Join us for exceptional music, coffee, and dessert in an intimate setting at one of our Friday night Green Wood Coffee Houses.

Doors open one half hour before each performance. Performances begin at 8:00 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Seating is unassigned.

At this time, tickets cannot be purchased online, so reservations are highly recommended! Call 734-665-8558 and leave a message with your name, number of tickets desired, and performance. Then (if there is time between your call and the performance date) send a check for the total (payable to "FUMC Green Wood") to: FUMC Green Wood, 1001 Green Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105. Include name, address, and phone number. Tickets will be waiting at the door. Reservations made without payment may not be honored for sold-out performances.

Tickets are also available at the door. Kids 10 and under are 2-for-1.
Group discounts available — call 734-665-8558 for details.

Spring 2010 Schedule      Incomplete -- please check back for updates.

Friday, January 15, 2010 - Wayward Roots ($12)

Ann Arbor's versatile combo Wayward Roots combines the talents of David Mosher (mandolin), Alan Ruben (bass), Evan Childress (fiddle), Todd Lang (guitar) and Tony Pace (dobro). With all members sharing vocal responsibilities, their repertoire of original acoustic music is part Americana, part jazz, part folk, and part improvisational, yet clearly from the bluegrass tradition. Come on out and enjoy an evening of toe-tappin', foot-stompin' fun!

Friday, January 22, 2010 - Michael Johnathon ($12)

Every Monday night, musical history is made as the Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour begins its regular radio and television broadcast at the Kentucky Theatre.  Tour buses deliver visitors from faraway places; crowds scramble for good seats.  Volunteers wearing black shirts finish their sound checks and adjust their cameras.  The house is packed as stage lights dim. Woodsongs’ founder, Michael Johnathon, comes onstage and introduces himself as a folksinger, songwriter and tree hugger.  What he doesn’t say is he’s also a playwright, producer, author and touring artist.  Johnathon has a worldwide radio audience exceeding a million listeners each week.

This “Woody Guthrie in a Cyber World” grew up in upstate New York along the shores of the Hudson River. At 19 years old, he moved to the Mexican border town of Laredo, Texas and found a job working as a late night DJ on KLAR-FM. One night, he played Turn, Turn, Turn by the 60’s folk rock group, The Byrds. As the song played, he recalled seeing Pete Seeger and Harry Chapin performing in his Dutchess County hometown.

By the time the song ended, he decided to pursue a career as a folksinger.  Two months later, he bought a guitar and a banjo and settled into the isolated mountain hamlet of Mousie, Kentucky.  For the next three years, he traveled up and down the hollers of the Appalachian mountains learning the music of the mountain people.  Michael experienced hundreds of front porch hootenannies where folks would pull out their banjos and fiddles, and play the old songs that their grandparents taught them.

He performed two thousand “Earth Concerts” at colleges, schools, fairs and benefits.  By the time Johnathon settled in Lexington in 1988, he had drawn international attention from the press and had performed for more than 2 million people.  He has been featured on CNN, TNN, CMT, AP, Headline News, NPR, Bravo and the BBC.

WoodSongs now has nearly 500 radio affiliates, the Internet, podcasts and XM Satellite Radio.  The television version is available to 300 PBS stations.  What hasn't changed is Johnathon’s focus on providing a showcase for grass-roots musicians who, like him, make their living on a scale much smaller than that of bands filling stadiums.

His 2007 release Walden: The Earth Song Collection brings Johnathon’s career around full circle.  The 11 tracks are recorded with vocals, guitar, mandolin, banjo, flutes and a string quartet.  This album reflects the many emotions that Henry David Thoreau stirs in Johnathon as a songwriter.  Supporting the album on tour, Michael’s concerts are poetic and passionate, usually performed with guitar and banjo.

“Take the inventiveness of Bob Dylan, the melodic voice of John Denver, add the showmanship of Garrison Keillor and that’s Michael Johnathon.”  Bob Spear, Heartland Review

"He is one of the few performers today who understands that the music of the future must respect the music of the past.  His strong understanding of the centuries-old folk tradition is a breath of fresh air."  Phil Shapiro, Bound for Glory

“Michael Johnathon is a consummate musician, a singer and songwriter with something to say.”  Joe Ross, Bluegrass Now

“He stretches the folk category with the range of his concerns to the complexity of his musical arrangements.  His songs have a compelling directness to them.”  Ed Morris, Billboard

Friday, February 5, 2010 - Juggernaut Jug Band ($15)

You haven't heard "Pinball Wizard" or "People Are Strange" until you've heard it played on jugs and "various other sundries."

Jug band music is blues, ragtime, swing and jazz combined in a strange concoction spawned in Louisville, home of the Juggernaut Jug Band. Jug bands flourished in towns along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in the 1920s and 1930s.

Today, as then, a jug band is the ultimate party band. The Juggernauts have been featured on the Today Show and radio's "Dr. Demento Show." Their current CD is You Mean We Get Paid For This?

Juggernaut Jug Band Members:

Roscoe Goose - Washboard, Trumpet, Cans, Blues Harp, and Snare. Also plays First Jug. (Usually gets slapped before getting chance to play Second Jug.)

The Amazing Mr. Fish - Walking Bass, Running Nose Flute and Washtub Bass. (Actually not a fish and according to female acquaintances, anything but amazing.)

Skip Tracer - Newest and youngest member of the group.  Known far and wide as the "Hillbilly Playboy" from Hannibal, MO., on guitar, mandolin, banjo and vocals.

Smiley Habanero - Hot guitarist from south of the border.  And if you think his guitar playing is hot, just wait!

Friday, February 19, 2010 - Claudia Schmidt ($12)

Michigan native Claudia Schmidt has covered a lot of musical ground, beginning with a stirring rendition of "Tammy" at age 4 around a neighborhood bonfire. Then came years of choirs, a guitar, a dulcimer, and some theatre thrown into the pot.

With more than three decades as a touring professional traversing North America as well as Europe in venues ranging from intimate clubs to 4,000 seat theatres, and festival stages in front of 25,000 rapt listeners, she is familiar with the mediums of radio and TV, with regular stints on Public Radio International's "A Prairie Home Companion" in its early incarnation, and starring in an hour-long documentary called "I Sing Because I Can't Fly," produced by KTCA TV in St. Paul.  She participated in the delightful Les Blank movie, "Gap-Toothed Women," contributing a song as well as an interview.  She wrote an award-winning score and performed in the Goodman Theatre's 1992 Chicago production of Brecht's "Good Person of Szechuan."  In 2006 & 2007 she was a lead performer along with Ruth McKenzie and Prudence Johnson in “The Gales of November.”  The “Gales” is a musical retelling of the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy from the point of view of three wives of the doomed crew of the Great Lakes ore-carrier.  Her music has also recently appeared in the documentary, “Motherhood Manifesto,” produced by John DeGraaf and the folks at moveon.org.

Claudia has recorded fourteen albums of mostly original songs, exploring folk, blues, and jazz idioms featuring her acclaimed 12- string guitar and mountain dulcimer.  Recently she collaborated with the New Reformation Jazz Band on a Dixieland gospel recording and a tribute to Gershwin and Ellington in celebration of their hundredth birthdays.  Claudia’s 2003 release on Redhouse Records, Wings of Wonder, features many new songs with instrumental support by Dean Magraw and Peter Ostroushko.  I Thought About You is her second effort leading her own swinging sextet, Claudia Schmidt & The JumpBoys.  In the fall of 2003 Claudia released a spoken-word CD featuring some of the many pieces she’s made famous in her performances over the past thirty years.  The CD Roads includes 17 poems and essays from her rich performance repertoire.  In the Summer of 2006 Claudia released her first self-produced folk/acoustic CD, Spinning.  This recording is a coming home of sorts, with a studio full of Michigan’s finest musicians.  In the fall of 2006 Claudia teamed up again with Dean Magraw, this time for a live jazz recording at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis.  This great example of Claudia at work on stage features classic jazz pieces along with several of her own jazz-inspired compositions.

A musician who has always hated categories, Claudia describes herself as a "creative noisemaker."  You may expect anything at a Schmidt concert: hymn, poem, bawdy verse, torch song, satire.  Her joy and love of performing are contagious.  She can weave the elements of music and stage into a program so unified and full of life that one critic has described a Claudia Schmidt concert as "....a lot like falling in love.  You never know what's going to happen next; chances are it's going to be wonderful; every moment is burned into your memory; and you know you'll never be the same again."

Friday, March 12, 2010 - Kat Eggleston ($12)

Kat is one of the most accomplished guitarists and singer/songwriters in the folk, Celtic and traditional music genres. Elating, moving, and amusing audiences with her beautiful blend of sweet melodies, gentle honesty and searing humor, Kat's music reflects a wide range of life's experiences with unusual clarity and authority.

In a clear alto with flawless intonation, Kat Eggleston goes straight to the lyrical and emotional truth of every word and every note. Her musings on home, childhood, and her father's garden are gems of direct, unassuming plainspokenness. Her narratives push hard at our senses and demand we return again and again to pick up the pieces we dropped on first hearing, expanding our comprehension of difficult, personal and universal experience.

Kat has released five CDs to date, three of which are available from Waterbug Music, one from Redwing Music, and the most recent, Speak, in August 2009 as an independent release.

Also an actor, teacher and hammered dulcimer player, Kat has been a lead singer with The Otters and with Bohola, and recorded a duo CD with Kate MacLeod. She has played live and on recordings with David Bromberg, Bohola, the David Munnelly Band, Niamh Parsons, Jim Tullio, Tom Dundee, Dennis Cahill, Michael Smith, Brooks Williams, Andrew Calhoun, and many others.  She has toured in Europe, Australia, Ireland, England, and Scotland as well as the U.S.

After nearly 20 years in Chicago as a performing singer-songwriter and musical theater artist (including two seasons in Michael Smith's "Snow Queen" at Chicago's prestigious Victory Gardens Theatre), she returned to her home community of Vashon Island in 2008 to be close to her beloved father, an inspiration for many of her best songs.

"I was born when my parents were working on the 'Gumby' show, probably sealing my fate as a performer, and certainly making green the central color of my wardrobe." Kat's mother was Gumby's first voice, and her father was Gumby's first art director and invented Pokey. Her father is an inspiration for some of her best songs.

Friday, March 19, 2010 - Dave Boutette ($12)

In his own words: "A guy on Bois Blanc Island said I looked like James Taylor and sounded like Neil Diamond. He was real drunk though."

Here's what AMG said: "There's an honesty in his voice that's genuinely comforting; he finishes each line with an exclamation point that's confident without coming off as smug, putting him somewhere in between Alex Chilton and Elvis Costello. Boutette's a songwriter that relieves the Midwest of its tendency to spew forth an endless sea of singer/songwriter banality, replacing its tired clichés with protagonists that are as mischievous as they are heartfelt." An evening with Dave Boutette is just plain fun. His songs are wonderfully written and delivered with infectious enthusiasm and emotion. His energy is contagiously genial and will give your day a fine winding-down.

Friday, March 26, 2010 - Michael Johnson ($15)

Friday, April 16, 2010 - Chuck Mitchell

Friday, April 23, 2010 - Mustard's Retreat ($12)

Friday, April 30, 2010 - Small Potatoes ($15)

Friday, May 7 and Saturday, May 8, 2010 - Don White ($17)

Friday, May 21, 2010 - Friends In Deed Benefit

Performers interested in bookings at the Green Wood Coffee House should leave a message at 734-665-8558.