Ann Arbor

Panhandle Slim

Jeff Daniels, that restless playwriting mill, keeps shoving the raw grist of Americana into the hopper and spitting out scripts. His most sustained look at American life and myth is the Escanaba soon-to-be-trilogy of North Woods...

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A Place at the Table

There's nothing so blatantly vaginal as Judy Chicago's work in the current exhibition at the Ann Arbor Art Center, although it obviously refers to her controversial feminist masterpiece, The Dinner Party. Sponsored by...

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Dana Cooper

Music is a young person's art, so I'm always fascinated by musicians who keep commanding attention with fresh material after several decades in the business. Singer-songwriter Dana Cooper, who'll be featured at the...

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A breast-feeding business

Barbara Robertson says she catches flak for selling breast-feeding supplies. It usually boils down to this, she says: if breast-feeding is free, how come you’re in business?But Robertson didn’t open the Breastfeeding...

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Madcat & Kane at the Ark

Madcat & Kane have been performing together for eighteen years, but in any poll of blues fans, they long ago were candidates — and voted in and elected — as one of the finest duos working in that genre. That’s not...

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Steep Canyon Rangers

Bluegrass music is conservative in the best sense of the word, refining traditions into clearer, deeper forms. Players start out by learning the standards and continue to play them while adding slowly to that core repertory....

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Upstairs on South U

Sandria Haney knows jeans and knows how to give parties, which certainly explains why she’s opened a business called Party In Our Pants on South University. That background may also explain why Haney is rather grandly...

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Natalie MacMaster

Onstage, Natalie MacMaster is a one-woman Riverdance, constantly step-dancing, prancing, whirling, twirling, stamping, stomping, all the while playing horsehair-sizzling tunes that most fiddlers can't manage even while...

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Jen Sygit

I can't remember when or where I first heard Jen Sygit sing. We were sharing a stage somewhere, I think. But I remember, quite clearly, my response the second she opened her mouth. It was one word — "whoa"...

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Demetrius Nicodemus

The first time I interviewed a comedian after a show, I was surprised when he dropped his stage persona and morphed into a businessman. In time, I came to expect it. Still, I kept looking for what my naive idea of a comedian is...

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Janet Kauffman

Confined animal feeding operations. Factory farms. For those of us who don't or no longer live in the country, these are the places we drive by on Sunday jaunts or pass on the freeway: acres and acres of buildings often...

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Everyday Cook’s next step

“We’re not doing lunches,” says Mary Campbell of Everyday Cook, “but we’re not closed.” Campbell’s anxious to quash rumors that she’d given up on her combination restaurant and cookware store in Kerrytown after losing out on a...

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El Camino Real

Toledo’s Best Margarita (if you believe the Toledo City Paper) is now available in Ann Arbor. You’ll find it at Toledo’s Best Mexican Restaurant (if you believe the Toledo City Paper), also now available in Ann...

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The OffRamps

Several days after hearing the OffRamps play at the Elbow Room in Ypsilanti, I couldn't get the refrain of one of their songs out of my head: "You said you were sorry, but that really doesn't make it all...

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Madame XD

I first encountered the music of Xiao Dong Wei two years ago, on a beautiful June morning. I'd ridden my bike down to the end of Maple Road to find Huron River Drive all blocked off with traffic cones. I stopped. No cars, no...

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Miles Harvey

A few years ago Miles Harvey hit it big with his nonfiction book The Island of Lost Maps, which not only told a fascinating story about a thief who cut maps from rare old books housed in North America's best libraries, but...

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Lizz Wright

Lizz Wright grew up singing gospel music in the church of her minister father in south Georgia's Lowndes County. She studied voice at Georgia State University in Atlanta, at the New School in New York, and in Vancouver,...

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Mandy Patinkin

Who is Mandy Patinkin? The answer depends on whom you talk to. For those who watch television, he's Jeffrey Geiger in Chicago Hope and Jason Gideon in Criminal Minds. For those who go to the movies, he's Iñigo...

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Deep End Ensemble

Even though no one has ever come up with a precise definition of the word jazz, many of its most dedicated lovers jealously guard its borders, often to the exclusion of any other music. Paradoxically, whatever jazz is, it is...

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