Nothing better than a three-day weekend. Well, except a 4-day weekend but I’m not getting stingy here. A three-day weekend was just what the doctor ordered. What doc? Umm…Doctor Detroit? My wife and I took Friday off and headed up north three hours to the great Michigan college town known as Ann Arbor, or “the biggest little city in the middle”. At least that’s according to the painting which hung in the dining area of the Holiday Inn Express we stayed at.
Why was Ann Arbor our destination? We had tickets to see the great jazz drummer(or beat scientist) Makaya McCraven at the Michigan Theater. This is an artist I’ve been all about for a few years now. He, along with guys like Jeff Parker and Joel Ross, have become to my ears the new sound of modern jazz. They are pushing the idea of what jazz can be, adding elements of hip hop, psychedelia, and experimental sound collages to the mix. McCraven approaches jazz music more like the way Miles Davis and Teo Macero approached it in the mid-60s and early 70s. Taking live improvisations, recording them, and then reconfiguring those recordings into a studio work.
Anyways, more on Makaya later.
My wife and I left around 11am Friday morning and hit the road. We stopped off the freeway for a quick bite of lunch around 1pm and made it to our hotel around 3:30. After a little post-drive decompression we headed out to do some exploring in downtown Ann Arbor.
Ann Arbor does feel like both a little city and a big one. Even when a town is generally small to mid-size, when there’s a college in it that always gives the area a bit of heft. Like a small to medium body wearing tons of layers of clothes, the proportions seem bigger. Ann Arbor feels pretty massive when downtown as you’re surrounded by buildings belonging to the University of Michigan, as well as lots of shops and cultural artifacts. There’s also plenty of homeless and shady areas, too. It’s what comes with the territory in a college town, unfortunately(for the ones homeless, that is.) Towns like Bloomington(home of Indiana University), South Bend(home of Notre Dame), and even where my oldest went Greencastle(home of Depauw University) feel larger than what they are with prominent colleges in them.
First stop for us was an oversize shopping area. An indoor retail spot with grocery store, restaurants, coffee shops, a beer and wine seller, and your basic fancy trinket/doo dad sellers. My wife wanted to check the doo dads, so I checked the map and the record shop I wanted to check out was just a four-minute walk away. Encore Records wasn’t a stranger to me, as when we were in Ann Arbor six years ago on our way to Canada we stopped in and I bought Madvillian’s Madvilliany and something else that’s not coming to mind. It was a cool spot and I wanted to revisit.
Going in my mind went blank. I couldn’t think of a damn thing to get. You know how that goes? Sometimes you hit the record shop and even with nothing in mind stuff starts hitting your brain like some electrical music storm. You could easily walk out with 5 to 10 albums. I don’t know if it was the long drive or the excitement of the concert or just that I needed to eat, but I couldn’t find one thing. That’s the worst. As a super fan of music you feel like you’ve failed if you can’t leave the shop with at least one damn album.
I think part of it was that there was 3 people in there working and they were all in deep conversation about something. What? I wasn’t sure. It felt kind of clique-y, and they were listening to the Lord of the Rings S/T as well. It was distracting. There was no “Hey how’s it going? What are you looking for? What are you in town for?” It was like I was a ghost in the building. I don’t always need a greeting, but sometimes it’s a bit of an ice breaker and I can relax a bit and start to get the music buying mojo working, you know?
Anyways, I did come across a repressing of Dr. Lonnie Smith’s groovy funk masterpiece Turning Point, so I didn’t leave empty-handed. I went up and interrupted their conversation about real peanut butter and things that are just flavored to taste like peanut butter and then left.
We ate at a place called Detroit Pizza Pub downtown. Found it in a search and it got a decent rating so we hit them up. It was definitely a pub. Felt like it had been a crappy bar that was converted to a restaurant. It stunk like cigarette smoke as well, so my Spidey senses were already tingling. We were too hungry and short on time to re-evaluate the dinner plans so we grabbed a menu.
We ordered bruschetta for an appetizer and a small(4-pc) bbq chicken square pie. The bruschetta came out in quick time and as she sat it down I thought what in God’s name is that? Now, my idea of bruschetta is a slice of Italian bread toasted with olive oil drizzled over it. Then topped with a fresh slice of tomato, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and balsamic glaze over top. What was left on our table was tiny slices of Italian bread toasted to crunchy and topped with what looked like brown piles of shit. Turns out the piles were diced up green olives and capers. I hate green olives anyways, but diced up I seemed to have hated them more. It was not good. My wife said she thought the menu said something about green olives but didn’t think anything of it.
The pizza came out soon after and, while not true Detroit-style, it was at least tasty. I didn’t leave the place completely disappointed.
We made it to the theater with about 30 minutes before the show. When we finally got in and to our seats I was blown away. We were in the second row to the stage, and what looked like about 15 feet from the drums. Best seats I’ve ever had for show. The crowd started to roll in and there were A LOT of gray-haired folks that I can only assume were alumni season ticket holders. I’d wondered to myself if any of them even knew who Makaya McCraven was. If not, they were in for a treat.
The show was unbelievable. Maybe one of the best 90 minutes of live music I’ve ever seen. It was a quartet, with McCraven accompanied by upright bass, electric guitar, and saxophone. They played cuts from his upcoming album which hits 10/31, as well as the title track from his last album In These Times. They closed the show with an encore where they performed the incredible “Autumn In New York” from his Blue Note remix album Deciphering The Message.
It was just a stunning performance. I found myself going from the guitarist to the bassist to the saxophonist back to McCraven, equally in awe of them all. And the forearms on McCraven and the bass player looked like they were weightlifters. Like I said, one of the best 90 minutes of live music I’ve ever seen.
We made it back to the hotel around 10 pm and crashed.
Saturday we ate the continental breakfast at the hotel then checked out around 8:40am. My wife wanted to hit up a couple thrift stores, which we did. First one was a bust. It was like going through someone’s dilapidated horse barn and hoping to find treasures amongst dirty garage sale finds. It was not good. We then found another one that was run by a local PTO group. All their proceeds go to local PTOs which we both thought was pretty great. My wife found some things, while I just meandered.
The last stop was Wazoo Records back in downtown Ann Arbor. It was a pretty cool place, up a narrow staircase and into a pretty small shop overlooking downtown. They had lots of cool stuff, but by then I think my shopping mojo had been depleted. Sadly, I left empty-handed.
We hit the road for home.
Made a stop at a Cabela’s as I needed to use the bathroom. First time in a Cabela’s, and probably the last. It’s like a superstore for hunter/gatherers, so I was completely out of place there. Even the children were in camo and were packing in that place. I thought I’d look at some coats but after about five minutes I felt we needed to get out. I think the folks there sensed we listen to NPR, and the modern country that was playing over the loudspeakers was making me nervous.
At some point on the drive home we realized we weren’t going where we thought we were. We’d planned on taking I94 west to Kalamazoo, then find some food there, maybe hit up our favorite market Bullseye in Three Rivers. Turns out we had stayed on another highway that was taking us to Toledo, OH. This was not the plan. We ended up getting on highway 12 west and decided we’d take it to White Pigeon, where we could get dinner at a Mancino’s. It ended up being a couple extra hours on the road, but by God we were going to at least have a damn good dinner.
We hit all kinds of traffic issues; road closures, small town festivals, road construction, and just about any bad driving stereotypes you could think of. We finally made it to Mancino’s around 5pm and stuffed ourselves on ham and cheese grinders and breadsticks. We also stopped at an orchard and picked up some fresh cider, Dutch Apple Pie, and a pumpkin roll.
It’s always great to get away, at least when it’s my wife and I. Getting older, kids grown up, and not having to worry about how an aging dog is doing home alone frees you to just be in the moment, not rush, and enjoy yourself. I never realized how uptight I was when we’d go away back when we had an old dog at home that I was constantly worrying about. Now I actually enjoy going out and doing things. I’m still a homebody/borderline hermit, but not quite as much as I was. And when we get to go to shows like the one we witnessed in Ann Arbor Friday night, I’m all the more down for it.
Bring on the jazz concerts, the thrift store adventures, the pumpkin rolls, and take the long way home. Hold the green olive bruschetta.
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