Three Stories about Seventeen Artists
1: May Erlewine, Laurel Premo, Anna Gustavsson:
It started when May Erlewine was helping her friend Laurel Premo find a venue. This was sometime in 2016, when Laurel was releasing a project titled I Walked Abroad — a masterwork collaboration of fiddle music from both American and Swedish traditions, in partnership with Swedish nyckelharpa player Anna Gustavsson.
What happened is pretty simple: Premo and Gustavsson were looking to bring their music to Traverse City and asked May — a beloved and well-connected local songwriter — to hunt down a venue for them. After thorough considerations of all the available options, May called Laurel to admit defeat.
This is not to say that Traverse City lacks incredible places to experience live music, nor even to say we should be ranking these venues on some kind of scale. No, the best strategy — as with species of any wild animal, types of peppers both sweet and hot, varieties of prayer, and names for any kind of weather and any kind of love — is abundant diversity. In this case, what May was seeking in the Traverse City musical ecosystem was what we’ve taken to calling a “missing middle” — a not-so-big venue, small enough for intimacy and immediacy, absent the din of a bar, professional enough to present a program that matches the skill and intention of the artists, and just large enough to ensure that performers are paid a fair wage.
Coincidentally, it was around the same time that Kate Redman and Chris Treter, two of the original visionaries for a cooperative mixed-use space on 8th Street, reached out to May. Kate asked her to share her experience as a touring artist, in order to help design a live music venue. They expected a quick meeting. What they got was a heartfelt manifesto. I love this summary from May:
I’ve toured all over the world and found myself on every kind of stage you could imagine — loud seedy bars, quiet churches, auditoriums, living rooms. Of the thousands of venues I’ve played, I can list a dozen, maybe, where I knew, from the moment I walked in, that I was somewhere truly special. As both an artist and as an audience member, I can tell you that places like that, and the shows they produce, are so powerful.
At an early point in their conversation, Kate and May reached out to my organization, Crosshatch Center for Art and Ecology, to consider joining as a partner. “Yes, yes, yes,” we said. My first memories of that partnership involve us all leaning over designs in Ray Kendra’s architectural office, talking about how to shape the room, where to put windows and pillars, why we needed double-door entryways, and what a truly welcoming green room would require. My younger self would have rejected this “design by committee” as destined for mediocrity. It did indeed require endless compromise and ran into every kind of obstacle: material, financial, political, and practical. May’s vision and everyone’s commitment to the process kept us coming back to work through them all.
Deep in the minutiae of the process, Amanda (my partner in life and work, and co-founder and co-director of Crosshatch) realized that we might make progress by leaning on a counter-intuitive model. I remember being surprised by her question: “What would be different if we thought of this as an artist residency?”
2. Samantha Crawford, Holly Wren Spaulding, Bethany and Brandon Foote, Marcus and Melissa Sigh, Beth Nelson, Esteban del Valle:
Crosshatch has more experience with artist residencies than performance spaces, which bring a very different set of lessons. In 2010, we founded a residency on the edge of the Mackinac State Forest called the Hill House. The house was rustic. It was simple. It was kitschy. We signed the lease, then brought over an old piano, a record player, a crate of vinyl, and a hundred or so well-loved books of poetry and fiction. A residency was born.
Samantha Crawford was the first to call this new space home, for about a week. She was glad to be closer to the studio where she was recording her debut album Take Heart.
Holly Wren Spaulding came next. We’d known Holly as a friend and a luminous poet-activist who had been to a lot of residencies, which made her our beta-tester. She redecorated fearlessly, and she encouraged us to create a welcoming spread — fresh cut flowers, home-baked cookies, a handwritten note and a bottle of wine — which became the norm from then on.
Bethany and Brandon Foote, aka the musical duo Gifts or Creatures, shyly admitted they mostly had just slept for the first few days. I think they were surprised by our delight. “Whatever helps your practice is what we support,” we said. That definitely includes sleep.
By the time Marcus and Melissa Sigh showed up, we had managed to afford a new “emerging songwriter” stipend of $200. It was our turn to be surprised, when they said the money allowed them to afford color copies for a grant application, which in turn helped them fund a music education program in Lansing.
Beth Nelson brought a Daruma doll with one blackened eye, her companion as she wrote at the picnic table each afternoon. Our photos of Beth at work were among the first images we had of an artist in residence.
Esteban del Valle tells a sweet story: how for much of his life his food had come either frozen or fast, but swayed by the fresh farm veggies at the Hill House, he decided he’d get better at cooking while he was in residence. We ran into Esteban a few years later and he said that his decision had stuck, and so he improved his diet, his health, and by extension, his art practice. This was an outcome that we never would have predicted, much less planned for.
On and on it went, each artist bringing some new lesson about how to help their practices thrive. The central themes soon became clear: First, trust the artists. A structureless residency was liberating, and made for astounding productivity, even if it came a month or a year later. We’ve been calling this “radical hospitality.” Second, success does not depend on wealth: tall white walls, high-end furniture, marble tile and a manicured landscape are not requirements. Instead, make a place for muddy boots and bread baking. I describe the Hill House experience as if your favorite eccentric artist aunt invites you to house-sit while she is off overseas for a few weeks. It should feel less like a museum, and more like, well, home.
3. Andrew Lutes, Jeff Haas, Jessica Kooiman Parker, Matt McCalpin, Bob James, Derrek Hall, May Erlewine (reprise)
Two confessions, both hard: first, after seven years, we ended the Hill House, both because the family wanted to put the house up for sale, and because a confederate flag went up at the house up the road. We had ignored the evidence until this point, that a house in the deep woods was a welcoming adventure only for some. We closed up shop, vowing to improve and start again.
The second confession: not long after, Crosshatch quit the Alluvion (for good, we thought at the time). Look, we’re not exceptional fundraisers, and after taking hard runs at the capital campaign for almost two years, we realized we weren’t going to be able to honor our end of the deal. I remember working at home, during the pandemic, still feeling the raw ache of that failure. We had let Kate and Chris down, and we were watching this amazing project carry on without us. Kate checked in with us from time to time, and that’s how we learned Andrew Lutes had joined the team.
We had met with Andrew twice while he was manager at Workshop Brewing Company, talking about a business plan he had written to start up a music venue in Traverse City. We were relieved to hear that this smart and gentle human had joined the team at Commongrounds. Andrew had often mentioned his formative memories of the Traverse City community space Jacob’s Well, and we knew he wanted to honor its legacy of centering and supporting young artists. We also learned that while we had been sulking, Andrew and Kate had been leaping over many of the earlier obstacles.
Soon after, Amanda told me about another email from Kate. It turned out that jazz pianist and composer Jeff Haas, who we had not yet met, had bought an equity share in the Alluvion. He then donated an additional amount to bring Crosshatch in alongside him. He wanted to make sure the mission didn’t get forgotten. Reflecting on this sudden and unimaginable act of generosity still stops my breath.
In the movie version of this essay, this is where the bassline and the high-hat come in and the montage starts. Not only were we back in the action, but we had become part of an amazing team (dare I say a charmingly rag-tag band of misfits?) all working together with overlapping visions of a truly artist-centered project.
Jessica Kooiman Parker showed up from seemingly everywhere at once. She’s a curator with a keen eye, and early conversations proved that she understood artist-centered spaces. We had been dreaming of a way to bring the visual arts to the building; Jessica arrived with both capacity and a clear map to get there, and so both our team and our mission expanded.
Matt McCalpin, a level-headed leader with a quiet professionalism and a love of improvisation, came aboard as our operations director. I think Matt’s interview ran over by about two hours because he and Jeff Haas couldn’t stop talking about Jazz. They still have stars in their eyes when they see each other.
Me too, actually. I’ve never experienced synchronicity and synergy like what happened those next few months. We got back to work with renewed enthusiasm and an expanded network of support, and soon the Alluvion began to secure record amounts of funding. First, an anchor gift from Impact 100 (the first successful bid from an arts project), followed by a gift from Rotary Charities, followed by a successful crowdfunding campaign through Patronicity that secured matches from both the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the Green Brick Foundation, then a capstone grant from Builder’s Initiative to close the books on our start-up expenses. Yeah, I’m breathless. We raised well over half a million dollars in rapid succession, which meant not only could we open the doors to the Alluvion, we could deepen the conversation about how to make our own unique path — learning how to center artists, support emerging musicians, and become a truly community-focused art space.
Legendary Jazz composer Bob James came for a tour. He sat down in a chair Matt had salvaged from a local church, took a deep breath, and stilled in the space. Hearing about our mission and our programming, sitting there, feeling it, he said he wanted to donate a concert grand piano to the Alluvion.
May Erlewine, so instrumental in the early vision, who had leaned over blueprints with us for months, but who had not yet seen the building itself, finally came for a tour. She took a deep breath, and she felt it. She said it felt like home.
Coincidentally, just as that tour was ending, with most of the partners still standing together in the Alluvion, the donated piano arrived. The movers carefully placed and reassembled it, then laid the bench down in front of it. Jeff Haas sat down and played a short piece. Derek Hall, one of the piano movers, also a gospel pianist and musical director at Lighthouse Church of God, sat down and played it. May Erlewine sat down and played it. Andrew Dost happened to be walking by (artist cameo!); he sat down and played it. An abundant diversity of styles and techniques and varieties of musical prayer came together in that magical moment to welcome this piano into its new home.
Already, I can feel the room resonating like the wood of an old fiddle, filling up with the art, music, and theater happening inside of it, and changing in unpredictable ways.
May Erlewine has been making an important argument — that to build a home for art like this requires a lot of pieces. The most essential is for the community to say “Yes, we want this. Yes, we’ll support this.” We’ve begun hearing those voices grow louder and stronger, but we’re not celebrating yet. We have a clear intention, and a team we’re proud of, but only time will tell if the programming can fulfill the promise of this small venue. We’re asking artists and audiences and fans and sponsors and donors and partners and the community to keep saying “yes” — to keep building this home for radical hospitality, together.
I’m holding on to a hope that it won’t be long before Laurel Premo and Anna Gustavsson bring their fiddle and nyckelharpa to the venue that was created for them. That, friends, will be a special moment. But the most beautiful part is that the things we love the most about the Alluvion — we don’t even know what they are yet.
This article originally appeared in the Spring ’23 issue of the Boardman Review. You can purchase a copy of that issue here.
