Whether you're looking for your big break, want to perfect your live performance skills, or just want to perform live for the sheer fun of it, Open Stage nights offer supportive audiences and a terrific space.
At its heart, bluegrass music is about what happens when you commit to the moment. The joy of improvisation keeps the music fresh, and the fun of crafting ideas on the fly keeps the musicians on their toes. This true spirit of bluegrass infuses the self-titled record from Mighty Poplar, a new all-star roots project featuring Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse, Noam Pikelny and Chris Eldridge of Punch Brothers, and bassist Greg Garrison (Leftover Salmon).
Though Pikelny, Eldridge, Garrison all knew each other from their early work with Punch Brothers, impromptu backstage jams with Marlin at festivals across the country were the key that unlocked the project. A lifelong song collector, Marlin selected and sang lead on most of the songs here, bringing classics as well as deep cuts from greats like Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, John Hartford, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Norman Blake. The playing is just about as amazing as you would expect given the group’s membership, but it’s never overstated or showy. This is a bluegrass supergroup that has been tearing up stages all over the place since the release of their self-titled debut album at the end of March, and we are excited to welcome them for their first Ark show!
Presented at Royal Oak Music Theatre by The Ark and AEG with ann arbor's 107one Celebrating over 30 years as a band, Toad the Wet Sprocket is still making music and touring with the same spirit of unwavering independence that started it all over three decades ago. Toad the Wet Sprocket share in the kind of musical chemistry that can only come from meeting in high school and writing, recording and touring on albums over the course time.
The daughter of the famed Polish-Canadian mathematician Irving Kaplansky (who once wrote a song based on the first 14 digits of pi that his daughter has been known to perform), Lucy Kaplansky started out singing in Chicago bars. Then, barely out of high school, she took off for New York City. There she found a fertile community of songwriters and performers—Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, Bill Morrissey, Cliff Eberhardt, and others—where she fit right in—and kept on singing after earning a degree and working in the field of clinical psychology. She's a singer-songwriter with an extraordinary feel for the range of human emotion. Lucy puts her own spin on contemporary songwriter folk with warm, powerful vocals and guitar playing that draws guitar gods (or geeks) to talk shop with her. Lucy Kaplansky, says the Boston Globe, "is becoming the troubadour laureate of modern city folk." Her CD “Ten Year Night” is the all-time best-selling album in the catalog of the folk label Red House Records. Lucy comes to Michigan with a wonderful new album, "Last Days of Summer."
Kristian Matsson has never remained in one place for very long. Having spent much of the last decade touring around the world as The Tallest Man on Earth, Matsson has captivated audiences using, as The New York Times describes, “every inch of his long guitar cord to roam the stage: darting around, crouching, stretching, hip-twitching, […]
The all-star cast will collaborate, improvise, and feature the stylings of each player and ensemble as they pay tribute to legendary guitar innovator Django Reinhardt by playing some of his most famous compositions, deepest cuts, musical lineage, and music from the contemporary jazz manouche cannon of which his work is considered to be the blueprint. For longtime lovers or the newly curious; this celebration of Hot Club music will give listeners a deeper appreciation for the joyous energy and community that surrounds this tradition of social music.
Special Guest: Paul Cebar
The Ark 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesIt's as if the blues met modern poetry and got infused with Zen calm. Chris Smither takes the blues in a direction all his own, offering stoic, existential ruminations sung in a weathered blues moan and set to quietly virtuosic guitar.
Paul Cebar cut his teeth musically in the coffeehouse folk scene of the mid-'70s in Milwaukee. Taking cues from the dance bands of western Louisiana (and his native Midwest,), the streets (and 45’s) of New Orleans, touring African and Caribbean combos and the soul, funk & blues of his youth coupled with early, teeth-cutting experience in the verbal hotbeds of the coffeehouse scene, Cebar is a masterful synthesist of rhythmic culture
Opener: Charly Lowry
Michigan Theater 603 East Liberty, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesRhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time GRAMMY Award-winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the […]
The jazz-blues-and-swing combo that touched off a whole new craze for classic American dance music in the 1990s is back in town! Big Bad Voodoo Daddy took its name from an autograph blues guitarist Albert Collins scrawled on a poster for BBVD leader Scotty Morris in 1989. With thousands of appearances in the U.S. and […]
Special Guest: Taylor Rae
The Ark 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesPortland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower.
Craigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.
One of a pair of brothers who spearheaded a tremendous renaissance in Canadian songwriting in the 1970s and 1980s, Garnet Rogers tells detailed stories of people from all walks of life and their small, everyday victories. He can shift from seriousness to razor-sharp wit in a heartbeat, and no two of his shows are the same. Nearly six and a half feet tall, he has a striking stage presence. Says Dirty Linen: "He knows and captures what is real and lasting--the joyous, contradictory poetry of living," and Canada's Kitchener Record praises Garnet's "visionary songs of haunting and mysterious power." Come by and pick up a copy of Garnet’s new book, 6 Crows Gold.
Opener: Oh He Dead
The Ark 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesLove You Anyway, the new album from Devon Gilfillian, is an intoxicating, genre-blasting game changer spanning soul, hip-hop, R&B, and rock, all under the banner of Black joy. With an incisive eye and unassuming swagger, Gilfillian re-imagines modern soul music by redefining its possibilities.
Produced by Jeremy Lutito (Joy Oladokun, NEEDTOBREATHE), Love You Anyway, (Fantasy) confronts as well as comforts. Chronicling Gilfillian’s journey as a Black artist living in America, it’s as much about fighting for what you believe in: equity and representation, as it is about love - finding it, making it, and channeling it into every facet of our lives.
A captivating, can’t-miss live performer, the Philadelphia-born, Nashville based singer-songwriter regularly commands club, theater, and festival stages around the world. Now, on Love You Anyway, Gilfillian conjures the raw, sexy emotions of his predecessors and the next-level grooves of his contemporaries, taking soul music into an exciting and restorative new future.