A year ago, Jenni Roby didn’t think The Arboretum would become a flourishing live music venue.

At the time, she had opened a new event space located inside a former rehabilitation center in Saline.

Originally called Perfect Scenario, the space was designed to host rummage sales, comedy showcases, holiday happenings, and other community-themed events.

Roby wanted a place where parents could attend events while the space’s teen staff could watch their children onsite.

At those same events, parents could also enjoy live music from local artists.

“It was coming off my own experience in life, needing cool places to go with my kids, and it’s hard to find things like that to do,” said Roby, who has five children, ranging from ages two to 15. “I thought, ‘What can I create?’, and I always wanted music in there.”

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

This week:
The Maxwell Rubin Trio, Paper Petals, Grunt., The Winter Ghouls, The QR Network label, Sleep Tight Tiger, WCBN live recordings, Swan Upon Leda, Furniture Music, and BFEELZ.

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

Standout Track: No. 4, “Corner Blues,” from NoW Trio, a jazz trio from Detroit. The band's self-titled album features instrumentals that range from energetic and hopeful to contemplative and wistful.

On “Corner Blues,” drummer and composer Travis Aukerman, a former Ypsilanti resident, drew inspiration from spending time at the Corner Brewery and playing shows there. The ballad’s emotive chords and lyrical playing evoke a sense of wistfulness and longing for Aukerman.

“It’s a special place to go whenever you’re feeling down—or happy!—and looking for good company amongst the regulars,” he wrote in an email interview. “Perhaps the feeling of a chapter ending is evoked by the way I usually feel at the end of most days. I remember feeling reflective about my common day-to-day experiences when I wrote the piece.”

It is Thursday, June 25, 2026, around 7 pm. Michael Jewett sits in his music room; ”The cats are letting me use it,” he says.

Two cats and a dog share the Ypsilanti home with Jewett, his wife, and his music collection—thousands of recordings, mostly on CD, mostly jazz.

“Tomorrow will be my last day,” he says, as he decides what to play, then changes his mind, then decides again.

Jewett has called WEMU home for over 40 years. Along with hosting two shows weekday mornings and afternoons, he also has been serving as operations manager, keeping track of the collection, making sure everything is correctly labeled “in the right box, in the right order [and that] everything is done in the correct fashion at the correct time.”

Recently, that included moving the huge collection—vinyl, reel-to-reels, and CDs—from one building on the EMU campus to another.

“When you do the boring stuff nobody else wants to do, they keep you around,” he muses.

Hardly.

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

This week: Miles Okazaki, Cool and Normal!, Jonathan Killstring, Raw Honey, The Other Steve Horne, Jacob Sigman and Jade Nicole, and Katie Greene.

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

Standout Track: No. 1, “Cinematography,” from Social Meteor, an alt-rock band from Washtenaw County and Metro Detroit. The group’s new EP, Silhouettes, examines the everyday human experiences of love, change, and loss, as well as the strong emotional responses they evoke.

On “Cinematography,” vocalist-guitarist Bradley Birkle sings about deciphering the meaning of an artist’s work, whether it’s through visual art, music, or film.

“Whether ... visiting an art museum, a film festival, or a concert, or simply watching a movie together at home [with friends], I’ve always enjoyed looking into the artist’s intent or the hidden meanings layered into a piece of art,” he wrote in an email interview. “Looking beyond the surface and into the full depth of a piece reveals the soul of the artist. I would hope that listeners would come away from this EP seeing a piece of our souls, and in that, an understanding that they are not alone.”

Andy Milne's powerful new album is the captivating soundtrack to True North: Canadian Myths and Black Power, a documentary that tells the story of the Sir George Williams Affair, the largest student occupation in Canadian history.

Through a combination of rare archival footage and new interviews with people who were there, the film sheds light on an important and under-discussed period in the global history of Black liberation movements by focusing on events in late 1960s Montreal. True North has its broadcast premiere on Monday, July 6, on PBS’s Independent Lens.

A two-time Juno Award winner, Milne is a Canadian jazz pianist, composer, and University of Michigan associate professor who was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in Kincardine and Toronto. True North (Original Motion Picture Score) is Milne’s second collaboration with Emmy-winning director Michèle Stephenson, with whom he previously worked on the CBC TV series Black Life: Untold Stories, for which Milne received a Canadian Screen Composers Award nomination.

True North is an expansion of one of the eight episodes produced for Black Life, in which Stephenson explored two era-defining Black empowerment events in 1960s Montreal, one of which was the Sir George Williams Affair.

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

This week:
GVMMY, NoW Trio, Kelsey., Knut Hill, Coñazo, and Spectral Threads.

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

Standout Track: No. 5, “A Fiction for Today,” from Jonathan Edwards, an indie-folk singer-songwriter and guitarist from Ypsilanti. His latest release, The Sparrow EP, examines the emotional struggles people experience internally—vulnerability, desperation, fragility, and helplessness—as they live in a rapidly changing society.

On “A Fiction for Today,” Edwards sings about seeking refuge from society's growing political and social tensions and finding the strength to persevere. While the track explores living in an oppressive world, it also functions as a contemplative and hopeful sendoff for the EP.

“Lyrically, this is one of my favorites from the EP,” Edwards wrote. “The song is dedicated to those who are up against the wall and struggling in a world that is so heavily positioned against them. ... The cards are stacked against so many, and disturbing decisions are being made every day to push people further and further down. I hope this song is taken as a letter of optimism and compassion for those who have little say in the circumstances they may find themselves in.”

In 2024, during Ann Arbor's bicentennial year, AADL's Archives commissioned 200 digital-content releases related to the town's history. One of those entries into the Ann Arbor 200 was Frank Uhle's authoritative profile of Ollie McLaughlin, a radio DJ, concert promoter, and record producer who died in 1984 at age 58. McLaughlin produced "roughly 100 singles," Uhle wrote, "and more than a dozen LPs in styles ranging from rockabilly and rhythm & blues to jazz, soul, funk, and even psychedelic rock." His greatest success was discovering future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Del Shannon, who had a No. 1 hit in 1961 with "Runaway."

Uhle's article, titled "There Was Only One Ollie McLaughlin," relied on a variety of sources to profile the records-and-radio star, including material from one of the music producer's children, Moira McLaughlin.

Now, Moira and her brother, Khaliph Young, are using a variety of sources and heaps of artificial intelligence to bring their father's voice and life story to the podcast world.