This story originally ran on December 5, 2024. "The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry" continues documenting Michigan poets, and on Monday, September 22, there's a live poetry reading at the Downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library showcasing four poets from the project: Owólabi Aboyade, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, Bryan Thao Worra, and Rebecca Biber.

Chien-an Yuan is an evangelist.

Not the type who's selling you hope in exchange for a monthly tithe but the kind who just wants you to believe—in art and its healing powers; in music and its succor; in poetry and life-giving energy.

The Ann Arbor musician-photographer-curator works not just in words but in deeds—and sometimes, the deeds are words, carefully arranged and expertly recited as is the case with The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry.

The project is a collaboration between Yuan's 1473 record label, Michigan poets, and Fifth Avenue Studios, the recordings division of the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL). 

Named after two high school teachers who inspired Yuan, The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is a collection of recited poems, documented at Fifth Avenue Studios, with covers created by local artists for each chapter in the series. (Shannon Rae Daniels' watercolors will adorn the first 10 sessions.) All the recordings can be listened to and downloaded free of charge whether or not you have a library card.

The anthology's construction is ongoing—you can listen to Ann Arbor poets Kyunghee Kim and Zilka Joseph so far—but there's an official launch for the project on Monday, December 9, at 6 pm at AADL's Downtown location. Kim will be joined by upcoming Coolidge-Wagner writers Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe, Chace Morris, and Emily Nick Howard, along with Yuan introducing the poets and talking about the project. (Joseph will be at a future Coolidge-Wagner event.)

I sent Yuan some queries about The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry, and his answers were so passionate, revealing, and thorough that they stand alone without my framing questions.

Below is Yuan's testament to the power of art and a brief history of The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry:

Pat Deneau sings about the adrenaline rush he gets from work and music on the song “Hits the Same.”

The musician-firefighter’s heart pounds as he climbs on a firetruck with the Ann Arbor Fire Department, or sets foot onstage with The City Lines and sings, “I don’t know what I’m doing here / But my heart is racing / Is this the price to feel so alive?”

“When I’m singing those lines, I’m almost picturing like I’ve got the hose line in my arm, and I've got my buddy on my back pushing me in and the fire’s pouring overhead,” said Deneau about the anthemic opener from the Ann Arbor trio’s new album, Prescribed Fires. “It feels exactly the same as flipping the standby switch on the amp, and the volume control is up and the cymbals wash.”

“Hits the Same” also sets the compelling narrative for The City Lines’ third album, which explores parenthood, career, mental health, heritage, and the environment.

Alexis C. Lamb created Refugia Festival in 2024 out of a sense of frustration. 

She saw a disconnect between environmentally conscious arts programming, which is usually presented indoors, and the natural place for eco-art: outdoors.

The second edition of the all-day music and arts Refugia Festival, which is at the Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor on September 28, provides a way to celebrate sound and become more aware of the needs and issues related to the climate while harmonizing with it. How does the music we produce resonate with nature? What do animals think of the music we blare through speakers whenever we want? And what can music do to explore and inform humanity’s relationship with the climate?

"[Refugia] came out of my doctoral dissertation work, which was in the School of Music, Theater and Dance at the U of M," Lamb said, "which was focused on exploring whether a sonic relationship between our human-made music and the sounds of the natural world was possible, without being threatening to that particular ecosystem.”

Magdalena J. Zaborowska makes connections across the experiences of and influences on James Baldwin in her wide-ranging book James Baldwin: The Life Album. Unlike her earlier two monographs on Baldwin, this unique and deeply researched biography is written for a general audience.

However, Zaborowska did not write James Baldwin: The Life Album as a standard biography but rather modeled it after a double vinyl record with four sides (i.e., sections), each with its own tracks (i.e., chapters). The table of contents serves as a track list. Zaborowska elaborates on this creative approach in her book’s introduction:

His critics’ desire that Baldwin straighten out is among the reasons why in James Baldwin I tell his life story in a deliberately unstraightforward, even queer, manner. To honor who he was, and how he viewed and wrote about himself, I revisit his life both chronologically and achronologically, and at times by mixing the two approaches. A brilliant stylist of the English language, Baldwin leaned on repetition and revolution, even re-evolution, of themes, phrases, and points of view, some of which were inspired by Black English and music. Exploding traditional syntax, style, and genre expectations, his long sentences remixed ideas, characters, events, and locations, embracing what he called “the beat.” Fascinated with how experience and emotion drove embodied imagination, will, and speech, he channeled their restless dance into his works, syncopating dates, locations, and personae, repeating riffs and refrains like a virtuoso improviser.

The biography’s structure as an album lends itself well to telling Baldwin’s life story and reflects the very way Baldwin himself approached his work.

If you’re among those feeling depleted by all the desperation, striving, and clickbait online, it’s downright refreshing to speak to Skyline High School math teacher Nick Bertsos about the music he makes with his alt-folk band, Little Traps.

“We’re actually playing at a chili cook-off in Saline in a couple of weeks,” said Bertsos. “That’s our next huge gig. Which I’m excited about, because I like chili.”

Though Little Traps plays most often at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti, the band’s most recent performance was at a barn in Dexter, to celebrate the release of its second full-length album, Regular Love.

“Bruce Springsteen yells about that one beautiful love, and there are always these grandiose notions,” said Bertsos, Little Traps’ frontman and primary songwriter. “And it’s like, what about the regular stuff, like making coffee for my wife in the morning, and she doesn’t have to ask?”

The band started recording songs for Regular Love back in 2019, shortly after the release of its 2018 debut, Can’t Count. But after getting about three tracks down, the pandemic hit, and the project stalled out.

The first Remnants exhibit was staged on October 17, 2023, at Marjorie Mae Del-Radio's Ypsilanti house. The woman affectionately known as "Big Marjorie" was not physically present in her longtime home at 824 Jefferson Street, but her spirit filled the abode—once covered in family photographs, now mostly empty.

Del-Radio died April 12, 2023, at age 90, and her house was cleared out for its sale.

Takeisha Jefferson and Tywree Bailey, both Ypsi-born artists, wanted to honor their grandma and the house that was a family hub, so they did the one-day Remnants exhibit as a creative memorial for friends and family.

"So many family members spoke of how grandma’s house looked like a gallery because of all the photographs she displayed of family members," Jefferson wrote in a Facebook message. "Well, tomorrow it will be a gallery."

Jefferson and Bailey decorated the home with their own photographs and paintings, and also filled a room with Grandma Del-Radio's colorful muumuus, which floated in the space like joyful ghosts.

Even though Remnants was an impromptu event, first cousins Jefferson and Bailey knew they wanted to have a second edition of the exhibit in a traditional gallery.

Remnants II, which runs through September 26 at Ypsilanti's 22 North, doesn't feature any muumuus. But it is brimming with love and pride for their family's history, which stretches deep into Ypsilanti's past. There are photos of and correspondence from Del-Radio's grandfather, William Campbell, who worked as a janitor and porter for Ypsi's Freighthouse, from 1927 to 1936, as well as other images of other family members.

The core of the show belongs to Jefferson and Bailey's artwork, sometimes with assistance from other family members, such as Takeisha's daughter, Tylear Jefferson, also a visual artist.

Laughing Hyenas formed in the mid-late 1980s underground rock scene that birthed more widely beloved acts like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and eventually Nirvana, as well as the mainstream grunge and alternative era of the '90s. Rooted in the hardcore punk flare up just a few years prior, combined with the blue-collar sleaze of Detroit's Alice Cooper and raw excitement of Ann Arbor's Stooges, the Hyenas melded stinging guitars with pounding rhythms and one of the biggest voices on record, giving equal nods to bluesman John Lee Hooker and Nick Cave's pre-crooner noisemakers The Birthday Party.

Founding members John Brannon, vocals, and the late Larissa Stolarchuck, guitar, had already made names for themselves in Detroit's Negative Approach and L-Seven, respectively, before bailing on the city to set up camp in Ann Arbor and immerse themselves in their singular vision of starting the "best band in the world." After recruiting Kevin Monroe—he and Stolarchuck both adopted the last name "Strickland" in the band—to make the move from guitar to bass, and adding Jim Kimball—son of University of Michigan and Olympic diving coach Dick Kimball—on drums, the band had a solid lineup of players all living together in an old house off of Platt Road, who set to making dark and dangerous sounding rock 'n' roll.

In May 2024, Same Eyes got a golden ticket to TikTok and Instagram fame when a viral video of the Ann Arbor synth-pop group playing “Desperate Others” racked up millions of views. Using the caption “POV: you found a small indie band from Michigan before they blew up,” the clip prophesied what would become a season of virality.

“On this ride I’m sick again / think I'm losing all my friends shit-faced, smoke hash, drink wine, talk smack, and bother everyone,” singer Alex Hughes croons as he paces on stage.

Though most artists dream of a moment like this—when at least a handful of those millions are record label executives looking to offer a deal up on a silver platter—and Same Eyes saw a big bump in concert attendance as well as music and merch sales, core band members Hughes and Chad Pratt were uneasy about the onslaught of attention.

“Labels would ask us things like, ‘What are your dreams?’ and we’d say we wanted to tour a little bit and play all the mid-sized venues,” Hughes said. “That would be great. It forced us to think about what we really wanted in a healthy way. We wanted to just keep doing what we were doing before.”

Stacks of fabric. Spoiled food. Personal care items covering every surface of the sink and shower. Mold overtaking a bathroom. Unfinished projects. A collapsed garage full of things. Unmaintained yard.

Welcome to the childhood and houses of the Longs, Amanda Uhle’s family, which she writes about in her new memoir, Destroy This House.

Uhle will celebrate the release of her book and be joined in conversation by Davy Rothbart on Tuesday, August 26, at 6:30 pm at AADL Downtown.

The exploits of Uhle’s parents, Stephen and Sandra Long, sound incredible. Uhle distanced herself when she left for college—and even before then. Yet, what is clear in the memoir is that the family ties were strong, at times humorous, and at other times painful.

Freddie Brooks wants to create a time capsule for the band Detroit Energy Asylum.

The Metro Detroit producer and label owner discovered that analog tape recordings of the group’s past studio sessions were starting to disintegrate and raced to preserve them.

“I had roughly three dozen of these big two-inch reels [of analog tape] and some of them were starting to shed,” said Brooks, who produced and managed the band from 1980 to 2000.

“The [tape] was falling off, and I ended up having to bake all those tapes and to transfer them for posterity. That’s when I started going through them, and that’s what happened with the ReCreation record [in 2019]. I was going through them and thought, ‘These songs are mostly finished. Most of them haven’t been released.’ I put the ReCreation [record] together, and beyond that, later on, I started listening to some of the other ones.”

Brooks realized there was a wealth of Detroit Energy Asylum material to unearth and share with fans—both past and present.