar. He did, and we took up residence there most Tuesday nights for years.
The Ark has moved twice since those early days. Its current iteration on Main St. looks very different from the first one on Hill St., but the feeling is the same. Shows there—our own and other musicians’ that we attend—are still among the highlights of our year.
We’ll be playing at the Ark again this fall to celebrate our musical jubilee. As always, we’ll plan to introduce some new songs and arrangements. And we’ll undoubtedly get more nervous before that show than for any other gig this year. Ever since that first hoot, we’ve known that the Ark is special.
Gemini—San and Laz Slomovits—has been singing with adults and children in Ann Arbor and nationally for fifty years.
