Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
6B
Wednesday, October 10, 2018// The Statement
7B
vided by current Canterbury leadership,
Harris worried the student body at the
time would “become too secularized and
forget their religious foundation,” and
took it upon himself to see Hobart Hall
— shortly after renamed Harris Hall — be
built at 617 East Huron Street. The build-
ing still stands, but is now used as office
space.
The Hobart Guild, the organization in
charge of the Hall, aimed to “stimulate
(the student body’s) spirituality,” hosted
their first regular meeting on Oct. 2, 1890.
Harris Hall, a steam-heated building with
a capacity of 500 people, included a stage
— a crucial symbol of performance that
would continue with the Church for years
to come — a non-smoking billiards room,
a library, a dining room, a bowling alley
and more.
The building would fall into disuse as a
social gathering as the University grew —
eventually being swallowed up and leased
by the school — and the ministry moved
to a smaller house owned by St. Andrew’s
on Lawrence Street in 1935. Several years
after the World War II, the Episcopa-
lian Student Foundation took over, hir-
ing a chaplain and moving to 218 North
Division Street. The institution, after
changing buildings (and even names) a
few times, would finally settle at its cur-
rent location of 721 Huron as Canterbury
House in 1995.
Go back to 1967. What I wouldn’t give
to be in the room with Burke and Mar-
tin Bell, the Chaplains at the time, when
they decided to transform the mission of
Canterbury House, and subsequently Ann
Arbor’s place in music history.
Burke, following the trend of religious
institutions nationwide in the late ’60s,
wanted to blend current fads with spiritu-
ality to connect with a generation bent on
rebellion. The college students of the late
’60s wanted nothing to do with an orga-
nized establishment telling them what
to do, when to do it and what to believe.
The dream of the coffee house chapel,
in Burke’s words, was a “means of estab-
lishing contact, whether it be through
folk music, folk rock, blues, liturgy, art or
drama.”
Burke and Bell, along with student
manager Ed Reynolds, a music fanatic
who, according to Canterbury documents,
“was completely turned off to all things
that smacked of religion,” made the move
to an old print shop at 330 Maynard and
turned the space into a coffee house/min-
istry/concert venue/everything but the
kitchen sink in terms of cultural potential.
This move was a catalyst for the flood
of musical invention that was brimming
at the University. Students plucking away
at guitars and banjos in their dorms were
dying for a place to play and hear their
musical idols. Burke, Bell and Reynolds
made this dream possible.
W
hen I first received a batch of
the recording samples from
Glenn at MHP, I was sit-
ting in a pristine white coffee shop with
antique furniture, delicate latte foam
designs and the sounds of Noname’s new
album Room 25 pumping through the
speakers just around the corner from
330 Maynard. I closed whatever home-
work I should have been working on, as
well as the Facebook tab I was mindlessly
scrolling through, and rocketed my hand
towards my backpack to find my earbuds.
I found the files and knew which one
would be my first listen.
“joni_mitchell_marcie_1968.flac”
I hit play on the reel-to-reel sample.
The voice of an emcee emerges. It is quick
and businesslike, as if he’s announcing the
next stop on the subway.
“Joni Mitchell.”
Applause follows. However, after a
name like Joni Mitchell’s, given her
legendary status today, you’d expect a
stadium of cheering fans to be heard.
Canterbury House is no stadium. It wasn’t
even the size of the Michigan Theater.
It was, in this iteration, quite literally a
coffee shop with a stage, a decent sound
booth and minimal lighting.
This low-key setup feeds into the
recordings. The claps reverberated off
the walls in a way only intimate venues
can allow. Then,
everything
around me melt-
ed as Mitchell
began to sing.
“Marcie in a
coat of flowers
/
Stops
inside
a candy store /
Reds are sweet
and greens are
sour / Still no let-
ter at her door …”
I’m in a tight
spot here. As a
writer, it’s my job
to find the exact
words to convey
Mitchell’s
vocal
quality, her fin-
gerpicking on her
acoustic
guitar,
her lyrical prow-
ess as a songwriter, to you, the reader. I’ve
heard the tapes and you haven’t. This isn’t
a taunt, but rather a description of the role
I am in the position to fulfill.
The problem is Mitchell transcends
description. Her serene, profound sopra-
no register lures you in but, as soon as
you think you have a moment to breathe
and revel in the beauty Mitchell has con-
structed around you — her lyricism and
guitar chops knock you on your ass and
demand you pay your respects to the
Queen of California. Attention must be
paid, and Mitchell will get that attention
without breaking a sweat.
Bob Franke sure paid attention. And
she thanked him for it.
F
ranke, a student at the Univer-
sity during the late ’60s, was
what many would consider a
staple of Canterbury House during the
coffee house period. Like many folkies of
the period, Franke and his buddies were
inspired by Bob Dylan’s mainstream suc-
cess and the folk renaissance. In true early
Dylan fashion, Frankie and gang would
listen to people like Reynolds, a mentor
to Franke, perform cuts from the Harry
Smith Anthology of American Folk Music,
a seminal collection of folk songs from the
’20s and ’30s that laid the groundwork
for the folk renaissance of the ’60s. From
there, the folk fever spread in true folk
tradition.
“He and his friends would take songs
from the (Harry Smith Anthology) which
was, basically, the weirdest thing we had
ever heard but the most wonderful too and
he’d play all of these stories that we knew
nothing about,” Franke said. “He learned
the styles how how to tell these stories
with a guitar and basically taught those
techniques to me and we passed them
back and forth among all our friends.”
Growing
up,
Franke
was
always
attracted to music that told stories, spe-
cifically his parents’ musical theater LPs.
Then, being in a city like Ann Arbor in the
middle of a folk revival, he couldn’t keep
away. Franke recounted the moment dur-
ing his freshman year he really solidified
his relationship with and lifelong rever-
ence of Canterbury House as a space for
musicians to share their passions and sto-
ries with the audience. When he asked to
play a set, he was instead given a position
revered by few but a blessing in disguise —
the job of doorkeeper.
“It was an education itself. I took money
at the door and got to see some of the most
amazing people coming through, folk
revival people and traditional folk people
as well and, later on, people who sort of
stood at the crossroads of folk and pop
music,” Franke said. “I wound up spend-
ing all my time there and really learned an
awful lot about music.”
But back to Joni. While working as
doorkeeper and sometimes playing his
own songs, Franke saw Mitchell perform
at Canterbury House in ’67. According
to a letter from Mitchell’s agent Elliot
Smith to Reverend Burke, “Joni loved
playing the Room and when another date
can be worked out, would love to go back
once again.” Lucky for Franke, and frankly
everyone else at the University, Smith and
Burke arranged for Mitchell to play three
nights at Canterbury March 8-10, 1968, for
$650. Franke wasn’t going to let Mitchell’s
talent slip through Ann Arbor’s fingers
again without getting the word out some-
how.
Along with his trusted position at the
door, Franke was also occasionally writ-
ing for The Michigan Daily’s Arts section.
He had written a review of Mitchell’s first
Ann Arbor show in ’67 and, in The Daily’s
March 9 issue, penned the article “Joni
Mitchell Yang, Dylan Yin,” which began
with a simple command: “Joni Mitchell is
playing at Canterbury House this weekend.
See her.”
Franke described Mitchell’s music best,
in my opinion, when he wrote, “Perhaps
one of the best words to describe it is joy.
Not happiness as such, but the positive
unity of human experience.” With this
glowing review in print, Franke wasn’t
going to miss the show for anything.
“Apparently, (Joni’s) manager had shown
her the article and she was delighted by it
because every artist wants to be heard, and
I had heard her deeply and reported on
that experience so she asked to meet me,”
Franke said. “I was still taking money at
the door and I just went right down, met
her and she gave me a big hug, thanked me
for writing the article and I’ve remembered
that hug for the rest of my life.”
In our conversation, Franke made it
clear how large of an impact his time at
Canterbury had on his career as a musician.
Canterbury House was a place for Franke
to improve his chops and be exposed to all
styles of music, learning from other per-
formers and having fun all the while. Out of
all the things he has kept from the period,
Franke mentioned he held onto his articles
on Mitchell.
“What (the articles) meant to me was
that I was proud that I had gotten it right,
that I had found something of real value
and reported on it, shared it with every-
body and that that had an effect to help
Joni herself become the person and artist
that she’d become,” Franke said.
W
hile sitting in Espresso Royale
(South University location)
looking through a Kodak box
of film prints and contact sheets, the smil-
ing face of a young boy with a guitar piqued
my curiosity. Al Blixt, the photographer,
told me to turn the contact sheet over to see
if he had written who the performer was.
Sure enough, it was Franke.
Blixt, also a student at the University at
the time, photographed countless concerts
and performances at the coffee shop loca-
tion. Dozens of his prints are in the Bentley
Historical Archives for Canterbury House.
In the Espresso Royale lobby, I was holding
photographic history.
Blixt got his start photographing racing
tracks with his father growing up. Once he
got to the University and found out about
Canterbury House’s Division Street loca-
tion, he fell under its spell, like everyone
eventually did, and became the official
Canterbury House photographer.
“I saw something in The Daily or the
paper so I went and I was hooked,” Blixt
said during our conversation. “I loved
it and, of course, at the time in my dorm,
everyone seemed to have a guitar and they
were all listening to the Great Folk Scare of
the 1960s.”
Although he said he loved photograph-
ing the folk musicians, Blixt made a point of
noting it wasn’t just folkies with an acous-
tic guitar in one hand and Harry Smith’s
Anthology in the other on stage at 330
Maynard. His photographs of the Buddy
Guy Band, with two saxophone players and
Buddy on electric, back up his argument.
He points to the metamorphosis in Bob
Dylan’s sound from the early ’60s to ’67,
incredibly explored in D. A. Pennebaker’s
1967 documentary “Don’t Look Back,” to
highlight the diversity of sounds echoing
down the alley.
“By this time, Bob Dylan had gone elec-
tric so after that, the crossover between
electrified music and folk music was
breached,” Blixt said. “We would have peo-
ple who would come in and sing traditional
Scottish ballads, mostly it was singer-song-
writers, but … a jug band is not folk music. A
blues band is not folk music. As a matter of
fact, if you’re not a string band, you’re not
folk music.”
Blixt also remembered the events that
weren’t necessarily performances, such as
noon movie screenings and free brown rice
and apple cider. Blixt said the people there
knew the space was special.
As the official photographer, Blixt’s
photos were mounted on the walls of the
the coffee house for patrons to see. In his
photos lies both a journalistic eye for cap-
turing the event and a sense of drama and
storytelling. We talked extensively about
one photo of Doc Watson, a singer-song-
writer who had been blind since he was a
year old but revolutionized folk music with
his flatpicking style. In his print, Watson is
waiting in the green
room
of
Canter-
bury House before
a performance, and
Blixt and I couldn’t
help but comment
on his concentra-
tion and what could
possibly be running
through his head —
lyrics, stories to tell
onstage or anything
under the sun.
“Anytime
you’re
photographing
musical
artists,
there’s no sound so
what you’re trying
to do is capture a
representation that
encapsulates
the
experience the best
you can,” Blixt said.
“What you’re trying
to do is to (capture)
something
where
people
would
say
‘That’s a cool pic-
ture and I don’t even
know who it is.’”
G
ayle
Rubin, an
associate
professor of Anthro-
pology and Women’s
Studies, started DJing
in junior high school before becoming a
Wolverine. She discovered her passion for
music when she noticed the reaction from
people at parties when she’d take a turn
selecting albums for the record player.
“People would be sitting around, feeling
awkward and I would just go over to the
record player and start putting stuff on and
they would start to dance,” Rubin said.
Rubin started her college career in ’66
and discovered Canterbury at the Maynard
location in ’67. Like Blixt and Franke, she
remembered having the opportunity to see
tons of incredible talents, some that made it
big and others that potentially should have.
She got to see Neil Young, Mitchell, Jim
Kweskin and many more artists in their
prime.
However, like Blixt, she also looked back
fondly on other elements of the magical
space for members of the artist community
at the University, such as the spirituality
in the space and the conversations around
food sustainability.
“It was wonderful in so many ways,”
Rubin said. “It was a religious organization
first and foremost … but a lot of the minis-
ters were very progressive so it became a
place where people who were part of ‘the
Movement’ gathered and went for meet-
ings, to hang out, to go to services on Sun-
day. I am not religious, and I didn’t grow
up Christian but even I went to services.
They were just really profoundly pleasant
and inspiring services to go to. Also, one of
Ann Arbor’s first health food restaurants
was located as a little kind of salad bar in
the front of Canterbury House.”
Although Rubin currently still DJs
from time to time, she finds the differ-
ences between recorded and live music to
be crucial to an audiophile. As you can tell
from recordings such as Neil Young’s Sugar
Mountain - Live at Canterbury House 1968,
shows at Canterbury were nothing like the
recorded material from the same artist.
They told stories, they had extended asides,
or “raps” as the Young reissue calls them,
and they could converse with the intimate
crowds. Rubin said this is where the beauty
of live music rings true.
“Recorded music always sounds the
same, because once it’s recorded, it’s like
publishing a book. It’s codified. It’s there
on a page,” Rubin said. “Live music is more
spontaneous. It can vary quite a bit more …
And the way sound works live is very dif-
ferent than the way it works coming off of a
stereo or coming out of speakers … You can
feel the air move and you certainly could at
Canterbury House.”
With folks like Young and Mitchell sell-
ing out amphitheaters today, these gigs
have a superstar aura to them — huge
amplification systems, big spotlights and
thousands of adoring fans. However, Fran-
ke, Blixt and Rubin were lucky enough to
catch them and many more at the intimate
sets of Canterbury, with the air moving
around them.
However, the music wasn’t the only
thing making the air move in the late ’60s.
If you wanted to rebel against the Man and
the War Machine, you’d just have to head
down the very same alley at 330 Maynard.
Part two of this series will run in next
Wednesday’s issue of Statement Magazine.
“The claps reverberated off the walls
in a way only intimate venues can
allow. Then, everything around me
melted as Mitchell began to sing.”
Courtesy of Al Blixt
Joni Mitchell at Canterbury House in the late ‘60s.
Courtesy of Al Blixt
Spider John Koerner at Canterbury House in the late ‘60s.
Courtesy of Al Blixt
Bob Franke at Canterbury House in the late ‘60s.