Playing For A Cure

Bang
A Can...
Classically

The Alligators promise an evening of blues
that is definitely not cold-blooded.

JULIE WIENER STAFF WRITER

n Saturday night, blues en-
thusiasts will have good
cause to party. Local blues
band The Alligators will
perform in Milford at a benefit for
the Michigan Lupus Foundation.
According to guitarist Steve
Schwartz, it promises to be a live-
ly evening. 'The Alligators is not
just the type of band where you
sit back and you listen to a song
and if you enjoy it you clap and if
you don't, you don't," he says.
"Normally, if we don't have the
crowd up and dancing by the mid-
dle of the first set, then we're ei-
ther in the wrong place or we're
doing something wrong."
"A lot of people would stereo-
type blues as being kind of laid-
back, cry in your beer songs," says
Mark Seyler, the band's drum-

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went by and the right mix of mu-
sicians got together, we developed
a real original style, as our CD
shows," says Schwartz.
Gimme Some Skin," The Alli-
gators' first CD, was released in
1996 and has been getting air-
play on radio stations through-
out Michigan. Of the 12 songs,
10 are written by band
members. The entire
band is involved in
the songwriting, in
an effort that Seyler de-
scribes as "very much a col-
laboration." Since the CD's
release, The Alligators have not
only been playing at clubs, but
also blues festivals around the
state, and they have a full sched-
ule of festivals lined up for the
summer.

mer. "And we certainly
Their music can be
Alligators, from left
do our share of those, The
heard
on blues shows
to right: Steve Schwartz
but we try to mix it up
on 93.9 FM (The Riv-
(guitar), R.D. Jones
a bit.
er), 94.7 FM and 89.1
(bass), Mark Seyler
"A lot of our songs (drums), Greg "Wailin' FM, and Gimme
have a sense of humor
Dale" Blankenship
Some Skin is avail-
(harmonica), Dave
in them," he adds, and
able at Harmony
Krammer (vocals).
he attributes much of
House outlets and in-
the excitement in per-
dependent record
formance to vocalist Dave Kram- stores throughout Michigan.
mer. "Whether he's singing a
All the band members grew up
song or rapping with the audi- in the metro Detroit area, and
ence in between songs, it adds to both Schwartz and Krammer are
the total show," says Seyler.
Jewish. Schwartz, who grew up
Dave Krammer and harmoni- in Oak Park attending Beth
ca player Greg "Wailin' Dale" Shalom, is currently a member
Blankenship — the "founding fa- of Temple Israel. Krammer, the
thers of the band" — started The son of Holocaust survivors, grew
Alligators in the early '80s. The up in Detroit and Farmington
five-member band describes its and celebrated his bar mitzvah
music as a mixture of blues, R&B at Temple Beth El.
and rock 'n' roll. "As the years
Although the band has per-

formed at a number of benefits,
lupus is a cause that hits close to
home. Both Schwartz and Seyler
have lost loved ones to lupus.
Schwartz's mother, Evelyn, who
had been active in the Beth

Former U-M
student Julia Wolfe
brings her Bang
On A Can All-Stars
to Ann Arbor's
Power Center.

LYNNE KONSTANTIN STAFF WRITER

Shalom Sisterhood, died 14 years
ago of lupus. Seyler's brother
Mark died last November, after
struggling with lupus for more
than 15 years.
"During the time of the fu-
neral I started thinking, we do
all these events for oth-
er groups, maybe we'd
like to do something for
lupus," says Seyler.
The disease, a geneti-
cally transmitted auto-
immune disorder in
which the immune sys-
tem attacks the body,
currently has no cure.
: Patients are generally
treated with corticos-
teroids, which lead to a
number of complica-
tions.
According to Michi-
gan Lupus Foundation
Director Tom Roberts,
lupus affects Jews,
Asians and African
Americans at double
the rate of people from
Northern European
backgrounds. Women are at
greater risk than men. O

e The Alligators will perform.
9 p.m. tomorrow at the Red
Doggie Saloon (on Main
Street, in the Summit Place
Plaza) in Milford. Jeff "Zippy"
Crowe of 93.9 ("The River")
will emcee, and Reverend
Marc Falconberry and The
Progressive Blues Band will
also perform, There is no cov-
er charge, but donations to the
Lupus Foundation will be ac-
cepted. For directions to the
Red Doggie Saloon, call (810)
685-2171. For more informa-
tion about lupus, contact the
Michigan Lupus Foundation
at (810) 775-8310.

I

n 1987, Julia Wolfe and some
of her friends put on a
marathon concert in a Soho
art gallery. Their goal was to
make a happening, and maybe
someone would show up and
have a good time.
Someone did show up. John
Cage, Steve Reich and the New
York Times, for starters.
"It was very exciting for us;
here we just wanted to see what
would happen, and these great
avant-garde musicians showed
up," says Wolfe.
At 3 a.m., the crowd had
cleared enough for Wolfe and
her friends to clean up the
gallery. It was then they real-
ized, "Hey, maybe we should do
this again."
This one-time experiment
metamorphosed into the Bang
On A Can Festival, an annual
event in New York that draws
thousands of people to experi-
ence some of the most innova-
tive musical styles, a blend
rooted in classical music that
teeters on the surreal.
And from this festival sprang
a sextet of virtuoso performers,
known as the Bang On A Can
All-Stars, who, in the midst of
an international tour, will per-
form at Ann Arbor's Power Cen-
ter at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 5.
Julia Wolfe, 38, is artistic di-
rector of both Bang On A Can
ventures, along with Michael
Gordon and David Lang, both
40. Although Wolfe hails from a
town outside of Philadelphia, in

1976 she discovered a program
at the University of Michigan
which appealed to her. "I had
heard so many interesting
things about Ann Arbor," says
Wolfe. "The residential college
offered an alternative to the
large lecture hall. It was a small-
er program, and I really want-
ed to experience not being in the
Northeast.
"I found Ann Arbor to be re-
ally refreshing." She stayed on
long enough to become inter-
ested in theater; in fact, she and
some friends developed the Wild
Swan Theater, still active in
Ann Arbor.
Her main connection, howev-
er, has always been to music.
She attended Yale's School of
Music, did some doctoral work
at Princeton, and "totally delved
into writing for instruments and
writing ensembles," she adds.
It was while at Yale that she
met Gordon and Lang, who had
similar musical interests in the
juxtaposed unity of minimalism,
classical music and pop culture.
At one of their initial perfor-
mances together, Wolfe explains,
the concert promoters needed a
description of their performance.
"We told them we were banging
on cans. We have ties to classical
music, but wanted to break down
any elitist ideas, make it more
informal. We wanted to send that
message by picking that title,"
she says.
The influences of contempo-
rary Dutch composer Louis An-