Bill Bynum & Co. Sunday night at the Old Town Tavern. Left to right: Mary Seelhorst on fiddle, Chuck Anderson on bass, Dave Keeney on guitar, Bill Bynum on guitar and vocals. (Photos by the writer.)

They’d come specifically to hear Bill Bynum & Co. play the Old Town Tavern – a neighborhood bar offering free live music every Sunday night. Yes, the Johnstons are fans – they buy a CD every time they see Bill play, says Jim, so they’ll have one to give away to another friend as an introduction to Bynum’s songs.

What kind of songs are those? Bynum announced his Old Town set by saying, “Howdy, folks, we’re here to play some hillbilly music!” And that’s what they did for two 45-minute sets, with a break in between.

The Chronicle didn’t have to drive nearly an hour to get to the Old Town like the Johnstons did – the Old Town is right down the street from us.

But we were there to see Bynum, too, because we wanted to check out one of the acts playing BreakFest 2010 at The Ark on Feb. 26. That’s when Bynum will be joined by Bonnie Rideout, Rev. Robert Jones, Sr. and Duck Baker in a benefit concert at The Ark for The Breakfast at St. Andrew’s, a nonprofit that provides a hot breakfast every day of the year to anyone who shows up at the doorstep of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on North Division.

Why Not Golf?

Jim Cain, who’s producing the BreakFest fundraiser, told The Chronicle that the idea of organizing a concert as a fundraiser was his attempt “to save Ann Arbor from yet another charity golf outing.”

Cain serves as a member of the board of The Breakfast at St. Andrew’s and works as a volunteer at the breakfast itself – washing dishes. The work of organizing the fundraiser, Cain said, didn’t really seem like work. Recruiting the artists was a combination of cold calling and connections – helped by Cain’s own musical background.

Cain played bass in the Saline High School orchestra with fiddler Bonnie Rideout and took piano lessons from her mom. But when he first tried to contact her, she was in Scotland recording a CD and couldn’t be reached. After finally tracking her down, she was instantly on board.

Cain didn’t have a previous connection to fingerstyle guitarist Duck Baker, so he cold-emailed him asking him to play the benefit. In his email, Cain included the fact that he was learning some Irish fiddle tunes arranged for fingerstyle guitar – using teaching materials created by Baker. Baker said yes, and Cain has helped arrange some shows in Kalamazoo and Lansing to make the trip from New York England worth Baker’s while.

But the first artist to agree to perform for BreakFest was Bynum – on a handshake deal. How did Cain get to know Bynum? Start with Bynum & Co.’s fiddle player, Mary Seelhorst. Her husband is an editor at Car and Driver magazine, which is based in Ann Arbor, and she herself is a photographer who on occasion shoots automobiles. Cain met them at the Rolling Sculpture Car Show in downtown Ann Arbor and got to know the band that way.

The Funding Challenge

Part of the impetus behind the need to ramp up fundraising efforts for The Breakfast at St. Andrew’s program was the end of support from the city of Ann Arbor. When human services allocations were made this current year, a new evaluation metric was implemented, along with a requirement that audited financial statements be provided.

The Breakfast was not able to provide audited statements for this year’s application cycle, so was not allocated any funding. As the city of Ann Arbor faces a challenging budget year – with all programs on the table – it’s not clear if any human services programs will receive funding in the coming year.

All of the $30 ticket price for the show at The Ark goes directly to support The Breakfast. To make a donation directly, call 734-663-0518  or make an online donation to the St. Andrew’s breakfast program.

Bynum at the Old Town: Photos

Meanwhile, here are some photos to document the rest of the evening at the Old Town Tavern.

In the first booth were Jim and Connie Johnston, who'd driven from near Jackson, Mich. to hear Bill Bynum & Co. play Ann Arbor's Old Town Tavern.

Bill Bynum

Dave Keeney

Chuck Anderson (on bass) and Dave Keeney

Bill Bynum

The pitcher is passed.

Musician Dick Siegel in his home on Ann Arbor's near northwest side. (Photo by Mary Morgan.)

A strange and fortuitous connection exists between the local musician Dick Siegel, myself, and The Ann Arbor Chronicle. Last May, I wrote a tribute to Ken King of Frog Holler Farm, who passed away after battling a brain tumor. I knew that Dick had played music with Ken, and I thought he might have some insightful words for the tribute.

Just before finishing that article, I ran into Dick at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market, and one of his quotes completed the piece for me. The column ended:

Dick Siegel had this final thought about the death of his long time friend, Ken King.

“He just took one foot off the earth… just now.”

Dick told me that after reading the column in The Chronicle, and considering further what Ken meant to him, he wrote a song about Ken that he then performed at Ken’s memorial service. It is a slow, deeply moving ballad that pays tribute to an extraordinary man, captivating and also hopeful. Expanding on the imagery quoted in the memorial article, the song is called ”The Man Who Fell Into The Sky.”

Dick himself is no less extraordinary. This internationally recognized singer/songwriter and performer is playing at The Ark on Saturday, Jan. 9 as Dick Siegel and the Brandos. This is the latest partnering for Dick – playing with Brian Delaney and Dave Roof – and perhaps one of the ensembles most likely to showcase his immense talent. The three men have also been spending time in the studio, with a new album expected this summer – the tribute to Ken will be on that album.

I had the opportunity to talk with Dick recently at his home on Ann Arbor’s near northwest side. In a wide-ranging interview, we touched on everything from the process of writing his tribute, to Ken, to his childhood growing up in New Jersey, and how his upbringing instilled in him a strong sense of community.

The Power of Community

Dick and I have spoken a few times since our unusual connection through The Chronicle article last spring, but I was just a silent fan of his music before this all took place. And he had no idea who I was. It was a nice connection, the kind that can take place in our small, intertwined community.

In fact, one of my great interests is in community, why Ann Arbor is special, and how it is that we have so many extraordinary people in our midst. So I asked Dick about his experience of Ann Arbor.

Like so many others, he came here for the University of Michigan, and he stayed. His wife Karen teaches at Ypsilanti High School in both theatre and debate. His daughter attends Mack Open, just a few blocks from their home, and Dick was enthusiastic about her work with Sarah Randazzo doing tap, ballet and jazz dance.

Dick’s own childhood was spent in West Orange, New Jersey, where community was important to his family. Dick’s grandfather ran a corner soda shop in Nutley, New Jersey, and was able to cultivate a diverse and vibrant community of regular customers. Dick’s father passed on that appreciation for small town culture. Dick talked about the time spent with his father that included visiting people his dad knew in the course of doing errands or even buying gas, and being part of a town where connections mattered.

He has found that same sort of opportunity to get to know people, to be a regular, here in Ann Arbor.

“I love the small businesses here,” Dick said, “knowing the proprietors, having friendly relationships with them, being part of a network that works with and for each other.”

I asked Dick if the current resurgence of support for local businesses, local food, and locally produced goods could apply to local musicians as well. He agreed that is it important, though he feels that supporting local music is in some ways different. A number of times during our interview, Dick repeated the idea of his songs being a part of the culture and essence of the community. Especially as a songwriter, his role is that of a chronicler or troubadour of our lives and experiences.

Yet he must, and does, have a larger appeal. He relies on the connections and support within our small city, which has also launched his international career. There is something of value in supporting an artist in your community, he said. These artists “share a lot of your culture and they are chronicling your experience. But they’ve got to be good. To do that effectively, you have to hone your craft – no matter what your medium is.”

“My career feels very comfortable and rooted to this place and the life that I live here,” he added. “Although I do travel and perform other places, I’ve never been a performer that is primarily on the road performing. I do know that … living in a place and living among friends … is very important to me.”

Building a Musical Career

While developing his craft, Dick worked as a builder and carpenter. His house reflects that background. In the less than 10 years Dick and his family have lived there, they’ve transformed a neglected yard and vinyl-sided home into a place that’s inviting, clad in the original and more attractive wooden exterior, with restoration of wooden floors, new walls and mechanicals, landscaping in the backyard, a renewed and welcoming front porch, and many other details blending modern, functional, and antique.

While Dick felt some pressure to devote himself full-time to music, he said he liked the work as a carpenter and builder, the friends that he made, and the opportunities it gave him. But now, he spends all his time on his musical career – writing songs, recording, and performing.

Dick has found Ann Arbor to be an accepting place to have a non-traditional career. The town is “a gentle place, very open-minded,” he said. “People are allowed to be who they are without getting a lot of flack from other people. That is one of Ann Arbor’s messages. You can be yourself. That is why you live here.”

“And it’s a supportive community for artists and musicians. They are valued in this community. When I started out, I could devote myself to playing the guitar and writing songs … people didn’t look down, it was a respected pursuit.”

Now, his career is being recognized in traditional ways as well. This semester, he’ll be the Helen L. DeRoy Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan’s Honors Program, teaching a course called, “Sing Out of Our Minds: The Art of Songwriting.”

“Angelo’s” – a Love Song

His own songwriting is grounded in his sense of place. While Dick now lives in the near northwest side of Ann Arbor, he spent many years living near Delhi Park. “It was a tiny little community before all these grand houses were built there,” he recalled. “When I was just beginning to be a songwriter, that was where I lived and I began to look at the world in a larger way – take pictures of it and put the pictures into songs.”

Which confirmed one of my suspicions: that my favorite Dick Siegel song – “When The Sumac Is On Fire” – was inspired by the Staghorn Sumac near the Huron River. “There is a lot of sumac out there,” Dick said. “The song is one of my favorites as well. It is transporting.” He recalled playing the song in Italy to audiences who didn’t speak English – they loved the song without understanding a single word.

But “When The Sumac Is On Fire” isn’t the song that most people recognize from Dick’s repertoire. At this point in his career, he’s best known for “Angelo’s” – a reference to Angelo’s Restaurant in Ann Arbor. The song plays every Saturday and Sunday on the WCSX-FM “Over Easy” program, and over the years it has been heard by tens of thousands of people around the world. It also sells well on iTunes. I asked Dick what it was like to be so well known for a particular song.

“It’s great!” he said. “So many people know the song … many more than know me. When they discover the connection they say, ‘That’s you!? … That’s your song!!??’ They’ve been my fans without realizing it.”

Dick has appreciated being associated with the song, and the fact that it provides an introduction to his other music for new fans.

I learned that “Angelo’s” came on the heels of Dick working very hard on a different song, “a love song that was convoluted and difficult,” he said. “As a vacation from that song, I started making up this one. It came very quickly and captured something romantic, light-hearted and optimistic. Sometimes you struggle with a song and sometimes they pop into your head.”

“I’d been listening to Louie Jordan music. Swing chords, jazz chords … I could use these new chords in a way that made sense to me. They seemed right for ‘Angelo’s.’ When a song is so easy to write … there is no time for it to wither as you are writing it. It comes out ready to jump around.”

The Writing Process

During our interview, Dick also described the process of writing his tribute to Ken King, and from that discussion I was able to gain some insight into both what songwriting means to him as well as how it sometimes unfolds.

“There is always the listener in mind: Am I writing well enough? Am I being clear?” he explained. “I put songs together to be vehicles for something that I can communicate to someone else, something they’ll be able to understand and experience themselves when they hear it. Writing the song about Ken – I went to places that were very sad with the purpose of making something beautiful. I needed to do it for my own relief, with the idea that if I did it right, it could be a relief and comfort for others as well.”

I have been a fan of Dick’s for so many years because of his rich voice, and as a guitar player myself I enjoy listening to musicians who are far more accomplished than I am. I have found so many of the songs he has written simply mesmerizing. The word evocative may be overused, yet that is a fine description of songs that share experience, transport you to other times and places, and stir feelings inside of laughter, love, sadness, happiness, and more.

I was able to listen to a few of his songs with Dick. I loved watching him listen to his own recordings – attentive, fully present, and also frankly intense. I hesitated to say anything to break the mood and his concentration. Yet of course he has heard these same songs countless times, considered each note, and then the synergy of the performance.

A New Direction

Dick described to me why he’s so very excited about the evolution his music has taken with his new trio, the Brandos, and with his help I could fully appreciate that something very special is happening.

The name is taken from another popular song of his, “What Would Brando Do” – a song that struck me strongly when I first heard it. I can recall where I was and who I was with, even though that was a few decades ago. (Both “Angelo’s” and “What Would Brando Do” are on the CD “Snap” – you can here audio clips from the songs on the CD Baby website.)

While Dick had a brief “Brandos” band for a Top of the Park performance, that previous band only played together a few times. “When I started playing a lot with Brian and Dave and realized there was something important with the music we were making and I became committed to the endeavor, I thought the Brandos would be a cool name,” he said. “It made sense.”

I’m not a music reviewer, or critic. I’m just learning how to write about food – something beyond “yum,” “awesome” and “tasty.” So writing about music rather than just singing and enjoying it is a bit of a further stretch for me. But not surprisingly, Dick is articulate when describing his own music, the musicality of his partners Brian Delaney and Dave Roof, and what’s so special about this phase in his long career.

Dick describes Brian as “a musical omnivore,” beginning his career as a classical pianist, and then moving on to the guitar and creating a group called The Royal Garden Trio.

”When he plays a song with me,” Dick said, “he comes up with a part that is very much a part of that song, and expands the entity that the song is. We started getting together just to enjoy ourselves, and some of the stuff we were coming up with was so powerful and amazing and we’d be sitting and playing for a while and after a while we’d say, ‘That’s amazing! Fantastic!’”

Dick and Brian share many of the same roots regarding their musical inspirations and the inventiveness of their styles. When Brian started playing a Shorty – a short electric 12-string guitar – Dick said he was further captivated. The instrument, as Brian played it, fit into the spaces in Dick’s music in a new and wonderful way, providing support and yet not overpowering the basic melodies and imagery created in the lyrics.

“The voice of that instrument melded with my guitar,” Dick said. “The space that my guitar occupied totally melded with the space of that instrument. There was no redundancy in the tone and tenor and pitch of the sounds. It was a very complete-sounding picture of music. That was somewhat of a revelation. Suddenly I could imagine that this sound of this guitar was complementary to my guitar. That it could be used on any song and it would enhance the sound.”

And when I had a brief chance to hear one of their recordings, I could hear what he meant. The Shorty has a mandolin-sounding tone, and the two instruments together sounded more whole.

With no drummer, the contribution of slap bass by Dave rounds out the trio.

“Dave is one of my favorite bass players ever,” Dick told me. “He knows my music. When the three of us started to play together, the sonic space we inhabited, the bass the way Dave was playing it, there was room for him – so it filled it up. With Dave playing and adding percussiveness and drive, there is a complete sound. There is no need for any other instrument. We can perform like this and record like this.”

“The more we began to perform,” Dick added, “the more that feeling was realized. It allowed me to perform songs with these two guys that I could only [previously] play in a rock band. But they allowed a certain pulse to come alive. With the voices and their instruments, powerful rhythmic entities could be performed with a lot of drive.”

“There are some songs where I can sit back,” he said. “I can just sing, with old songs that I’ve sung hundreds of times – I’m free. I’m not trying to make everything happen, and everything is happening. In terms of the total musicality of the endeavor, the level is so high for me.”

And what can you expect for the Jan. 9 concert at The Ark, as well as for the upcoming album?

The trio is breaking new ground, Dick said, “pushing the boundary of what a string trio can do.” And with this new incarnation, “the performance of those songs is so high. I’m excited about it. I look forward to every time that we play.”

Ticket information for the Jan. 9 performance of Dick Siegel and the Brandos is available on The Ark’s website. Siegel’s albums are available online at CD Baby, and individual songs are also sold on iTunes. Additional information about his career and more – including where you can order the Siegel’s Smoky #40 sandwich – is on his own website. About the writer: Linda Diane Feldt is a local holistic health practitioner, teacher and writer. You can follow her foraging and herbal tips on twitter.com/wildcrafting.

Dave Sharp (Photos by Dave Askins.)

Last Friday, The Chronicle took a break from reporting on government meetings to pay a visit to Live at PJ’s on the western edge of downtown Ann Arbor at the corner of First and Huron.

The occasion of our visit: The release of Dave Sharp’s Secret Seven CD. The music, self-described as “Jazz, World Music and Rock together with a grooving sound for all ears” was available for sale on CDs as well as re-usable, eco-friendly USB drives – because, as Sharp put it, “This is Ann Arbor, right?”

Sharp, of course, knew right where he was, because he teaches bass at the Ann Arbor Music Center on Ashley Street a couple of blocks away from PJ’s.

His students, as well as the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, were represented in the crowd. After the jump, we share some photos to document the evening.

Chris Kaercher (sax), Sean Ike (vocals), Chris McCall (vocals), Dave Sharp (bass)

Ross Huff

Sean Ike

Muruga Booker

Chris McCall

Sean Ike and Chris McCall

Ross Huff (trumpet) and Chris Kaercher (sax)

Chris McCall

An Orpheum Bell rehearsal: On bass, Serge van der Voo; vocals sung through a gramophone horn, Aaron Klein.

I’m wedged in the corner of a west side Ann Arbor basement amongst a jumble of musical instrument cases. The cases belong to the six musicians of Orpheum Bell. There’s more than one case per musician – they each play an array of different instruments. During a break in the rehearsal, I have to ask: What is that? It’s a Stroh violin, “spelled like the beer,” explains Annie Crawford.

The rehearsal is geared towards a CD release show at The Ark on Dec. 4. I’m soaking in the sounds of the basement practice mostly because of that CD, the group’s second – “Pearls.”

Serge van der Voo had sent along a review copy of the CD to The Chronicle. In a world of MP3 files flung around the Internet, a physical CD is an awfully clunky way to deliver musical data. But when I unfolded the heavy card stock CD cover into its 16-inch total length, I noticed one of the folds was not exactly uniform and regular – not the way you’d expect if a machine had produced several thousand of them.

An even closer examination revealed that the print quality was not the laser-like rigid perfection that a modern digital printer delivers. Which is not to say it was sloppy. On the contrary. It was more like trace-evidence that human hands had played a role. Who were these people with the apparently handcrafted CD case? To get some insight, I had crammed myself back amongst those instrument cases in the corner of a basement for two hours.

The CD cover was imprinted with artwork and text by a hand-fed cylinder letterpress. And now it’s imprinted with my musical memory of that two hours of rehearsal. It’s upon that physical artifact that I will hang the pleasant recollection of an evening spent listening to live music played by some extraordinarily talented musicians.

Orpheum Bell: Music and Words

The music of Orpheum Bell is self-described as “country and eastern.” The country elements are easy enough to pick out: banjo, bass, mandolin, violin.

But Laurel Premo’s style is not the ostentatious metallic ringing banjo typical of some American country music. Instead, it is an almost muted strum that can still tickle forth individual notes from her open back 5-string. And Annie Crawford’s Stroh violin, with its metal horn, projects a sound a bit different from a country music fiddle.

Merrill Hodnefield (standing) and Laurel Premo, playing the dobro.

The eastern influences come partly from the Stroh violins, but more from Michael Billmire’s accordion. And based on their sound, it’s on occasion easy enough to imagine that Orpheum Bell is a band of gypsies. The tracks that feature Merrill Hodnefield’s musical saw are just a little bit spooky.

Part of what makes it difficult to slot Orpheum Bell into a convenient musical slot is their use of variation in tempo – all driven by van der Voo’s bass, whether he’s bowing it, plucking it, or whacking its body with the palms of his hands.

During rehearsal, at the conclusion of one tune – which included lyrics about the Cayahoga River – Premo remarked that it was “rubato-ish.” It seemed to pull them along, she said.

What Orpheum Bell has achieved musically with this new CD “Pearls” is consistent with the poetry of Aaron Klein, who’s responsible for most of the lyrics and much of the music.  It’s not surprising that songs collected together under the title “Pearls” have water imagery woven throughout.

Take the first track on the CD,”What If No Sparrow Fell,” which includes a line that I would like to imagine was inspired by standing at Argo Dam and looking first south, and then north along the Huron River: “The river’s skinny but the pond’s so wide …” It’s hard not to point out that the Huron connects Orpheum Bell at least indirectly to Ann Arbor’s recent history – van der Voo’s wife, Kirsten Elling, is the daughter of Liz Elling, who swam the length of the river in the summer of 2007.

In “Sparrow,” water also can be found in the tears that flowers “wept by the bandshell as the rain swang wide.”

Starting with the bass at 12 o'clock and going clockwise: Serge van der Voo, Merrill Hodnefield, Laurel Premo, Annie Crawford, Michael Billmire, Aaron Klein. (Photo by the writer.)

And I would again like to imagine a specific local Ann Arbor connection that might have inspired the lyric – the Westpark Bandshell, not so awfully far from the west side basement where Orpheum Bell rehearses. (I was raised on a literary tradition that doesn’t place much stock in author intent or inspiration – Klein’s text is mine now, to hear how I like. You can ask him if you want, but I’m not going to.)

Between the first and the last tracks, fountains, lakes, oceans and harbors populate the landscapes that Klein describes.

And on the last track of the CD, “Don’t Let On,” it’s one of the CD’s numerous flowers that ties into the watery thematic flow: “The rose whispers from the deep well/ Don’t need more water, but I could use some more light.”

But it’s not all flowers on this CD: “Every garden needs a weed” is the wisdom offered by “New Hearse for Hastings.” And it’s that idea, I think, that captures the aesthetic of Klein’s gravelly voice – accentuated in its gravelly glory when he sings through a gramophone horn – contrasted with the pretty vocals of Orpheum Bell’s female singers.

It’s a reminder that actual people, not robots, provide the manual musical labor that makes for the pleasant sounds we’re hearing.

Printing the CD Cover: A Collaboration

Manual labor also produced the CD cover that van der Voo had sent to The Chronicle – labor shared across several shoulders. He and his wife, Kirsten Elling, used an old 1950s-era hand-fed cylinder letterpress to print the designs, using copper plates that Geoff Innis had prepared.

Jim Horton whose hand-fed cylinder letterpress was used to print the CD covers, gets his first look at the results. (Photo by the writer.)

Innis, who works for  Perich Advertising + Design, had the plates made by Owosso Graphics, located in a Owosso, Michigan.

The calligraphy on the old bank check design that forms the back of the CD cover was rendered by Kelly Burke – someone Aaron Klein had randomly met at a local art supply store.

The check itself was designed with help from Bob Hohertz of the American Society of Check Collectors.

The letterpress used for the printing sits in the basement of Jim Horton, along with several other old presses and type-setting gear. Horton teaches studio art and printmaking at Greenhills School and Hollander’s School of Book Arts.

Van der Voo indulged a request from me to see the press. And that meant he drove me out to meet Horton where he lives near Waters and Wagner roads, amongst a woods that boasts some pawpaw trees.

Kirsten Elling and husband Serge van der Voo operated the press during printing of the CD cover. (Photo by Geoff Innis.)

When van der Voo handed him a copy of the CD, Horton was getting his first peek at the finished CD cover. He was clearly satisfied with the output from his press.

He discerned a spot with slightly non-uniform ink distribution – and was delighted. It seemed to be exactly the desired effect.

Horton explained that the 1,000 or so copies of the CD cover that Orpheum Bell had printed were pushing the limits of what the press was designed to do, which was to make proofs of newspaper pages before a proper press run.

Recording the CD: An Ethic of Realism

Orpheum Bell’s CD was recorded, mixed and mastered by Jim Roll at his Ann Arbor studio, Backseat Productions. I phoned him up to ask about the “Pearls” recording, and any special challenges posed by Orpheum Bell’s commitment to less-than-modern instruments – Stroh violins, gramophone horns and the like.

Roll talked about the philosophy of his approach to recording: “The ethic of the studio is realism as opposed to modern production,” he explained, “so, they [Orpheum Bell] were a good match.”

Michael Billmire (trumpet) and Aaron Klein (guitar) take a break during the Orpheum Bell rehearsal. (Photo by the writer.)

Achieving that realism entails backing the musicians off the microphones a little bit, Roll explained, “to make sure you can hear the room.” The idea, he says, is to leave “the grit and the reality” there on the recording.

Roll had mixed, but not recorded, Orpheum Bell’s first CD, “Pretty As You,” which was done live with no isolation of individual tracks. For “Pearls,” Roll explained, the bones of each song – bass, guitar and vocals – were recorded live, with other instruments like violins and accordions added later. But they never record to a click track (a metronome), Roll says, to make sure that variations in tempo can come across.

Towards the end of the basement rehearsal, Orpheum Bell goes through the track from “Pretty As You” that bears the same title as the whole CD – it’s planned as their final number at the CD release show at The Ark on Dec. 4. And the discussion at the rehearsal focuses on the question of tempo – do they want to finish it that way? Van der Voo concludes: “I’m happy to end on that pace.”

Michael Billmire bends the notes of his trumpet to his will. (Photo by the writer.)

Serge van der Voo is a blur on bass. (Photo by the writer.)