"Hallowed ground": Performers reflect on 60 years of community and creativity at The Ark

This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, and the University Musical Society.

Annie Capps used to stop by The Ark’s open mic night to "wait in line and sit on the stairs — the way they used to do it," she says. "You had to get there early … and the first 16 people [in line] got to play."
 
"You walk [out] on that stage, and you’re like, ‘Holy moly," says the Chelsea-based singer/songwriter. "You can't do poorly. You just feel like a rock star when you walk out there."
 
The Ark — the beloved Ann Arbor music venue known for spotlighting folk and other forms of roots music — has long since moved to a lottery system for open mic performers. But in those days, musicians had to earn their place in line.
 
"We met a lot of people [who] became friends and colleagues sitting on those steps, waiting to play," Capps says. "I know bands that formed because they met at open mics."
 Doug CoombeAnnie and Rod Capps performing at the Johnny's Speakeasy Benefit at The Ark in 2024.
This year, The Ark celebrates its 60^th anniversary. To observe the occasion, and to reflect on that history, I spoke with close to a dozen local and not-so-local artists about their memories of the venue. I thought I’d hear a few anecdotes about a local club; instead, I learned about community-building, legacy, and how a sense of intimacy might affect a musician’s performance.
 
David Tamulevich, co-founder of the seminal Ann Arbor band Mustard's Retreat, says there's immense "community commitment to The Ark," and for good reason. 

"They're there for musicians and musicians are there for them — and that word gets out," says Tamulevich, whose band is celebrating its 50^th anniversary.
 
Katie Larson of Traverse City-founded and Nashville-based band the Accidentals describes The Ark as "Ann Arbor’s living room," while Chelsea-based actor and musician Jeff Daniels calls it "one of the treasures of the country."
 courtesy Jeff DanielsJeff Daniels.
The venue has cultivated what Los Angeles-based musician Theo Katzman describes as a "culture of listening," – or a "culture of respect," according to the Accidentals’ Sav Madigan.
 
And while Katzman says it’s not the kind of scene where "everybody's gonna be drunk and talking over the music," Minnesota-based singer/songwriter John Gorka says it is the kind of place "where people can really sit and listen to the show without a lot of noise."
 
Even so, says Daniels, "It's not a listening room in the sense that it's a library, and ‘Everybody be quiet, please.’"
 
"I would bet that the Rolling Stones would love to play at The Ark. … Bono would probably love to play The Ark," says Katzman.
 
"People who go there are just true music lovers," says Madigan. "There's such a reverence that people walk into that building with."
 
Among musicians, Capps says, The Ark is "a place that everybody wants to play," – in fact, "the place to play between the west coast and the east coast," according to Tamulevich.
 
How The Ark became any of these things can be ascribed to the duo employed early on to manage the venue. Married couple Linda and David Siglin both submitted applications for a general manager position in 1969. While David was officially hired, the understanding, he told MLive, was that he’d be sharing the role with Linda.
 
The couple ran The Ark from 1969 to 1983, when Linda transitioned to a position with the University of Michigan. David continued on in his role at The Ark until 2008. The couple’s daughter, Anya Siglin, is now The Ark’s program director.
 courtesy Mustard's RetreatLibby Glover and David Tamulevich of Mustard's Retreat.
Tamulevich praises "the dedication that David and Linda Siglin had to that place, which kept it going."
 
On March 16 of this year, Linda Siglin unexpectedly passed away.
 
"It's unfathomable to think that she's gone," says current Ark Executive Director Marianne James.
 
"Anyone who met Linda wasn't likely to forget her," James says. "She had a larger-than-life personality and led with a quick wit and big laugh that filled any room. … It's an enormous loss to her family, her friends, The Ark, and the community."
 
"The balcony gets the joke"
 
In conversations for this story, I asked each artist what it was about The Ark that made it unique, that made it feel like an inviting place to play. I asked them to be as specific as they could; I wanted to try to define, as precisely as possible, the indefinable ambience, or atmosphere, or — for lack of a better term — vibe that seems to linger there so insistently (despite the fact that The Ark has twice changed location).
 
In one way or another, every artist I spoke to remarked on the sense of intimacy that the space invites. One night, Daniels went to see the virtuosic Delta blues/jazz guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps perform at The Ark.
 
"You had all these guitar players in the first row," Daniels says, no more than "10 feet, maybe eight feet away from Kelly Joe's guitar."
 
"Their eyes didn't leave his hands," he says. "... They bought tickets in the front row to lean forward so they could watch Kelly Joe Phelps’ hands on his acoustic guitar."
 Doug CoombeThornetta Davis.
Detroit blues legend Thornetta Davis agrees that the space is "real intimate." 

"It feels like we're all a part of the same experience," she says."Even if I'm performing and they're in the audience, we're all a part of it."
 
As a performer onstage, "[you’re] surrounded on three sides by people," says the Accidentals’ Larson. "You're not just looking out at a dark sea of seats. You can see people's faces in the front row. There's been times where I've been worried I'm going to accidentally poke someone with my cello bow — because we're that close."
 
And while there is still a physical barrier separating audience from artist, at least technically, "you don’t really feel separated when you’re a performer," says Capps. "You don’t really feel separated from the audience."
 Doug CoombeKatie Larson and Sav Madigan of The Accidentals.
"I think that's pretty true of folk music in general," says Gorka. "It’s not, like, ‘Look at me.’ It’s more, like, ‘Look at us.’… There's no distance, physically, from the performer."
 
Katzman insists that "every artist loves the intimacy" at the venue. 

"It’s scary sometimes," he acknowledges, "because you’re sort of, like, ‘Oh my god, there’s no hiding here.'"
 
"You don't have to push," Daniels adds. "It's not Broadway, where you’ve got to throw it to the balcony. … They’re right there. You can talk to them."
 courtesy Theo KatzmanTheo Katzman.
This is a point Daniels returns to, as if worrying a scrap piece of paper with his fingers.
 
"You don't have to push," he says again. "They're right there. They're right there. It's like playing to a living room. It's playing to one person. It's the intimacy of it — in a way, it brings out the musicianship and the lyrics. ... You can do more. You don't have to make sure that the balcony gets the joke."
 
"As a songwriter," he says, "as somebody who just sits up there with an acoustic guitar … [there’s] no place to hide. It's a great test. If your song is good, it'll hold up. If your guitar playing is good, it'll hold up."

Daniels says the resulting effect is like "a close-up in a movie."

"That's what I saw with Kelly Joe Phelps — he pulled us right into that guitar," he says.
 
I ask Daniels what kind of challenges the venue's intimacy might present for a performer.
 
"It shows your weaknesses," he says. "It shows where you aren't as confident. But ... if you can get to [this] point … you lose the fact that you’re performing, [and] now you’re just playing. At a place like The Ark, you can get away with that. There's still a performance, there's still timing, there's still the musicianship, but you can play to an audience that's five feet in front of you, and not worry about anybody further away than that. That's different than throwing it out there. You can pull them in, and by pulling them in, now you're playing more by yourself, for yourself, and that's where — if you can get there — that's where the magic is. That’s where the fun is. Same thing with acting. They say ‘Cut,’ and you forget what you just did."
 
That is, he adds, "once you get over the fact that they're five feet away, or whatever."
 
"Hallowed ground"
 
The artists I spoke with remembered not only playing at The Ark themselves, but witnessing memorable performances as audience members. The Accidentals' Madigan remembers seeing Béla Fleck perform with Abigail Washburn when Washburn was about eight months pregnant and "could barely hold a banjo in her arms."
 
Jeff Daniels remembers a Christine Lavin performance from approximately 1987 — a time, he says, when "I had a guitar and I knew three chords, but I’d been around a lot of writers and was trying to write some stuff." Exposure to Lavin’s lighthearted, quick-witted style at precisely the moment he was developing into a songwriter, Daniels says, felt like receiving "permission to be funny."
 
As for Tamulevich, who became a prominent agent and manager a decade after founding Mustard’s Retreat, a night when Dar Williams opened for Ani DiFranco springs immediately to mind.
 
At the time, Tamulevich was DiFranco’s booking agent. He’d just signed Williams, too, and agreed to have her open for DiFranco even though he says "they’re very, very different performers."
Doug CoombeThe War and Treaty performing at The Ark in 2021.
"Ani’s driving and dynamic, and Dar," he says, "is softer."
 
"It's not an easy thing to go in front of an Ani DiFranco audience, especially at that time," Tamulevich insists. He says DiFranco was "the hot and rising star," every bit a "phenomenon."
 
For Williams, Tamulevich says, the set was essentially "an audition." But, he says, "I remember Dar coming out, and within 30 seconds, the audience was totally charmed and in her hand."
 
Tamulevich says The Ark is "sort of hallowed ground. When you go up onstage, you think of the people who have been there — standing in the same place that you're standing — for 60 years. It’s extraordinary."
 Doug CoombeA performance of North Country Opera at The Ark in 2022.
"You're playing on the same stage as some of your heroes," Capps agrees.
 
This was a point that many artists turned to in our conversations: how much it meant to play the same stage their heroes had once played — even if it wasn’t at the same moment in time, and even if the actual stage has been rebuilt once or twice.
 
In its first iteration, The Ark was a house on Hill Street where guests could get free snacks and drinks along with their concerts. After that building was torn down in the early '70s, the club moved to a warehouse on Main Street before relocating in 1996 to its current location at 316 S. Main St.
 Doug CoombeRichard Thompson performing at The Ark in 2019.
With reverence, Capps rattles off a list of folk-music heroes who've played The Ark in at least one of its incarnations: Arlo Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk, Judy Collins, Elizabeth Cotten.
 
And while the club has undoubtedly emphasized folk throughout its history, Davis says it hasn’t "slacked on getting all different kinds of music, all different kinds of people, all different kinds of artistry to perform on that stage."
 
More recently, says Capps, The Ark is "a venue that can fill six nights a week with top-shelf, international touring artists … [and] days later, you’ve got the local artists playing."
Doug CoombeDani Darling. 
That kind of schedule testifies to Ark staffers' commitment "to having their finger on the pulse of … what's happening in the community," says Ann Arbor-based musician Dani Darling.
 
"They're always willing … to be engaged with community and finding ways to assist artists, whatever their background, wherever they're coming from, however they can be helpful — even if you're not a folk artist," Darling says.
 
"When Motown left," says Davis, "everybody thought the music went with them. So it's important for venues like The Ark to continue … supporting local artists."
 
"These cats have played here?"

Any Ark performer encounters a palpable reminder of the venue's legacy right before they go onstage: the walls of the green room, where musicians get ready to perform, is plastered in the signatures of artists who've played there in the past.

Katzman calls the space "one of the most incredible green rooms in the world. … People have signed every inch of that thing."
 
Among the signatures, Darling adds, "I can pinpoint dozens and dozens of artists that I've known, that I've seen perform, or that are all-out famous."
 Doug CoombeDominic John Davis warming up backstage at The Ark before a Chris Buhalis concert in 2016.
Visiting artists can peruse the scribbled-over space, adding their own marks as they please.
Because of that ink, "you're a part of history at The Ark," says Davis.
 
Darling refers to the overlapping signatures as "a metaphor for how we're all connected through The Ark."

"[It] represents something really beautiful as far as the history of Ann Arbor’s music scene," she says.
 
"I'll come back to The Ark and be like … ‘Wow, they played here?" Katzman says."... That kind of thing is so cool and unique to music. … You have this shared camaraderie [with other musicians that’s] like, ‘Oh, you played in Michigan? Where? Oh, you played The Ark? Oh, you're from Japan? You've been to The Ark?’ ... That's what hit me yesterday."
 Doug CoombeDavid Jones warming up before a show at The Ark in 2023.
Katzman had performed at The Ark with May Erlewine the night before we spoke. Glancing over signatures in the green room, he says, "I was like, ‘Whoa! These cats have played here? These cats have played here?’"
 
Tamulevich says that sense of community across a 60-year legacy is what has allowed the venue to endure and thrive.
 
"There's still not much money in this business," he says. 

"You do it because you believe in the community, because of what it means to you — what music means to you. I think that's why a lot of us are playing. It's like — music has meant so much to us, and we want to try to pass that along. Once in a while, you know, you get lucky enough."

Natalia Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and others.

All photos by Doug Coombe.