As engine #6 pulls up and parks in the street in front of the downtown fire station, Little Brother and I walk up slowly, hand in hand, to get a better look. Suddenly the driver’s door opens, and right before our eyes, a...
Read More“It used to be when it was only the rich people that bought granite, they would seek you out,” says Shawn Keene. “You could be tucked back in [an industrial] park and do really, really well. Now that the...
Read MoreEllie Serras calls Main Street “the community’s front yard.” Since her husband, Dennis, and his Mainstreet Ventures partners opened the Real Seafood Co. in 1975, she’s seen the street blossom from a gray,...
Read MoreRodney Crowell got his start in the 1970s as a member of Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band, a key point of departure for the artistically ambitious side of contemporary country music. In Nashville he was best known for a while as...
Read MoreI’m confused about Counter Cosby. Are they musical geniuses or are they impaired in some way? It’s hard to tell.When I saw them perform last winter at TC’s Speakeasy, they actually were impaired. They played...
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Visitors to the Ypsilanti Historical Museum on North Huron Street enter a lovely furnished 1860s Italianate home with gracious high-ceilinged rooms. I never go there without wishing I could move in (or at least throw a party...
Read MoreScott Padden loves hearing people reminisce about the Inverness Inn, the roadhouse on North Territorial that he’s renovated and reopened. They tell him tales from the 1950s or earlier—about eating in front of the...
Read MoreNeil and Chuck Cole have aging baby boomers in their sights. The Coles, who run Dexter’s Bio Logic Engineering, have invented a strength training system to help everyone from frail eighty-year-olds to professional athletes...
Read MoreLocal news is now being served up daily by an ambitious new publication—but you can’t find it on a newsstand. Mary Morgan and Dave Askins launched annarborchronicle.com on September 2, their wedding anniversary. Morgan, a...
Read MoreWhen Malcolm Tulip is billed as actor, director, and playwright, you can bet that you're in for a night of experimental and absurdist stagecraft. In his latest show at the Performance Network, The Day Everything Went Wrong,...
Read MoreRepetition and nostalgia are among the dominating principles of commercial culture. Hard-of-hearing rockers gather together after many years to tour, reprising their early hits, and many jazz musicians who find some modicum of...
Read MoreA Hard Lessons live show is a fierce and amazing thing to behold. This trio of Detroit twenty-somethings merges power pop, blues chords, soulful harmonizing, and straight-up rock 'n' roll, and delivers it with a...
Read More"Cool!" I said as I approached an interactive installation piece in the dark back room at Gallery Project. I cranked a wheel, and a short humanoid sculpture — with simple metal-frame legs, white baby shoes, and a...
Read MoreLet's start by acknowledging the elephant in the coffeehouse. When you think of Canadian folk musician Garnet Rogers, who will be at the Ark on Sunday, September 14, you can't help thinking also of his brother, Stan. The...
Read MoreExpatriate. For some of us the word conjures up cuddly bohemians living penniless in beautiful cities far from the dreariness of their middle-class upbringings, waiting to be visited by a muse fueled by poverty, drugs, absinthe,...
Read MoreCeltic music, especially of the Scots variety, has a mass following in Canada, with musicians covering a whole spectrum of styles from the purest tradition to rock slightly inflected with harps and whistles. The Barra MacNeils...
Read MoreHow easy it would be to notice “The Doyle & Debbie Show” on the Ark’s November schedule, quickly dismiss it as some weird Nashville country music/comedy duo you’ve never heard of, and not go.And what...
Read MoreAs I was skimming through the Ultrasounds' press release, a refreshingly frank quote caught my eye. "People don't want to hear songs about how bad things suck all the time," says lead guitarist Patrick Betzold....
Read MoreRoger McGuinn and John Sebastian are playing back-to-back solo sets at the Michigan Theater on Friday, August 8. It’s the hottest double bill of the summer: this is Roger McGuinn of the Byrds — “Mr. Tambourine...
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