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.

The first tale in Dr. Ursula Whitcher's novella-length short-stories collection, North Continent Ribbon, offers a striking example of the sci-fi author's poetic prose:

I stepped toward him with a hanging parry, crystal chiming as our blades met. That brought my left hand near his hilt. I pressed his wrist back just long enough to raise my sword and strike his face. My arm absorbed the shock of cutting bone. He slumped and fell. No longer my opponent; no longer caught in the current of our dance. The golden ribbon in his hair was streaked with blood.

The Ann Arbor-based author and mathematician's debut book, which came out in 2024, is being recognized in the industry, too. It was short-listed for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, with the committee writing:

Whitcher elegantly weaves a complex picture of the cultural and political history of the planet Nakharat—home to assassins, judges, sex workers, teenagers, and sentient starships—building a nuanced, tender understanding of how the politics of power plays out through the lives of individuals, and how collective resistance evolves within intimate relationships.

The architects of Dr. Whitcher's world-building are the queer characters she portrays across North Continent Ribbon's six stories. Yes, there are spaceships imbued with the human consciousness of prisoners, crystal swords, and artificial-intelligence books spouting poetry, but we mostly learn about Nakharat across 400 years through the eyes of its individuals, not its technological marvels. The private sides of these star-faring people are defined by the ribbons braided into their hair, which are then buried in a veil. These strips of fabric represent spouses, friends, family, work, contracts, gods, and more, tracing the wearers' histories but masking the information behind a head covering.

I spoke with Dr. Whitcher about North Continent Ribbon, what brought her to Ann Arbor, and what it means to be nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction.

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

This all-electronic-music edition features sounds from Pastland, Stunna + Calculon, The Waffle Tower, evbp/Owasurenaku, and CrispySafe. 

This story originally ran on July 17, 2019. We're rerunning it on what would have been Asheton's 77th birthday.

July 17 is Ron Asheton’s birthday. He died in 2009 at the age of 60, but not before he and the band he helped make famous had one last run when The Stooges reformed in 2003.

The Stooges arose from the rich musical compost of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area in the late 1960s and while the classic original lineup (Asheton on guitar, his brother Scott Asheton on drums, Dave Alexander on bass and Iggy Pop as frontman) only lasted a few glorious, intense years, the racket they made proved durable. They were a quartet of teenage cavemen with four chords between them, amps set for aggression, gnawing at the deepest atavistic urges of the human animal. Like all geniuses, they were unappreciated in their day but went on to inspire generations of future primitives around the globe and made punk rock inevitable. 

After the Stooges, Ron Asheton enjoyed a long music career with bands such as Destroy All Monsters, New Race, and Dark Carnival. He passed away from a heart attack shortly after a high-profile Stooges reunion. The man’s legacy in the annals of rock history is secure, legitimized by no less an “authority” as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but that isn’t the reason we’re here. 

What is discussed less about Asheton is his acting career, which found him playing both major and minor roles in five low-budget, locally sourced horror films shot in Michigan between 1988 and 1995. From all reports a genuine fan of the genre, Asheton holds his own in these cheap, gory, and frankly ridiculous films, sometimes emerging as the most believable actor on the screen (the competition is hardly stiff). He’s unrecognizable as a former rock guitar mangler, opting instead for a somewhat schlubby onscreen persona, sometimes as comic relief or second banana to a more traditional lead. 

So in honor of Asheton’s birthday, let’s review his filmography: