Standout Track: Number three, “West Park,” from Rik Strange, aka Erika Marlisa. The Ann Arbor singer-songwriter’s debut release, Angelclown, is a five-track EP that explores relationships. On “West Park,” Strange feels hopeful about a new partner and contemplates the direction of her life. At the time, she was living in a house on Huron [Street] that borders the park. Strange often took morning walks in West Park during the fall to process her fear and self-doubt. “This song was my attempt to instead lean into abundance, and yes, to attempt to approach a new love from that same place, instead of getting caught up in what it might become or what might go wrong. Ultimately, at the time, I wasn’t very good at that, and the relationship didn’t last, but that’s another song! That’s what I love about songwriting, the archival effect. Things change, but West Park preserves the whimsical feeling, place, and time—it’s nice there!”

If you took a giant dollop of American Idol, added a heaping helping of The Voice, and tossed in a massive spoonful of America's Got Talent, you'd have a lot of caterwauling singers standing around waiting to belt.

But if you wrap those competitions into a Whose Line Is It Anyway?-style format, and stage it at an Ann Arbor brewpub, then you have Mic Drop, a new improv singing competition, which debuts at 6:30 pm on Sunday, January 25, at hear.say brewing + theater. Mic Drop then runs every fourth Sunday of the month through June, at a minimum.

The rotating cast of singers includes Kyler Wilkins (aka Ki5), Leah Gittlen, Forrest Hejkal, Elizabeth Harding, Caitlyn Crowel, Josh McDaniel, Julia Snyderwine, Jenna Jansa, Toriano Drane, Katie Parzych, Beth Dutridge-Corp, Kara Williams, Sara Rose, and Shelly Smith.

Music director Jamie Artman will accompany the crooners on a variety of instruments, primarily guitar and keyboards.

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week:
October Babies, Laughing Hyenas, Bill Edwards, Larkn, Craig Taborn, Dre Dav and Mo Grease, Sigidy, Ryan Gerald, Kelsey., Studio Lounge, Benji Robot, and George Mashour.

Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters at the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills is a major retrospective of the work of this multifaceted art/music/film collective that formed in Ann Arbor in 1973. The comprehensive exhibit incorporates paintings, drawings, prints, flyers, sculptures, videos, multimedia displays, and ephemera-filled vitrines.

Deeply fascinated by 20th-century American pop culture and movies, Destroy All Monsters took its name from a 1968 Toho film that featured Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and other giant beasts. Often consisting of collaged-together elements, the collective's work satirized and/or celebrated life in the modern world. As co-founder Cary Loren notes in the Mythic Chaos program, “A sense of gloom, disaster, and apocalypse, mixed with doses of anarchy, comedy, and absurdity kept us together.”

The initial version of Destroy All Monsters (DAM) consisted of Loren, Niagara, Jim Shaw, and Mike Kelley—all but Loren were University of Michigan art students—and was headquartered at 741 Packard, a two-story frame house a few doors down from the Blue Front party store. Dubbed “God’s Oasis” after a drive-in church sign Shaw had found and posted on the porch, the home became a hub of creative activity until fall 1976, when Shaw and Kelley left for graduate studies at CalArts.

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week:
North Ingalls, Fearless Amaretto, Levi Makula, RE:fusion CC:ontractor, FFANGS, Winged Wheel, Sex Kennedy's, Jakarta Kids, and Ratmatia.

The Telegraph Quartet, which formed in San Francisco in 2013, has been in residence at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD) since fall 2024. 

David Gier, dean of SMTD and Paul C. Boylan Collegiate Professor of Music, said at the time of the announcement:

I’m delighted that the School of Music, Theatre & Dance is engaging the Telegraph Quartet for this residency, which will beautifully complement the dynamic work of our resident faculty in the Departments of Strings and Chamber Music. Our students will benefit significantly from sustained and focused interactions with this gifted professional quartet that will help them develop as chamber musicians and envision and plan for their lives as working musicians.

Eric Chin and Joseph Maile (violins), Pei-Ling Lin (viola), and Jeremiah Shaw (cello) have worked with student chamber-music groups and conducted studio classes/seminars for the most part, but there have also been several opportunities for the public to see concerts by the group, which The New York Times described as “full of elegance and pinpoint control."

The Telegraph Quartet will perform again at U-M on Friday, January 23, at 7:30 pm, at Stamps Auditorium in the Walgreen Drama Center. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets required. (A livestream will also be available.)

The transition from writing heady, intellectual jazz compositions to folk songs was the breath of fresh air Janelle Haskell was subconsciously seeking to reinvigorate her career as a musician and creator.

Honing her skills as a saxophonist and clarinetist from a young age in Ann Arbor, Haskell said she became burned out chasing a career as a jazz musician after a decade of living in New York City. Despite earning accolades as a featured soloist with renowned ensembles, including Doc Severinsen and his Tonight Show Band, The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, and The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, to name a few, Haskell returned to Ann Arbor in 2016, unsure of her next move as a musician.

With the COVID-19 pandemic isolating her from being able to perform with local jazz ensembles a few years later, inspiration returned when she picked up an old guitar she bought from a Guitar Center in Brooklyn, spawning a new vision for creativity as a folk singer-songwriter as well as a new performing name: the artist born Janelle Reichman dropped her last name and elevated her middle one to become Janelle Haskell.

“The good thing about getting into songwriting at the age of 37 or something is you have a backlog of all of this material. It's kind of just gone from there,” said Haskell.

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week:
Kat Steih, Mark Braun (Mr. B), Ani Mari, Matteo Sohn, The Sea, The Sea, Duburban & Krugah, Reckless Manner, and Kylee Phillips.

Ben Lorenz, co-founder of the Washtenaw County-based recording studio Willis Sound and the Ann Arbor-based eCommerce and digital marketing agency Human Element, died on Saturday, December 27. An announcement was made on the Human Element Facebook page.

David Roof, who runs Rooftop Recording out of Grand Blanc and has been friends with Lorenz since 11th grade, wrote this in a post on the A2 Music History Facebook page:

We lost a pillar of the Ann Arbor music community this weekend. Ben Lorenz, drummer for the Restroom Poets and October Babies. He founded the musical collective Oddfellow Music with his long time musical partner Jason McGee and a number of other awesome creative individuals. That eventually closed in order to refurbish and create Willis Sound. Ben was a kind, generous soul who was positive about the potential of others. He will be sorely missed.

You can read more tributes to Lorenz on his Facebook page.

Lorenz was also the drummer for 16 More Miles, which featured members of Restroom Poets and October Babies. Below is a selection of recordings and videos from Lorenz's various musical projects.

The Radar usually tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels. But for this edition, we've discovered 12 songs by artists who namechecked the county seat in their song titles. Only two of these creators live in the area, but for this Ann Arbor songs edition of The Radar, we've made them all honorary Tree Town-tonians.

This week: 
Max Langlinais, Paul Whetstone, Bats & Mice, Anson Seabra, Gostbustaz, Great American Ghost, The Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns, Shigeto, Dead Schembechlers, The Get Up Kids, and Cavity.

Know of any songs that mention specific places in Washtenaw County—whether those we missed with Ann Arbor in the title, or perhaps a buried reference to an Ypsilanti location from a noise-rock band that disbanded in 2009? Send your suggestions to pulp@aadl.org.