2B — Thursday, March 12, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

While the current owner made 

the room what it is today, the Blind 
Pig has always been wildly success-
ful. Previous owners sold the Pig 
not out of financial concern, but out 
of diverging aspirations. The first 
was big into espresso machines 
and left Ann Arbor to pursue that 
business; the next started Blind 
Pig Records with recording artists 
who were booked at the time. Soon 
after, that venture moved to San 
Francisco, allowing Betty to pur-
chase the Pig for Roy.

“If you talk to anyone who knew 

the Pig back in the day when it was 
a blues bar, everyone will say it was 
fucking packed every night. This 
was where you bought all your 
coke, so that didn’t hurt. It wasn’t 
like the Pig was ever not profitable, 
it was just that the owners were off 
to different shit and they wanted 
to sell. The Pig has always been 
blessed like that,” Berry said.

The Pig has had continuous suc-

cess over the past 40-plus years, 
though that doesn’t mean it hasn’t 
faced a few challenges. Berry 
recounts the drop in sales fol-
lowing September 2001. He said 
if a club was doing live bands and 
guaranteeing funds to bring them 
in and business was cut in half due 
to public fear, it ran a serious risk of 
going out of business. Quick on his 
feet, he booked solely local bands 
for the remainder of the 2001-2002 
academic year.

“For the first time we saw 

something affect the bar busi-
ness because people drink when 
they’re up and they drink when 

they’re down, so we are recession 
proof. So when that happened and 
people were afraid to go out, all of 
our numbers were just cut in half,” 
Berry said. “The rest of that school 
year there was just a pittance of 
tours. People were like, ‘What the 
fuck, man? Put some real fuck-
ing shows in there.’ I had to listen 
to that for a while. Then we got to 
summer …” He mimes pushing a 
throttle forward, “and we are so 
badass and we were just back.”

Aside 
from 
the 
post-9/11 

slump, Berry chalks up the Pig’s 
financial stability to owner Betty 
Goffett. At age 87, she is frugal-
minded and does not live beyond 
her means. Her financial outlook 
works to keep the Blind Pig ral-
lying through tough economic 
times.

“Honestly, she does not fuck 

around. When a beer cooler goes 
down, she replaces it. She doesn’t 
play with money. It’s really bor-
ing actually, but it’s through her 
leadership that we haven’t strug-
gled.”

Frugality aside, the Pig is not 

afraid to spend for what it needs. 
By now we are done at the post 
office, and are heading back to 
the 8 Ball. Berry begins telling 
one of his favorite stories about 
Betty. Last month, New York DJ 
and producer Kap Slap head-
lined the Blind Pig, but they did 
not have turntables compatible 
with Kap Slap’s USB hub. Two 
hours before show time the staff 
was looking for CDJ 2000s, the 
newest, 
top-of-the-line 
turn-

tables, but no one had them 
because they’re so expensive. 
Finally a friend of Berry called 
and said Guitar Center in Canton 
had them and you could return 
products the next day. Without 
the 2000s, the show would have 
to be cancelled and money would 
have been returned to over 200 
ticketholders.

“Without 
missing 
a 
beat 

(Betty) was like, ‘OK, cool. Let’s 
go.’ She calls ahead and has them 
stay open for her to make this 
purchase. She bought $7,500 
turntables to return them once 
their check cleared, so they 

didn’t think we were playing 
them,” Berry said. “There’s no 
owner like her. That’s Betty. 
She’s progressive and passion-
ate about groups, people and the 
quality of the experience.”

That experience starts with 

the shows’ lineups. Berry brings 
in a mix of local talent and 
national tours to Ann Arbor, and 
between the wealth of local tal-
ents and the national recognition 

of The Blind Pig as one of the 
best college-town clubs. Local 
bands are begging for shows, and 
agents send national acts to the 
Pig as a proving ground.

“Pound for pound, in terms of 

sound quality, experience of the 
patron and consistency of what’s 
happening there, we are often 
told we are one of the best (clubs) 
for our little size,” Berry said. 
“The reality is in the Detroit 
market we are the smallest of the 
clubs we compete with. We are 
competing with The Crofoot, St. 
Andrews and the Magic Stick. 
Every one of these rooms is big-
ger than us, so our advantage is 
that we are the college town.”

Musicians come to Ann Arbor to 

tap into the college-student demo-
graphic. The booking process dif-
fers slightly between local bands 

and national tours. Local bands 
either e-mail the Pig looking to play 
a lineup, or Berry is aware of a band 
through word of mouth and looks 
into them before offering them a 
spot. They start on a Wednesday or 
Thursday, and once they get a fol-
lowing they’ll move to a weekend.

For national acts, agents offer a 

night to Berry, and, if available, he 
gives them first hold, meaning that 
if no one is currently booked that 

night, they get first opportunity. He 
then sends in an offer, most times 
a flat rate plus a percentage if prof-
its hit a certain mark. Agents may 
accept immediately or negotiate 
for more. After the show is booked, 
announced and on-sale production 
is taken over by the staff, the gen-
eral manager or manager on duty 
pays the band, and Berry is already 
looking for the next show.

“It’s really smooth. Every club 

has the same procedure, but 
every club has its own tweak on 
it. The Magic Stick’s process has 
far many more people involved 
in it than we do, but that has to 
do with their size,” Berry said. 
“Coming from The Blind Pig 
and seeing that, it gives a nice 
perspective on how well the Pig 
is actually doing what they’re 
doing.”

While the playing field is 

somewhat leveled by the Pig’s 
status as a college-town club, 
they also have money on their 
side due to the affluence of the 
Michigan student body and Ann 
Arbor residents, so they are able 
to spend a lot to bring in acts the 
community wants to see.

Berry recounted how they 

began to shell out for big shows. 
Lee Berry, then-Blind Pig talent 
buyer who is now chief devel-
opment officer at the Michigan 
Theater, and then-newly hired 
Jason Berry began hosting dance 
nights featuring international 
DJs. Back in 1998-99, flying DJs 
in from Europe was a revolution-
ary idea. He recounts that a club 
on Main Street would play ghet-
totech every Wednesday, but 
only feature Ann Arbor DJs.

“We were like, ‘Fuck that,’” he 

said. “We spent money, but it was 
because Ann Arbor. We could do 
that and charge 25 bucks to get 
in, which would have been ludi-
crous, but because of the affluent 
student body, we could just go for 
it. And now it’s the norm. People 
would be surprised if that wasn’t 
happening now.

“The Pig is fucking great. As a 

talent buyer I can just sit there. It’s 
like painting.” He motions mov-
ing a paintbrush across a canvas. 
“The club is so solid, and it has a 
magnificent owner who rolls with 
the punches and understands the 
nature of the live music industry.”

The Blind Pig’s backlog of 

shows is impressive. Jason Berry 
has brought in John Mayer, The 
White Stripes and Wiz Khalifa’s 
first show in Michigan. Prior to 
that, Lee Berry brought in Pearl 
Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Dave 
Matthews Band and Nirvana, who 
famously stated the Blind Pig as 
their favorite venue to play in an 
MTV interview.

Nirvana’s legendary show took 

place in 1990 on its Bleach Tour. 
The tour was receiving lackluster 
response until the Monday before 
they were set to play; Soundgar-
den 
frontman, 
Chris 
Cornell, 

told a sold-out Blind Pig crowd to 
come back next week for Nirvana. 

Between that shoutout and some 
momentum built from opening for 
Tap and Screaming Trees, Nirvana 
took the stage to a sold-out crowd 
instead of the expected half-empty 
venue.

After the show, Nirvana didn’t 

have a place to stay, so the band 
crashed the Prism Productions 
offices on Fourth Street. Lee 
Berry walked into his office the 
next morning only to step over 
Krist Novoselic’s legs and see Kurt 
Cobain passed out on his sofa and 
in his plush office chair.

“I booked a bunch of great shit 

for my little 17-year tenure, but Lee 
booked all that famous shit,” Berry 
said. “But he’s got Dave Matthews 
and Godsmack. He is the Don 
Dada.” (Urban Dictionary: “A com-
bination of Don and Dada. Meaning 
the top pimp, the biggest player and 
even one step above mack daddy.”) 
“He booked everything the Pig is 
really famous for, including every 
damn time Nirvana played. He is 
the man.”

Step one: buy your husband 

a blues club. Step two: host all 
types of bands. Step three: profit. 
It was the perfect storm that has 
led to the local goldmine called 
The Blind Pig. It feeds off the 
vibrancy of Ann Arbor and the 
affluence of its inhabitants to put 
on legendary music shows.

“The point of it all is to sell 

beer, and we are just very good 
at selling it the way we sell it. 
It could be simpler, but that’s 
what the 8 Ball is for,” he said. 
“That’s just a beer and shot bar 
and the Pig is some complicated 
bells and whistles to sell a glass 
of beer. It all just works really 
well.”

VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily

The Blind Pig caters to the college student demographic. 

BLIND PIG
From Page 1B

Abraham.In.Motion 
dances social justice

By GILLIAN JAKAB

Daily Arts Writer

What does it mean to dance 

social justice? This question 
occupied the hour-and-a-half 
“night 
school” 
session 
this 

past Monday led by Prof. Clare 
Croft with choreographer Kyle 
Abraham as part of Abraham.
In.Motion’s weeklong residency 
in Ann Arbor, culminating in its 
University Musical Society debut 
of The Watershed on Friday and 
When the Wolves Came In on 
Saturday.

Abraham 
doesn’t 
dance 

around the issues of race and 
identity that he has set out to 
explore with these works, but 
rather charts a collision course 
with them in multi-media form. 
With the layers of choreography, 
music, visual projections and 
theatrical elements of drag, the 
mind and body are roused into 
perpetual motion as Abraham 
propels us through the history of 
civil rights to confront our con-
temporary social climate.

Abraham visited Ann Arbor 

last spring to do some workshops 
including a “You Can Dance” 
community 
program 
at 
the 

YMCA, but this is the first time 
we get to see Abraham.In.Motion 
perform. The Pittsburgh-born 
choreographer has been praised 
for his refreshing and eclectic 
post-modern style — a blend of 
his immersion in hip-hop and 
rave cultures and his classical 
training in music, visual art and 
dance. After studying modern 
dance 
at 
SUNY 
Purchase 

and 
NYU 
Tisch, 
Abraham 

began dancing professionally 
and founded his company in 
2006. The dance world has 
certainly noticed his talent; 
Abraham has been invited to 
work 
with 
long-established 

choreographers such as David 
Dorfman and Bill T. Jones, and 
was commissioned to create a 
piece for Alvin Ailey American 
Dance in 2012. Recognition and 
funding is essential to power 
a choreographer’s work and 
a MacArthur Fellowship in 

2013 and residency with New 
York Live Arts from 2012-2014, 
among 
other 
awards, 
have 

been key planks in Abraham’s 
launching pad.

Abraham comes to UMS with 

nine dancers from his company. 
One of them, Matthew Baker, is 
a native of Ann Arbor who went 
to Western Michigan University 
and grew up seeing shows at the 
Power Center and Hill Auditori-
um. Baker remembers being awed 
as a 13 year-old dance student see-
ing Baryshnikov perform solos on 
the stage of the Power Center. The 
realization that he will take the 
same stage this weekend is deeply 
meaningful to Baker.

“UMS, and the Power Center 

and all that has been a part of my 
life and my family’s life — it’ll be 
great to go back,” Baker said. “The 
programming is always really 
wonderful. I’m excited that our 
company is going to become part 
of that.”

This 
weekend, 
Abraham.

In.Motion is performing the two 
pieces created over Abraham’s 
tenure as resident artist with New 
York Live Arts, both of which pre-
miered in September 2014. The 
pieces correspond to the 100th 
anniversary of the Emancipation 
Proclamation and the 20th anni-
versary of the end of Apartheid 
in South Africa. Abraham drew 
inspiration from the 1960 Max 

Roach album We Insist! which, 
in Saturday’s program, When the 
Wolves Came In, is reinterpreted 
by the Robert Glasper Trio. Fri-
day’s program, The Watershed, 
is an evening-length piece that 
mixes imagery from the Emanci-
pation Proclamation period, the 
American civil rights movement in 
the 1960s and contemporary race 
relations.

“(The Watershed is) drawing 

some then-and-now comparisons 
and … (puts) questions out in the 
air and in people’s minds,” Baker 
said. “It’s really interesting the 
way that he uses dance and theat-
rical elements to do that — to start 
a conversation.”

This was a collaborative pro-

cess for Abraham, working with 
Glasper on musical interpreta-
tion of the Max Roach album 
and visual artist Glenn Ligon to 
curate film projections and over-
all set design to complement the 
live art. Not only was the process 
collaborative across artistic dis-
ciplines, but the choreography 
itself emerged from conversations 
with, and contributions from, the 
dancers. Baker reflected on the 
ways in which race is represented 
and performed in the pieces:

“A lot of the presentations of 

race, the race of a certain dancer 
and the relationships (among 
them) I think sometimes are very 
intentional to draw attention to 

TRAILER REVIEW

If Wes Anderson had a 

twin brother it would be Noah 
Baumbach. Many of Baumbach’s 
films 
– 

especially 
“The 
Squid 

and 
the 

Whale” 
and 

“Frances 
Ha” – exude 
the 
same 

cleverness, 
tactfulness 
and cinematic poise. In fact, 
Baumbach and Anderson have 
co-written two movies together, 
and have undoubtedly attended 
many of the same dinner parties 
(which 
is 
more 
important 

anyway). They are storytellers of 
the same stylistic vein: singular, 
insightful, 
memorable. 
With 

“While We’re Young,” however, 
Baumbach seems to be taking 
a more personal turn, one that 
promises to grapple with the 
struggles and challenges of aging 
in a world that’s increasingly 
dependent on young people.

Ben Stiller (“Night at the 

Museum”) and Naomi Watts 
(“Birdman”) star as a married 
middle-aged couple who become 
enthralled with the lifestyle 
and energy of a younger couple 
they counter. Together the two 

couples embark on a series of 
adventures, including a yoga-like 
class in which each participant 
consumes a mysterious drink, 
hallucinates and vomits their 
“demons” out from their system. 
If you’ve ever wanted to see Ben 
Stiller in a silly hipster context, 
this is your chance.

In addition to the strange and 

somewhat whimsical situations 
the couples volunteer themselves 
for, a broader and more serious 
commentary underlies the film. 
“While We’re Young” is about the 
cultural age gap and the strains 
it puts on intergenerational 
communication. It’s evident that, 
although each couple admires 
the other for certain qualities or 

habits, they all find fault in their 
relationships. In this way, the 
film is about learning to accept 
these marital faults instead of 
trying to change or ignore them. 
The title obviously implies a 
“well, it’s too late” sentiment, 
but it does nothing in the way 
of condescending to such an 
attitude. This will be a smart, 
well-written comedy about the 
pains and pleasures of age, and 
about the ways in which we all 
can come to fall in love with 
personal flaws.

Plus, James Murphy of LCD 

Soundsystem is orchestrating 
the film’s music. Need there be 
more reason to go and see it?

-BRIAN BURLAGE

A24

CONCERT REVIEW

UMS

That’s not how you spell YMCA.

a certain scene or movement, but 
I think a lot of the time they’re 
kind of up in the air to allow (an) 
audience 
(member’s) 
personal 

backgrounds or what (he or she) is 
interpreting in the piece to inform 
what they’re seeing,” Baker said. 
“I also think a lot of stuff is made 
initially qualitatively based on the 
blending of two dancer’s different 
styles, and sometimes race or iden-
tity or meaning fit in, or layer in, 
where it might make sense, or not 
make sense, or draw an interesting 
parallel. I think sometimes those 
things are crafted and sometimes 
they come up organically just as 
the movement does.”

The workshops and events sur-

rounding the performances — the 
night school sessions, brunch 
download and post-show Q&As 
following this weekend’s perfor-
mances — are of equal importance 
and serve as a forum to digest the 
heavy material.

“It’s really interesting to hear 

back from the communities and 
I think it’s important to Kyle, and 

I’ve seen a number of times, to let 
the communities hear each other,” 
Baker said. “I’ve actually sat in 
many of the small conversations 
where one person will (say) ‘the 
dance is so abstract’ and I think a 
lot of times people don’t know how 
to watch it, so when they’re forced 
to talk about it they come up with 
all these different perspectives 
and I think that revealing some-
thing about themselves helps them 
learn something about their com-
munities and each other and how 
to change or develop.”

Although not originally con-

ceived as a response to the recent 
tensions in race relations, The 
Watershed and When the Wolves 
Came In could not be more timely 
in the wake of the recent awak-
enings of the nation’s awareness 
around the killings of Michael 
Brown and Eric Garner last year.

“I think the pieces and the work 

(as a whole) raise a lot of questions 
for people, and starting a conversa-
tion can be a catalyst for change or 
for organizing … But I also think 

art and artists have a way of com-
municating certain things about 
the times that we live in because 
they are making art in that time. 
I think that Kyle’s voice has devel-
oped and is really being heard 
right now — people are taking note 
and heeding interest because he 
has a lot to say, and he says it in a 
really interesting way through 
movement,” Baker said.

Kyle Abraham has been called 

“the man of the moment” and 
“darling of the dance world” by 
Dance Magazine He is a rising 
star in the dance and performance 
world — one to watch in the years 
to come. Not only can we start by 
watching him this weekend at the 
Power Center, but we can engage 
in his conversation.

“As dance works,” Abraham 

writes in his Director’s Note, “The 
Watershed and its companion 
piece, When the Wolves Came In 
were created to live in a skin well 
aware of the cyclical hardships of 
our history and the very present 
fear of an unknowable future.”

A-

While 
We’re 
Young

A24

“(The Pig) was 

where you 

bought all your 

coke.”

It feeds off 
Ann Arbor’s 
vibrancy and 

affluence.

