“Sunshine” comes to Glen Arbor

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
In the 1950s there was a performer who made the rounds of the town and country elementary schools in Oceana County every year. His name was Louie Parsons, he was a big gangly guy with glasses, and his puppet show was the highlight of the year out at Benona School, the consolidated K-8 country school planted in a cow pasture in 1956 where I was in the first kindergarten class. He set up a portable puppet stage with a tiny curtain, he always had an assistant for the extra hands, and the puppets he’d made himself performed classic children’s tales in the lunch/recreation room that had a shuffleboard court blended into the floor tiles. Somehow there was always an apple in the story played by a small red rubber ball (the one you used to play Jax). Every year the ball escaped the clutches of a puppet and bounced into the crowd, accidentally-on-purpose, and the wide-eyed little kid who caught it felt very lucky indeed.

Between the puppet shows Louie played the piano. With hands flying and knees bouncing he played rollicking Fats Waller “stride” piano and sang funny lyrics. Then he turned his back to the piano, faced the crowd, reached his big hands behind him, and played a boogie-woogie — backwards! We kids were anxious for the next puppet show, but you could see on the faces of the teachers that it was amazing, and remembering now how he played piano backwards, I realize it was something astonishing that we just took for granted. When Justice of the Peace Howard Garver closed his barber shop and stopped performing shotgun weddings in downtown Shelby, Louie Parsons moved his puppet show stage into the back room of the storefront and let us kids come in for free on some summer Saturdays to be the audience as he prepared his new shows for another school year. The red apple bounced off the stage, Louie played the piano backwards, and we took it all as given and thought “it is what it is.”
Just as astonishing, and not to be taken for granted, is the amazing line-up of music coming to Glen Arbor this summer for the Manitou Music Festival. The result of a collaboration between the Glen Arbor Art Association, Three Musketeers Productions, Connemara Concerts and The Leelanau School, and sponsored in part by Art’s Tavern, Cherry Republic, Anderson’s Market, Traverse City State Bank and the Glen Arbor-Sleeping Bear Chamber of Commerce, 14 shows will fill the town with music between the Summer Solstice and Labor Day. Several shows will happen at the newly renovated Studio Stage behind the Lake Street Studios (across from Cherry Republic) in the “live” center of Glen Arbor. Included on the festival are the annual free Dune Climb concert, a Northport Community Band concert (on the lawn next to the Glen Arbor Athletic Club), an Art’s Collage concert, and a series of top-shelf folk shows, some on the graduation green at The Leelanau School. (See the complete Manitou Music Festival 2007 schedule at www.manitoumusicfestival.com.)
The first concert on June 23 at The Leelanau School is an absolute must-see. Jonathan Edwards will be in town teaching a singing-songwriting workshop all day Saturday before performing on the green at 8 p.m. Saturday night. The cost for the day-long workshop is cheap and is due to the initiative of Patrick Niemisto and Adair Corell, two of the founders of the regional Songwriters in the Round group — local folk musicians who have been performing round-robin shows monthly for 10 years at the Horizon Shine Café in Traverse City.
You will surely remember Jonathan Edward’s 1970s political pop hit “Sunshine”:
“Sunshine go away today, I don’t feel much like dancin’. Some man’s gone, he’s tried to run my life, Don’t know what he’s askin’. Several locals met Jonathan two summers ago at the Hiawatha Music Festival when he wandered into the Niemisto camp and sat around the fire pickin’ for half the night. He is down-to-earth and full of stories from his long career in music, and Jonathan is also brilliant and engaging, with incredible songs and tremendous energy on-stage. Hopefully he’ll arrive early enough to be at the first Beach Bards Bonfire of the season on The Leelanau School Beach on Friday night, June 22 (children’s hour at 8:30, poems, stories and music continue at 10, $1 per being). After the concert Saturday night Jonathan and the singer-songwriters will share music around the bonfire on the beach.
So, this will be a robust season of music in Glen Arbor, and you don’t want to take it for granted and miss something astonishing. Mark your calendars now! Great musicians from all over the country will be in town, and you can reserve tickets by calling the Glen Arbor Art Association at 231-334-6112: How much does it cost? I’ll buy it. The time is all we’ve lost. I’ll try it! Don’t miss it! It is what it is. Sunshine come on back another day. I promise you I’ll be singin’. This old world she’s gonna turn around, brand new bells’ll be ringin’!