Taylor Greenshields didn’t anticipate he'd be doing Fun Fest this long.

The Ypsilanti audio engineer, producer, and drummer started the annual event in 2021 after envisioning Frog Island Park’s amphitheater as the ideal space for an outdoor music festival.

“Yeah, it’s crazy that it’s the fifth year,” said Greenshields, who’s curating and hosting the event on August 9. “The first year was like a test run, and then seeing people enjoy the fest so much the next couple years, I had to keep it going.”

Since then, he’s featured an eclectic group of local artists performing at Fun Fest, including Travis Auckerman, Stormy Chromer, Ki5, The Macpodz, Thornetta Davis, and others.

“It’s almost like the festival is its own organism at this point,” said Greenshields, also the owner and operator of Fundamental Sound Co., an Ypsilanti-based recording studio.

“The festival has grown in many ways over the years by having different activities for kids [and] all sorts of different vendors, bands, and artists. Just the word getting around about the festival has really evolved over the last few years [as well].”

Now, he’s gearing up for the fifth edition of Fun Fest, which includes returning acts Al Bettis, Dani Darling, Ma Baker, and Violet Sol. It also features the new additions of Marcus Elliot, Peter Madcat Ruth’s C.A.R.Ma Quartet, and Jacuzzi Beach to the festival's lineup.

There is a movement in the United States to reach out to people in other countries through person-to-person contact. The intention is to develop empathy for other people, other cultures, and other points of view. The idea is admirable, but “empathy” is not always the same for everyone.

Playwright David Wells’ Radical Empathy is a challenging look at that movement through the relationship of an American couple and an Iraqi couple during the conflict between U.S. forces and ISIS from 2011 to 2018. Wells has found a perfect theater for his thought-provoking play at Ann Arbor’s Theatre Nova, a small theater with big ambitions.

A TED Talk lecturer gives an emotional, riveting, and eventually viral lecture on radical empathy. He challenges his audience to imagine how Americans would feel if, in the past, China had taken control of American coal, China had prospered, and Americans had fallen into poverty except for the richest citizens. He then brought the argument to the present—2011—and the United States is prosperous, but the Iraqi people are caught in a seemingly endless series of conflicts with the United States while also dealing with internal forces.

The lecture draws the attention of an Iraqi man. He is middle-class, unhappy with life under the control of ISIS, and wants to learn more about Radical Empathy. He writes to the lecturer, and a person-to-person conversation begins that also includes the wives of the two men.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features jazzy pop by Dani Darling, classical-jazz minatures by Timothy McAllister and Liz Ames, modern jazz by Brynn Hilliker, indie pop by Skinned Knees and the Band Aids, and trance techno by Aventar.

Despite the band’s name, J. Michael & The Heavy Burden wants to lighten the emotional load for people.

The Ann Arbor-Metro Detroit band provides a cathartic outlet for processing feelings—ranging from hope to heartbreak to euphoria—on its latest album.

“A lot of the music that I write, it all comes from a very emotional place,” said Jeff “J. Michael” Brach, frontman for the Americana-jam rock band, about Where We Belong.

“When I’m at my peak creatively and writing a lot of music, which I’m actually doing more of right now, it’s when I’m going through difficult things.”

Brach examines a spectrum of emotions while rediscovering his purpose—both personally and vicariously—across eight tracks.

“Universally, the music that I love, you can identify with it, even if you’re interpreting it differently,” he said. “We all come from our perspectives, but you can universally tap into certain things that are being said.”

The in-person Disability Pride art exhibition at Disability Network Washtenaw Monroe Livingston (DNWML) has its roots in the virtual world of 2020.

"I had recently become our arts manager," said Claire Moore, "and we were looking for ways to expand creative opportunities for our blossoming arts program. What began as a virtual art class in March 2020 has become a robust arts program with visual, performance, dance, and writing arts, as well as teaching opportunities for disabled artists. ... As our reputation for centering the arts has grown, so has our reach for the Disability Pride art exhibition."

The Disability Network is "run by people with disabilities for people with disabilities," as stated on its website, offering peer support, training, advocacy, and much more, but it's also become a creative hub, with the Disability Pride exhibit as a centerpiece.

"I truly believe offering a consistent, no-cost art exhibition for disabled artists, during Disability Pride month, is something so necessary—and completely aligns with our mission as an organization," Moore said.

The third edition of the Disability Pride exhibition, in DNWML's Gallery Be, is titled In This Together: Joy & Interdependence in Disability Culture. Moore put out a call for works by asking "artists to emphasize the jubilance and support they experience as members of the disability community."

Ypsilanti’s true believers The Velvet Snakes slithered into view in 2021, storming the dives of mid-Michigan in a blur of hair and paisley. As they pursued a path of ecstatic rock 'n’ roll raunch with frequent left turns into psychedelia, the band quickly found a home amongst connoisseurs of the Dee-troit/Ann Arbor/Ypsi underground rock axis.

After a handful of lineup changes, today The Velvet Snakes are Logan Belz and Gage Rettinger on guitar and vocals, while Tyler Love handles bass and Noah Wright holds down the tubs. The band recently completed their debut album, a collection called FIRST STRIKE, and The Velvet Snakes are making it official this Thursday, July 31, with a record release event at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti. (The band also headlines night three of Fuzz Fest 2025 at The Blind Pig on Saturday, August 23.)

The title of their song “Gorilla on the Beach” makes the best description of the Snakes’ sound, a flailing, fuzzy garage-rock stomp warped by the otherworldly bend and twang of surf guitar and soaked in a bath of Blue Cheer. With their broken blues riffs and acidic fretboard freak-outs, the Snakes produce the kind of budget-label psych-noise that should excite fans of bands like The Stooges and The Seeds (or any of their myriad progeny).

The stories in Dylan Strzynski’s new book-like zine, Guadalcanal 2006, notice oddities and make up stories about them.

What if an old car was eulogized like a human?

Would the last man alive eat cockroaches?

Why does that person have lunch alone in their car every day?

Are lizards the squirrels of Florida?

What if a painting of Guadalcanal took on a life of its own? How does Guadalcanal live on in the psyche? What if plane travelers were transferred to a submarine en route to Guadalcanal?  

A mix of fiction and nonfiction, these 26 stories of varying lengths do not provide answers to all the questions but rather observe and, in some cases, expand on what is possible. This approach aligns with how Strzynski describes his visual art.

“I’m always using my artwork as a way to tell people about where I’ve been and what I’ve seen,” he said. “Even if it’s funny and weird, it’s usually referencing something I experienced. … Rather than try to solve every problem within everything I make, I recognize everything is of a piece.”

Dexter-based Strzynski is not only a writer but also a visual artist and musician. Yet, his writing has not been featured until now.

“Writing has always been a part of my life, but I kept it a secret,” he said.

You might find Ann Arbor’s Dollie Rot in a parking garage stairwell, a lone field, or a dive bar stage.

Those haunting locales serve as the ideal backdrop for the gothic “it girl,” who released her debut EP Survivor’s Guilt in 2017 at age 16 and followed up with a handful of singles and the album Man’s Wrath in 2024.

In May, Rot released her latest EP, Hidden Works, a compilation of estranged tracks from her archives that reflect her signature low-fi sound, which is based around acoustic guitar and heaps of reverb.

“I touch on so many different points of strife in Hidden Works, and I wanted it to be a more well-rounded album than Man’s Wrath, which was a concept album with a theme present in all the songs,” Rot said. “Hidden Works is more mismatched. There’s less of a narrative quality, but it tells a story.”

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features music-hall-pop-psychedelic-jazz by Tinn Parrow & Company / Laurence Bond Miller, synthesizer music by Fred Thomas, alien electronica by The Evil Doings of an Intergalactic Skeleton, avant-R&B by Keif Skye, and ukulele-led pop by Mother Mushroom.

In his new film, Zach Damon shares the rich history of disability advocacy in Ann Arbor.

The director explores 70 years of local advocacy in Resilience Revealed: Ann Arbor’s Disability Legacy, which highlights the city’s foundational role in shaping the broader disability rights movement.

“Honestly, disability is something I have a great deal of experience in,” said Damon, who was born with cerebral palsy and grew up in Ann Arbor.

“And as a filmmaker, when an opportunity comes along to make a film about what you know, you have a duty to make work that can give a glimpse into what that is and what came before you to enlighten others.”

Through personal narratives, historical accounts, and expert insights, the 24-minute film examines the building blocks of Ann Arbor’s disability rights legacy, emphasizing its significance within the community and its impact on future generations.