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.

