The kids are alright — but the Geezers are having more fun

Editor's Note: Welcome to Curtain Call — your front-row seat to the unique, lively, and memorable performances shaping Kalamazoo’s arts scene. Supported by the I.S. Gilmore Foundation, this series highlights the creativity and community that make each show something special.

KALAMAZOO, MI — "Are you old enough to be in here?"

This was the first time since 1987 that someone asked me that in a bar. 

I was in a dim basement club. The band onstage was playing wild rock'n'roll. The crowd was on the dance floor, some moving in ways that could shock polite society. They'd had a number of adult beverages by that point. Many also had dinner at their tables, since the dance party started when respectable people ate, at 5 P.M.

Fran DwightGeezer Happy Hour takes place at Shakespeare's Pub. Check calendar for details. The next GHH is Monday, July 14.The second set primed the crowd, after 6 P.M. Duke and the Loose Cannons launched into the raw twangy spy theme, Johnny Rivers' 1966 hit "Secret Agent Man," and the place went nuts. 

"The Geezer Happy Hour" has been happening in the basement club of Shakespeare's Pub since April. Before that, it had been underway at Rugger's Up and Under until it closed in March.
Fran DwightMonday, July 14 is the next Geezer Happy Hour. Check Facebook calendar for further dates.The band members are all above 70, and the audience ranges from late middle age to somewhere past 80. You could say that they're rockin' to the oldies to feel like they're 17 again, but more likely, they feel just like themselves, 71 and ready to party to some good music for a change.
 
"We're the old guys, and the music is better."

Shakespeare's sound guy, Hank Belcher, plays a bit of present-day grindcore or whatever the kids call it nowadays, over the PA system as the Cannons set up before the doors opened.

Belcher is 28, and laughs as he says much of the Cannons' audience seems like they arrive on a "bus from the retirement home or something."

Fran DwightDuke and the Loose Cannon bring it on at the Geezer Happy Hour.But he loves what the band plays, and "it's fun to watch. It's kind of a weird other side of the coin to the hardcore shows that we have here. Where kids are down here killing themselves to, like, abrasive music," Belcher says.

Once, long ago, these musicians were making radical noise, the rock that the adults hated. Many of the band members have deep connections to Kalamazoo's freaky past.

Duke and The Loose Cannons' trumpeter Leonard Duke and bassist Craig Vestal met in the Milwood Junior High marching band in 1966. They went down a questionable road as teens, and in 1971, ended up in Rob Backus' Sherman Shultz Food Band. 

Fran DwightPacking an over-70 crowd at the Geezer Happy Hour.The Food Band played campus coffee shops, "loosely inspired by the White Panther movement and the cultural politics of John Sinclair... an eclectic band that consisted of a fluid and evolving group of local artists and radical musicians," according to its Facebook group. At different times, Cannons' guitarist Morgan Pyne was also part of the Food Band. 

Vestal went on to play in Segment, a regular band at The Club Soda. In the '80s, he and Pyne backed Brother I.V. Simson, "Battle Creek's Little Richard," Vestal says. Brother I.V. was a showman who would have his band play Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen" on repeat as the star prepared to come out in a cape and large processed hair, to give out flowers and kisses to the ladies in the audience.

Fran DwightBassist Craig Vestal of Duke and the Loose Cannons"That's where I met Herbie," Cannons' keyboardist Herb Thompson, who was Brother I.V. 's bandleader, Vestal says.

Vestal, Duke, and Pyne reconnected in the mid-'90s in the Kalamazoo Dixieland Orchestra and The Swingmasters to play jazz and swing in Kalamazoo senior centers. It was in that group that they met Cannons' drummer Tom Tomas. 

Fran DwightBorn to dance, Judy Sarkozy lets loose on the floor at the Geezer Happy Hour. Vestal says of The Swingmasters, "We were playing with a bunch of old swing guys that had always wanted to be like Glenn Miller and stuff like that. And we would play for the old people who only wanted to dance like they did in high school."

The young punks in the swing band had a vision of a future where "we're the old guys, and the music is better," Vestal says.

Fran DwightThe Geezer Happy Hour takes place on alternate Mondays each month at Shakespeare's Pub."Leonard would be hanging back with me and say, 'We could do this exact same thing, except we'd play rock and roll. People would love it."

"Gang" activity

The Cannons formed around 12 years ago, practiced in the back of Vestal's Portage Printing, and had regular gigs playing jazz to rock. (He retired and sold the shop a couple of years ago, so they practice at Pyne's home.) 

Fran DwightDancers celebrate 'geezerhood' at the Geezer Happy Hour.In January 2023, The New York Times broke the story that a "Geezer Happy Hour" was "the coolest rock show in Ann Arbor. And almost everyone there is over 65." 

Over in Ann Arbor, seniors were dancing to cool tunes at a reasonable hour. The Cannons knew what they had to do.

Fran DwightJudy Sarkozy is known as a "ringleader" of the Geezer Happy Hour, bringing a large group from the Heritage Community in tow.The Kalamazoo "Geezer Happy Hour" has been building up a following since starting in 2023. A lot of the crowd is there thanks to Judy Sarkozy, of Sarkozy Bakery. A regular, Michael Betz, warns before the show that she's "the ringleader" of a group of rabid fans. 

In Shakespeare's green room, during the pre-show interview, we hear the sound of some sort of ruckus outside. Rowdy whoops and shouts.

Fran DwightThe Geezer Happy Hour takes place on alternate Mondays each month throughout the year."Did you hear that screaming off stage? That was Judy Sarkozy coming in with all the people from Heritage," Vestal says. They arrived via bus from Heritage Community. "They all come in as a posse." 

It's like a gang has walked into the bar they've claimed as their own. They sat at the Geezers' table — to tease, the band had called this group that became their biggest fans Geezers, and the Geezers adopted the name.

The band starts with some chill and cool jazz — Quincy Jones' 1969 "Killer Joe,” then Freddie Hubbard's 1967 "Little Sunflower" —  in the windowless club. 

Fran DwightDuke and the Loose Cannons put on a great show at the Geezer Happy Hour.It's just after 5 p.m. Outside, it's a sunny day with drivers a couple of yards from Shakespeare's door on Kalamazoo Avenue getting stressed out on the rush home from work. Inside, the Geezers are starting their night off with a light dinner and drinks.

A couple more jazz tunes, and then it's time to dance to the Clovers' 1959 hit, "Love Potion No. 9."  

Fran DwightNostalgia and romance make great partners at the Geezer Happy Hour.Sarkozy jumps to her feet and heads to the dance floor alone. She turns and beckons her gang to join her. They do so, and the dance floor is full of twisting seniors.

Next, the band rocks on something unrecognizable, with Vestal shouting vocals like a 1966 teen in his first garage rock band. (We later find he was singing "Fool in Love," originally sung by Tina Turner. "It's a bit of a stretch," he says.)

Fran DwightNostalgia and romance make great partners at the Geezer Happy Hour.They slow things down with The Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses," Pyne on vocals, singing "Let's do some living after we die." Couples are slow dancing, with some real romance as we approach the late hour of 6 p.m.

The sound turns a shade of psychedelic as guest singer Grace Anne, a long-time professional vocalist in Kalamazoo, takes the mic for Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"  and "Somebody to Love." 

One could joke about how the dancers know all about how one (legally prescribed) pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, but Grace Anne propelled the dancers with her Grace Slick interpretation until they were moving as if they'd just gotten out of Cheech and Chong's van.

Fran DwightRockin' till they drop at the Geezer Happy HourIn the set break, I join the Geezers' table. They were in party mode, with some talking about how they saw the Airplane, or maybe it was the Starship, in the '70s, others yelling for "Joyce the Bartender" to join the table with hearty "JTB!" 

JTB is a bit younger than the crowd, by a few decades. She apparently works at Heritage. "I'm their bartender... I have a lot of friends!" 

Do residents have their own bar at Heritage? Why do they even need to leave?

The ringleader, Sarkozy, tells me, "We think it's important for us to get out of where we live and to be in the community." She moved into Heritage because it's near downtown, and they can easily go out for a night on the town.

Fran DwightDuke and the Loose Cannons perform on alternate Mondays for the Geezer Happy Hour at Shakespeare's Pub.There was a suggestion that they could bring the Cannons to Heritage, but "We said no!"

"When it's brought in for you, and your job is to sit there, it's a very different kind of feeling than when we say, 'Let's get in the car and go,' " she says.

Sarkozy was born in 1941, didn't dance much as a teen, and much of the music the Cannons cover came out when she was an adult. But she loves to dance to it now.

Fran DwightDuke and the Loose Cannons play a mixture of jazz, blues, Motown, soul, and rock and roll.At one Geezer Happy Hour, the Heritage gang had brought out "four of our folks, over 90, three of whom were dancing — we don't want to be in a place where they pat you on the head!"

When she started going to the shows, "there were just a few of us who were quite a bit older than the rest of the folks. And the beautiful thing about it was that everybody got up and danced, and danced with each other, and met each other."

Sarkozy adds with a big laugh, "It's a place where we're celebrating Geezerhood!"