An item for discussing upcoming shows at the Ark, Ann Arbor's renowned folk music stage.29 responses total.
Wed. Sept. 19: The Wrigley Sisters, twin sisters from the Orkney Islands, which I think are somewhere north of Scotland. Jennifer plays fiddle and Hazel plays guitar. My recollection of one of their early albums is that they were playing fairly straight traditional music, but the publicity material for them often talks about folk-jazz. They played for a while in the band Seelyhoo. http://www.wrigleysisters.com The Wrigley's USA tour began on Sept. 8, so they should have been in the country before the air travel shutdown. I expect to be there. Opening for the Wrigley Sisters are the Scottish band Tabache, who are definitely folk-jazz; I've enjoyed their first album.
(I forgot to mention: this is the same night that Lucinda Williams is appearing at the Michigan Theater. A reminder for happyboy.)
I was in a sour mood over the international crisis, and so that probably colors my impressions of the evening. Tabache turn out not to be the folk jazz band I thought they were; I got them confused with Bachue' Cafe. Ooops! Tabache was a trio: a Scottish guy playing fiddle, an Irish woman playing flute, fiddle and singing, and a guitarist. They were ok, fairly generic acoustic Celtic music. They might have been a little off their mark because of jet lag; they had just flown in on the day of the concert. I didn't think too much of the guitarist. The Wrigley Sisters were a lot better, but I still was feeling mentally agitated and almost left in the middle of the set. Jennifer Wrigley is a very good fiddler -- she won the BBC Young Traditions award given to an outstanding young folk instrumentalist a few years back -- and Hazel was a much more entertaining guitarist, quite melodic. They did some very entertaining comic riffs on "Where We Come From," which in this case is the Orkney Islands north of Scotland. Hazel explained how the jazz roots of her guitar playing stem from two teaching-generations back, when one of the first guitarists on the Orkneys was influenced by Django Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France via the shortwave radio. Hazel divides her time between the guitar and the piano, and I wasn't in a mood for her piano playing, I'm afraid. At the end of the evening Tabache joined the Wrigley twins for a long tune set with a lineup of piano, three fiddles and guitar. The massed fiddles were nice. For young performers, the Wrigleys have a lot of CDs to sell: five as the Sisters, plus three or four more which they played on, including one from their old band Seelyhoo. I settled on just getting their most recent one, "Skyran." ------- October brings a number of interesting shows to the Ark. Irish band Dervish, who I have never seen, and old Scottish reliables The Tannahill Weavers appear in the space of three days in early October; later in the month we get Del McCoury's bluegrass band.
Sat Oct 27: Lou and Peter Berryman make their annual October visit to the Ark. No one writes songs like Lou and Peter! See you there!
From the Ark calendar:
Sunday, February 17: locals Jo Serrapere and KC Groves do their
new old time act Uncle Earl. I hope I can go.
Thursday, February 21: Danny Barnes and Thee Old Codgers.
(that one's for happyboy)
Thursday, February 28: Muzsikas, from Hungary, a band I've followed
for maybe 16 years...
Tuesday, March 5: Richard Thompson
but damn, tickets are $35. This is likely to be the first
Thompson concert at the Ark which I've skipped.
Thursday, April 11: Kate Rusby, noted young British folksinger,
presumably with her husband John McCusker
Friday, April 19: Altan, the very well known Irish band
(another one for happyboy to note)
Wednesday, April 24: Waterson:Carthy. I'm burned out on Eliza Carthy,
but her family trio, with her parents Martin Carthy and
Norma Waterson, I'll still want to see.
There are also a bunch of shows with celtic-sounding band names
listed for March, but they are all bands I have never heard of before,
and no details have been posted yet on the Ark website.
I'm thinking of hitting the Finvarra's Wren, but think that I'm already
going to too many shows in the next month or two.
My list, so far:
Saturday, March 23: Lucy Kaplansky
Saturday, March 30: Sons of the Never Wrong
Monday, April 1: Dar Williams
Tuesday, April 16: Richard Shindell
The only expensive one in the bunch is Dar, coming in at $25. The rest are
between 12-15.
My wish list:
3-17: Chenille SIsters (also on 3-16, but I'll be at the Great Big Sea
concert that night)
4-9: Finvarra's Wren (I know that they're Irish, but know nothing else...but
I've been told that I'd like them)
4-20: Christine Lavin
4-26: Austin Lounge Lizards
The last two I'm more likely to make than the first two. However, I'm
thriled that the Ark finally has a bunch of shows worth going to! I've been
very dissappointed in the last year with their lineups....there has been so
little that I've actually been interested in. Hopefully this won't be all
of the good concerts for the year.
Since it now seems unlikely that I'll be able to make the Detroit Festival of the Arts this year, it's nice that the performer I want to see the most, Spanish bagpiper Susana Seivane, will appear at the Ark, Tuesday September 17. Also stopping by from Detroit Festival of the Arts will be Danu, the preceding night. The totally-rebuilt bagpipe rock band Wolfstone, from Scotland, are set for Monday Sept. 23. The last two Wolfstone shows I saw had the most enthusiastic audiences I'd ever seen at the Ark, but since then the band has broken up and been completely reconstituted, and I have completely lost touch with what they are doing now. I did hear one promising track on the BBC. Monday, Sept. 30, is Lo'Jo from France. Their 1999 album BOHEME DE CRISTAL kept me going in the hospital last month. I'll write more as this show approaches.
Free show at the Ark this Tuesday: the Asylum Street Spankers, from Austin, Texas. They have a web site at http://www.asylumstreetspankers.com and I don't know anything about them, but a band sounds like more fun than the struggling singer-songwriters who make up most of the Ark's free concerts. Mickey, can you tell us anything about these guys?
Yes, do tell!
Oh, yes the Spankers are loads and loads of fun! I haven't seen them play in a while, since they have been spending a lot of time on the road, but they have been a weird, fun staple in the Austin music scene for years. They began, I think, as a 10 or 12 piece ensemble, playing vaudevillian & novelty songs. I hope they still do some of these numbers (and I've heard that they do) because they're terrific --- a unique combination of blues and early jazz. Nowadays, the band sort revolves around a core group of four, and they do some really lonesome bluegrass & even a "hick hop" with dated gangsta rap with country murder ballad lyrics. We're talking instruments like washboard, ukelele & sometimes a hand saw, in addition to the more traditional guitars, fiddle & harmonicas. It's the type of music that could get very tiring, if the core of the group weren't such great musicians and able to completely disguise the absurdity of the lyrics with the amazing music. I'd definitely suggest going to see them --- but make sure you're in the mood to joke around and hear some hilarious, if off-colour, lyrics from the Spankers. They're part of makes Austin so wonderfully weird.
Ooooh, maybe I'll have to try to make it over there, then!
((rats, I'm going to have to miss this after all.))
Upcoming:
Sunday April 6: Robin & Linda Williams. Leslie's been a fan
about as long as this American country/folk duo
has been performing; I've liked them for about 15 years.
They're regulars on A Prairie Home Companion.
Monday/Tuesday April 14-15: Leo Kottke, two nights.
Guitar wizard with an entertaining dry style
of stage patter. Hey, Carla, maybe he's the American version of
Adrian Legg... :)
Sunday April 28: a klezmer band called Yid Vicious. I've never heard
of them before and it's doubtful I can go to the show,
but I just had to mention the band name.
Definitely a great band name..
I was thinking of going to them myself. :-)
Reschedule: April 16 is now Ute Lemper at the Ark, instead of the Michigan.
Jane Siberry is playing the Ark in December, I think on the 16th. http://www.pollstar.com to nail it down...
I'm getting my tix on Sat!
I was kind of interested in Tuesday's free show at the Ark. The band is The Clumsy Lovers, described as "celtic bluegrass rock." However, Carol M. just sent me a link for *another* free show Tuesday: Bulgarian Gypsy music at the U.Michigan Union, Tuesday, 8 pm. http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cwps/Bulgarian.htm Bulgarian might trump Celtic for me. Yargh, I hate conflicts like this.
What you need, Ken, is a band that plays _Bulgarian_ bluegrass Celtic rock. Really, if you can have the three, you can have the four, and I've no doubt it's coming.
Bela Fleck has probably attempted it at some point.
Clumsy Lovers are *fantastic*!!! I was very entertained when I read my last post in this item. Most of the bands that I had listed were ones that I had decided on seeing with this guy that I had met at the A2FF a couple of weeks before. We both made out our lists, compared them, and found that they matched almost exactly. Well, we did go see all those shows together....and by the end of the list, we started dating. We're now living happily together in Royal Oak. How sweet....brought together by folk music. ;)
I think the Clumsy Lovers might have just had another Ark show scrubbed by bad weather; they're on the bill again for sometime in the spring.
Huh, thought I'd already responded to that..,... It's April 23rd, I think.....sometime in april for sure, though.
Wednesday 11/10, the Ark is having a show by local kora player Mady Kouyate. I'll have a few more shows to point at later, and I should also write about what a kora is... (Think: African harp/lute type thing built on a large gourd.) The November & December Ark calendar is pretty much stripped bare of non-resident foreigners. There's one Canadian on the list, Jane Siberry. But the two African shows are by Michigan residents; the Celtic shows are by Americans, or in one case a Scottish expatriate now living in California. FRoots magazine, in a recent editorial, mentioned in passing that the USA world music business is getting hit badly by the difficulties in getting visas for touring musicians. No tours means very little publicity, and that in turn means falling CD sales. The Ark is filling its schedule with way too many singer-songwriters, probably because they have to.
(Is "singer-songwriter" a derogatory term? ;-)
To Ken it is, though if more people supported singer-songwriters, we might avoid more of the sort of crap represented by "bands" and "artists" like Blue, Daniel Benningfield, Justine Fairycake (Timberlake), post-Titanic-era Celine Dion, et al.
Third annual Concert for Peace Featuring Ann Arbor Musicians for Peace Where: The Ark, 326 S. Main, downtown Ann Arbor. When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 19. Tickets: $15, available online at www.theark.org The lineup: Chris Buhalis, Dave Boutette, Brian Lillie, Jo Serrapere, Jay Stielstra, Whit Hill & Al Hill Duo, Annie Capps, Sari Brown, HooDang, Fubar, John Latini, Jason Dennie, Jim Roll, Corndaddy, Hillrays. Learn more about the Committee for Peace at justpeaceinfo.org (from:) http://www.hometownlife.com/Plymouth/News.asp?pageType=Story&StoryID=72482 (if that doesn't bring up the article about the show, you will need to paste this at the end of the URL:) &Section=Filter&OnlineSection=Filter
News about the Ann Arbor Folk Festival: http://www.hometownlife.com/Plymouth/News.asp?pageType=Story&StoryID=81049 If that doesn't bring up the article, paste this at the end of the URL: &Section=Filter Important facts: The 2005 Ann Arbor Folk Festival Where: Hill Auditorium, 825 N. University, Ann Arbor When: 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28, and 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29 Tickets: $30 or $45 for one night, $80 both nights. Call Ticketmaster (248)645-6666 or The Ark (734) 761-1800 For more information: Call The Ark hotline (734) 761-1451 or visit www.theark.org
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