The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week:
MEMCO compilation, The QR Network compilation, No Hero & Pastland, Life Feeds on Life, David Magumba, Anku, Cracked & Hooked, and Baits.

Toni Wells is bringing a family-like vision to the local music scene.

Earlier this year, she launched The Family 734, a music collective that provides urban music artists and DJs in Washtenaw County with education, artist development, performance opportunities, and fan support.

“It’s an idea that’s been in my head for a few years now,” said Wells, an Ann Arbor hip-hop artist who performs and records as SwagRight Toni.

“Our network pre-pandemic and post-pandemic here in the area had been broken apart. This last year, I was in a space where I had a lot of time, and I was thinking more about my legacy and what I want to leave behind as an artist and just as a person in general.”

Wells envisioned forming a collective that champions and promotes hip-hop, R&B, soul, EDM, techno, and house music creatives in Washtenaw County.

A preview of the June, July, and August theatrical productions in Washtenaw County from Shakespeare in the Arb, The Encore Musical Theatre Co., Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, The Purple Rose Theatre Company, Theatre Nova, Forge Theater, Loonlight Theatre, The Penny Seats Theatre Company, PTD Productions, and Brevity Shakespeare.

One Track Mind features a Washtenaw County-associated artist or band discussing a single song.

Standout Track: “Ground Control” from Bekka, aka Rebekka Madeleine Port, an Ann Arbor singer-songwriter and a Huron High School senior. The space-themed song was inspired by watching high school friends graduate in 2025 and realizing her own graduation was still a year away. “It addresses the joy that graduating brings, but also the uncertainty,” Bekka wrote in an email interview about the goth-pop/hip-hop song. “It’s like you’re floating through space. I imagine it is a beautiful thing to experience, seeing all those different stars and planets, but also, how scary to be somewhere so infinitely big!”

Now, “Ground Control” takes on a new meaning for Bekka, who will graduate from Huron High School on June 6 and attend the University of Michigan in the fall. “When people listen to this song, I want them to see the universe that is waiting out there for them, but also not to forget the people who have been waiting with them for this moment, whether that be peers, parents, teachers, siblings, whoever,” she wrote.

This story originally ran on December 29, 2025. We're rereunning it because Kyle E. Miller will discuss "The Idiot's Gardan" on May 29 at the Ann Arbor District Library's Downtown location.

Kyle E. Miller's The Idiot’s Garden thrusts you immediately into the reality that Bike, Peloria, Seed, and Nameless inhabit. In this futuristic, climate-fiction (cli-fi) novel, the oceans have boiled, whales consume power lines, and the people and creatures possess abilities beyond our present-day human world.

The Idiot’s Garden is not one thing: It's a postapocalyptic novel, poetry, and short stories. The exact category may not be the important thing, though. The language will draw you in with the riddle-like turns of phrases. “It was terrifying to be born a thing that could change its mind,” concludes the first unnamed chapter.

The characters come together by necessity. Events happen that this group does not fully understand, yet they keep finding ways forward. At the beginning of the book, Seed’s recovery from his all-consuming illness seems miraculous and is explained by the six-fingered Peloria having fed him a fish:

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week:
John E. Lawrence, Fugue State, Naomi Wolfe, Codex, Cattywampus, and Frog Island Power Boat.

A new home for live music is coming to Ann Arbor with a focus on promoting and supporting local bands and musicians.

Borrowing inspiration from Ann Arbor proto-punk legends The Stooges, Ann Arbor Funhouse aims to be a space where townies and music heads alike can get a taste of the area's wide range of musical talent, presented inside Slows Bar BQ, 207 East Washington Street in downtown Ann Arbor.

Keelan Ferraiuolo—the former booking manager for Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti and former co-owner of A2 coffee shop Electric Eye—said Slows owner Terry Perrone approached her about bringing live music to the restaurant, which has ample extra space.

Slows can host shows for larger bands and multi-bill shows on its main floor, with a second music space in its basement for one-to three-person acts. Currently, Slows uses the upstairs area to host private events, primarily during the day, while the downstairs stage area is the same stage that hosted live music when Mash booked it.

One Track Mind features a Washtenaw County-associated artist discussing a single song.

Standout Track: No. 4, “Busy Body,” from Detroit’s Rod Wallace, an EMU alum, founding director of The Amplify Project, and principal of River Rouge High School. The hip-hop artist’s latest album, Regalia, serves as a cathartic outlet for navigating recent personal and professional changes, including getting a divorce and earning a doctoral degree in educational studies.

On “Busy Body,” Wallace raps about the struggle of balancing his career and passions with family priorities. The track was inspired during a trip to Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, with his two kids last year. “My son has the deepest love for roller coasters,” wrote Wallace in an email interview. “He has no fear whatsoever of them or any bad scenario that could conceivably come from something going wrong. I used that perspective as I went through a difficult time. Life is full of ups and downs, and sometimes the downward motion gives you just enough to get to the next peak.”

For many years, Karl Sikkenga didn’t like Much Ado About Nothing.

That was until the founder and director of Brevity Shakespeare saw a production at the Stratford Festival in Ontario that put a modern twist on The Bard's comedy.

The updated version features additional text from Canadian playwright Erin Shields in which Hero holds Claudio accountable for his toxic behavior.

“She told him—in gentle-but-firm, ladylike terms—just how badly he had treated her,” wrote Sikkenga in an email interview.

“To his credit, he owned up to it, and she deemed him worthy of a second chance. This was much better. And the Stratford Festival kindly gave Brevity Shakespeare permission to use the additional dialogue.”

In the original version, Claudio believes a lie about Hero from someone else and doesn’t fact-check or discuss it with Hero.

“Instead, he humiliates her,” wrote Sikkenga. “Great plan! Later on, he says he’s real sorry, and she’s all, ‘OK,’ and they get married after all. I really hated that.”

For their version, Sikkenga and his Brevity Shakespeare colleagues will celebrate Hero's newfound power in their production of Much Ado About Nothing, which runs May 22-24 and May 29-31 at The Ypsilanti Performance Space in Ypsilanti.

Brevity Shakespeare specializes in streamlining Shakespeare’s plays by trimming scripts and consolidating casts.

In that same spirit, Sikkenga said they cut some scenes and eliminated some characters from their production of Much Ado About Nothing.

“Cutting the chief vigilante, Dogberry, and his fellow feckless detectives was absolutely the hardest thing to do,” he wrote. “He is as funny as ineptitude gets, full of malapropisms and bad ideas. Having the maids take over the apprehension of the malefactor works really well, though.”

To learn more, I recently did an email interview with Sikkenga about the production.

Now that she’s finished graduate school, Sophie Bracken finds herself longing for past springs.

The University of Michigan alum and Ann Arbor clarinetist channels that feeling when she performs “I cannot meet the Spring unmoved” with OUT Ensemble, a wind quintet composed of LGBTQ+ musicians performing and commissioning the works of queer classical composers.

"I know that I myself am kind of nostalgic in spring for my high school days and some of the things we would do together in high school band," said Bracken, who recently graduated with a master’s degree in chamber music. "I think it’s just a really interesting way to reflect on spring."

Composed by U-M alum Nora Farley, “I cannot meet the Spring unmoved” is titled after and inspired by the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name.

“I really like Nora’s interpretation of spring,” Bracken said. “The Emily Dickinson poem, as well, that she’s drawing from has a lot of nostalgia and longing, which isn’t necessarily what you associate with spring—it’s usually a season of renewal and hope.”

The piece also serves as the opening track from OUT Ensemble’s debut album, Seasons of Change, which comes out May 22.