2006 November

You gotta love Marcia Ball. I defy anyone to resist this willowy Gulf Coast piano pounder and her blend of roots rock and soulful R&B. Her Royal Tallness presides upright, sidesaddle on the bench, crossed-leg bouncing time,...

The leaves have turned. The skies are cloudy. The wind is from the north. The first frost is on the ground, and winter is in the air. It's what the old-timers called Brahms weather. Some composers know no season —...

Some songs by Broken Social Scene are mood music, edgy yet soothing, atmospheric postrock. Then the Canadian indie-rock collective hits you with cacophonies that are so packed with dueling sounds, so boisterous and brash,...

“Our house is burning,” sings local folk-rock band Canada on its debut CD, This Cursed House. “When the trees go, we go too. When the birds go, we go too.” I like to know that twenty-something kids are...

What has 100-plus arms and 100-plus legs and sings in three-part harmony? Stumped? Need another clue? What bows and blows and bangs seventy-two instruments simultaneously and also sings silly, and not so silly, songs? Give up?...

Some admire Jeff Daniels for his rich and protean work as an actor. Others praise the vision and hard work he's lavished on the Purple Rose Theater, creating an arts network of national stature almost literally in the middle...

Adversity has its rewards, and the unexpected is the essence of art. Jane Bunnett was studying classical piano in Toronto when tendinitis put an end to her concert hall dreams. Rather than abandon music, she took up the flute at...

If you haven't been to one of the bluegrass concerts mounted periodically at Saline High School, the show on Saturday, November 4, featuring singer, fiddler, and songwriter Laurie Lewis, offers the perfect chance. The...

The U-M Museum of Art Off/Site’s current video installation offers an eighteen-minute meditation on the social patterns that have swept the Great Plains clean of immigrant small farmers. The exhibit begins with a...

The musicians who make up Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars all knew each other in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown. But they never played together until they met again in the Sembakounya Refugee Camp, at the end of...

I know that we should never judge a book by its cover, but every now and then the right cover can help us understand what's inside. On the cover of Rick Hilles's Brother Salvage, his powerful first collection of poetry,...