Manitou Music Festival welcomes Mulebone, Michael on Fire and Will Pearsall & Michael Fracasso
From staff reports
Celebrating its 21st season in the beautiful Leelanau Peninsula, the Manitou Music Festival presents another lineup of exciting and diverse concerts featuring: jazz, classical, blues, folk, country, celtic, bluegrass and world music in some of Michigan’s most idyllic settings. The Festival showcases regionally and nationally known artists performing in Glen Arbor.
On Sunday, July 17 at 8 p.m. the blues duo Mulebone will perform outdoors at the Lake Street Studio Stage, located at Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor. The rain location for all Glen Arbor concerts is the Glen Arbor Town Hall.
Mulebone is a partnership comprised of multi-instrumentalist John Ragusa and roots music specialist Hugh Pool. The launching pad for their musical expression is traditional blues. Together they have recorded a CD which spent 15 weeks in the Top 100 Albums in America. Along with playing live and TV appearances, they won blues artist of the year at radio stations from Seattle to Red Bank, New Jersey.
Together in Mulebone, Hugh and John play slide guitar boogies, one-chord trance riffs a la Howlin Wolf, uptempo rags of Reverend Gary Davis and country blues of all shapes and colors. Sometimes they play close to the source, almost as if tracing the image, and at other moments, they re-examine the source, float above it to take a new look as if seeing one’s home from a distant land.
John Ragusa plays conch shell, Jews harp, cornet, all manner of flutes, tin whistle, and chimes in on the harmony vocals. He is a member of Beth Nielson Chapman’s group as well as his own John Ragusa outfit, and plays regularly in conjunction with Deepak Chopra’s speaking engagements. Amongst dozens of studio credits are contemporary jazz greats: Joe Taylor, Jeremy Wall and world music icon Tom Ze. Hugh says, “One time we were in Lexington, Kentucky sitting at an outdoor cafe and John played me a bunch of melodies sliding a straw up and down in a cup of ice water” … you get the drift.
Hugh Pool plays guitars, harmonica, boot board and sings, all with a mouth full of whiskey and a giant heart. He has played his brand of blues in clubs and at festivals from Jakarta, Indonesia to North Cape, Norway; From Vienna, Austria to Ottawa, Ontario and has been critically lauded by the New York Times, New York Press, the Village Voice, Pittsburgh Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Blues Revue Magazine … the list goes on. He is also a noted producer who has worked on hundreds of records at his Williamsburg, Brooklyn studio, Excello, working with musicians such as: Taj Mahal, Debbie Harry and Marah, to name a few.
On Wednesday, July 20 at 8 p.m. the American Roots Musician Michael On Fire will perform outdoors at the Studio Stage. From the time he first picked up a guitar, at the age of 11, Michael on Fire, knew that his path and purpose was making music, and he has remained true to that calling, having lived his life as an original artist. He grew up in Detroit, where, in the 1970s, his early band, Old Buck, was a frontrunner of Country Rock music.
During that time, Michael was hired on as an arranger, “song doctor” and studio musician for Groovesville Music, working at the historic United Sound Recording Studios with legendary music Producer Don Davis. Davis arranged for Old Buck to record with the renowned Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which played on many of the most important rock, soul and country music records ever made. After a stint touring with Jango Edwards and the Friends Roadshow (for whom he co-wrote the international hits “Bicycle Seat,” and “American Boys”) Michael then formed the popular progressive music group, Prismatic, which released a trio of records, and performed 350 days a year for five consecutive years, including performances at The Montreaux International Jazz Festival, and shows with some of the most brilliant artists working in the field of jazz and progressive music.
In the ‘80s, Michael relocated to Los Angeles, where he attracted many top-notch players into his band, and started performing under the name Michael on Fire — six nights a week, all original music. He quickly developed a fervent following, and the list of luminaries who regularly showed up at his performances reads like a music and entertainment Hall of Fame. His first record under the new moniker, Pre-Dawn Chronicles, was released on the MCR Music label, and was co-produced by Michael, Stephen Stills and Joe Vitale.
Performing sometimes in a full-band format, sometimes as a trio, and sometimes as a solo artist, Michael on Fire spent the next dozen years touring unendingly through every nook and cranny of the United States, in every kind of environment — from bars to beautiful theaters, private homes to major outdoor festivals, from the rowdy to the reverent, from playing in prisons to performing for the President of the United States. He released eight CDs, all of which expressed his musical vision and garnered critical acclaim.
On Sunday, July 24 at 8 p.m. the Singer / Songwriters Will Pearsall & Michael Fracasso will perform outdoors at the Studio Stage. Will Pearsall’s deep resonant voice envelopes the listener, while his attack of the guitar creates a swelling tide that ebbs and flows. In his songs there are dark, sweltering nights of mystery, the ghosts of a gulf side hotel, howls of freedom, the subliminal heat of brewing lust. Born in the steamy recesses of north Florida, raised on the mocha colored banks of the St. Johns River, by a couple of northern migrants from Ebbetts Field, Will Pearsall seems to sweat the word “dichotomy”.
Swampy yet sophisticated, easy going yet wired with intensity, his music ranges from machine gun fire to molasses. His deep resonant voice envelopes the listener with lyrics that easily pass through the porous borders of literalism, all the while holding tight to their emotional umbilical. Not unlike that of a Michael Hedges, nor that of a Chris Whitley, his attack of the guitar creates a swelling tide that ebbs and flows. In his songs there are dark, sweltering nights of mystery, the ghosts of a gulfside hotel, howls of freedom, the subliminal heat of brewing lust. All are conveyed in the most simple and direct manner … voice, guitar and stomp board … no toys, gadgets or trinkets involved. As real as the thick evening air on the banks of that murky river.
Michael Fracasso grew up in an Ohio steel-mill town to Italian immigrant parents. His music background began with listening to AM radio as a kid, then attending country music jamborees, and eventually, after college, he became a part of the influential Greenwich Village singer-songwriter circle that included the likes of The Roches, Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert and the very talented singer-songwriter Mark Johnson, with whom Fracasso now occasionally performs as The Pomus Brothers. Fracasso eventually moved to Austin, Texas, where he found the perfect home for his Americana-tinged music.
Please visit the Manitou Music Festival website for information and tickets, www.manitoumusicfestival.com. All tickets cost $15 (Children 18 and under are free, except for the July 28 Benefit Concert. Tickets may be purchased at concert venues or by calling the Glen Arbor Art Association (231) 334-6112 or Lake Street Studios (231) 334-3179.
