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

This week features a smorgasbord of various hops—hip, trip, and otherwise—by Othercast, Half Blue, Exy, and Insulingod, plus musical-theater originals by Not Even Really Drama Students (N.E.R.D.S.).

Drive Thru is a new skateboard clothing, video, and lifestyle company run by friends Austin Roberts, Ramon Rogelio Fuentes, Kaito Osborn, and Luke Turowski. They are part of the passionate skate community in Washtenaw County, which officially counts Ypsilanti’s DIY skatepark in Prospect Park, the Ann Arbor Skatepark in Veterans Park, and the Olympia Skate Shop, with in both Ann Arbor and Ypsi, as gathering spots.

But skaters love to skate ... anywhere.

That’s the focus of this new skateboard lifestyle collective’s debut short film, also called Drive Thru, which captures skaters grinding and tricking throughout Washtenaw County, with a heavy focus on Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

The 25-minute-long Drive Thru premieres at The Blind Pig on Thursday, August 18, with a screening and performances by Michigan punk bands ​​Dad Caps and My Place or Yours.

We spoke with Drive Thru’s Austin Roberts and Ramon Rogelio Fuentes about their company, the film, and the skating scene in Washtenaw County.

Hava Gurevich beautifully imagines and creates her own artistic ecosystem.

The Ann Arbor artist blends nature’s vibrant colors with unique lifeforms and hypnotic botanical, aquatic, and microscopic motifs to capture a universal interconnectedness. 

Those stunning linkages thrive and evolve across Gurevich’s latest acrylic art exhibit, Inspired by Nature: 20 Years of Art by Hava Gurevich, at the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor.

“My work is very aquatic and botanical, but it’s been more botanical in the last few years because I’m not close to any body of water that has life in it,” said Gurevich, whose exhibit runs through Sept. 11 and includes artwork created from 2002 to 2022.

“There’s an intentional connection to nature and an intentional connection to plants and native plants, like prairies and wildflowers, and it’s all of those concepts that are in my work. They’re all here … and the themes all kind of fit.”

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

This week features pop-a-cappella by Ki5, hip-hop from Kiyoshi and 3Steez, pastoral ambiance by Utica, '90s-esque alt-rock by Jonathan Crayne, and experimental songcraft by KUZbeats.

After his pet rat passed away, Jay Frydenlund was at a loss for words.

Instead, the Chirp frontman decided to honor his late rodent companion, Stevie, with a spirited namesake instrumental.

“Stevie the Rat was the most fearless rat that has ever existed, so I wanted to write something about her that represented that,” said Frydenlund, Chirp’s lead vocalist and guitarist. “I started working on it a few days after she died.”

Alongside bandmates Brian Long (bass, vocals), Sam Naples (guitar, vocals), and Patrick Blommel (drums) in the Ann Arbor prog-funk-jazz jam quartet, Frydenlund penned the playful, ardent “Stevie.”

Buoyant electric guitar, soulful bass, and pulsating drums scurry throughout the melodic funk and psych-rock adventures of Stevie’s past. 

“I think the energy of the tune represents Stevie’s pretty well,” Frydenlund said. “Brian [Long] lights that song on fire with his bass solo. If Stevie were a bass-playing rat, that’s exactly what she would have done.”

Chirp will share “Stevie” and other fresh, funky tracks during an Aug. 13 show in Ann Arbor’s Liberty Plaza as part of the Concert to Shut Down Line 5. It will be the band's first hometown show since playing Ann Arbor Summer Festival: Top of the Park in June.

For Emma McDermott, people from her past and present provide the ultimate creative inspiration.

The Nashville, Tennessee electro-pop singer-songwriter thoughtfully channels previous relationships and memorable interactions on her reflective debut album, She Likes to Fly.

“I write a lot of my lyrics from my heart … not necessarily as journal entries, but if I’m feeling a certain feeling, and I’m able to put music to it, then it’s almost like being in a musical,” said McDermott, who hails from Ann Arbor and studies commercial voice at Belmont University.

“I do like to write about what I’m feeling, the times that I’ve had, and the people who have come and gone in my life. I write people as muses a little bit, so if I had a relationship in high school, and then I was just reflecting on it during my sophomore year of college, then that’s what fuels the lyrics and fuels the feeling.”

Throughout She Likes to Fly, McDermott chronicles an emotive journey of self-discovery that grooves and glides through life and love. Alongside intimate lyrics, magnetic synth-based instrumentation, and infectious dance-pop hooks, she provides captivating tales that instantly resonate with listeners.

“That’s sort of how it came together, just on its own,” McDermott said. “The songs were written over a span of like two or three years, so it wasn’t like I sat down and said, ‘Oh, I’m gonna write this album about this subject matter.’ It was kind of like a conglomerate sort of entity, and all those songs found their way toward each other to be on the album.”

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

This week features live music and demos by The Stooges circa 2003-2007, dub techno by cv313 and YY Ori, rustic Americana by False Figures, and modern classical courtesy of Alex Blanpied.

An exhibition featuring newer or less-established artists might conjure up thoughts of an elementary school art fair. 

But one peek at the new Emerge exhibit at Ann Arbor's Gutman Gallery will banish those incorrect thoughts right back into that giant box of unexamined fingerpaintings your kid did as a tot.

Like last year's inaugural edition, the Gutman Gallery and The Guild of Artists & Artisans have created another show worthy of excitement and praise for all the fresh talent highlighted in Emerge.

Check out the press release below and see some samples of the work featured in the exhibition.

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

This week features orchestral indie-folk from Lily Talmers, beat-driven tunes by Olivia Cirisan, otherworldly electronica via Otherseas, power-pop by Magic Toaster, and the return of the boom-bap by Tru Klassick.

This story originally ran on February 7. 2002. We're featuring it again because Olivia Van Goor will play Blue LLama Jazz Club on July 30.

For her debut EP, When The Shadows Fall, Milford jazz vocalist Olivia Van Goor unearthed and reshaped five hidden gems from the Great American Songbook and beyond.

“None of them are any of the classic standards like ‘Fly Me to the Moon,'" Van Goor said. "I intentionally chose standards that most professional working jazz musicians know, but not all of them. The two that are standards are ‘Willow Weep for Me’ and ‘No Moon at All. ... I did the Detroit Jazz Workshop two years in a row, and the first time I sang ‘Willow Weep for Me,’ and the second time I did ‘No Moon at All.’ I picked my milestone moments with learning the music.”

Those milestone moments also serve as a timeless journey through a spectrum of emotions ranging from hope to heartbreak. Each When The Shadows Fall track waltzes, swings, and bops from one era to the next. 

“I was really inspired by Veronica Swift, and she’s one of the best jazz vocalists of the time right now," Van Goor said. "On her last album, she took some musical theater songs that haven’t been taken by any of the legends and turned into standards and did them in that format.

“If you listen to an old recording of ‘Shadow Waltz,’ you’ll notice the style is completely different (from my version). I arranged all of the songs, and that’s my biggest originality to it, except I wrote the lyrics to ‘Hershey Bar.’”

The Olivia Van Goor Quartet will return to Ann Arbor’s Blue LLama Jazz Club on Feb. 18 July 30 and will perform songs from When The Shadows Fall as well as some past and new tunes.