Paul Keller Trio at Venue

Ann Arbor used to have multiple jazz clubs. Many of them have disappeared but there are still places to hear jazz in town, and some of them even provide jazz in broad daylight.

One such place is Venue by 4M, located in what used to be Lucky’s Market on the corner of East Stadium and South Industrial. In addition to its Saturday night gigs, Venue has jazz on Sundays from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. You can listen as you eat brunch, if you want, or just order coffee or a cup of tea…at a table or at the bar.

On October 6, the show with locals Paul Keller on bass and Ralph Tope on guitar offered a last-minute surprise: special guest vocalist Scott Hanley. Hanley’s partly a local, in that he graduated from Eastern Michigan University, and he told me he was at WEMU forty years ago. He later worked in Birmingham, Alabama, and Beaumont, Texas, and now in Pittsburgh.
The trio did a lot of oldies, fast and slow — “When You’re Smiling,” “It Had to Be You,” “Old Devil Moon,” “I Fall in Love Too Easily” — but one that I really liked,“Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” because they did it in 3/4 time!
There you are. Venue. Sunday mornings. Give yourself a treat. And leave the band something in the tip jar!


Mr. B’s Corner Concert

Wednesday October 30th at 5:00, Mr. B played his last Corner Concert down by the Kerrytown Market, with Kenji Lee on bass and Julian VanSlyke on drums. There was a pretty good crowd to hear the great blues and ragtime tunes they played and watch the sun go down over Ann Arbor in a blaze of glory. The last tune the trio played was St. Louis Blues.

Braun’s piano is mounted on a tricycle rig to get around town and he's putting it away for the winter. He joked that he wouldn't be getting it out again until spring, when he gives it its only tune-up of the year. So around April, keep a look-out for Mr. B back at that corner, with a new CD.

photograph by Conrad Zumhagen