Another Cooper’s Glen Spectacular

Neither a foot of new snow, nor sleet, nor dark of night kept the Detour gang and a few hundred happy pickers and listeners from crowding into the Radisson Hotel in Kalamazoo last weekend for the latest Cooper’s Glen Music Festival.  This was our third outing at this terrific event sponsored by the Great Lakes Acoustic Music Association and other organizations in Kalamazoo, and we had a great time!  Our ol’ pal Mike Sumner breezed in from Nashville with the Randy Kohrs Band to play a rollicking set and do some late-night jamming with the Detour boys.  And good friend Joel Mabus did an impromptu set featuring the golden mandolin tones of our own Jeff Rose when headliner Jim Lauderdale was stranded in Chicago by a winter storm.  Now we have to take special pains to keep Joel from luring Jeff away onto the road, the two of them sounded so good together!

We also were blown away by the incredible music of the Hot Club of Detroit and the Brothers Kalamazov of Kalamazoo.   Kevin had warned us for weeks that the Brothers Kalamazov are a blazingly original bunch, working through a pile of acoustic and brass instruments on the stage and swapping them around with such ease that we lost track of who could play what.  The Hot Club did the finest renditions of gypsy jazz I’ve ever heard since my Django/Stephane listening days too many years ago.

Many thanks to our fans for their kind words and avid support at our shows!  And a big vote of gratitude to Kathy Nichols, Mark Sahlgren, and all of the GLAMA folks who put on this shindig! — Doc Fiddle