After two years of work, interviews, and shooting, my newest community portrait project, Musicians In Jackson, is live and available.
The project, like my previous Artists In Jackson project, is available on the web and in book form. It features local musicians doing interesting things. Each of them represents a unique facet of Jackson’s creative community, from musical theatre to rap to folk, and many styles and media channels in between.
Together, they help make our small Midwestern city a great place to live, work, and play. They help entertain us, heal us, remind us, and connect us. Our musical scene is small, but tight-knit, and gets a ton of support thanks to local venues that value arts and culture. Jackson musicians are just as talented as anywhere else.
Musicians In Jackson took longer than I expected, and I struggled along the way to get the portraits, interviews, and stories done. Something snapped in me earlier this year, where I said to myself, “Enough is enough.” This summer, I made an arbitrary deadline – autumn 2019 – put it out into the world, and then worked like hell to finish the project.
And here it is. I’m excited to share these 14 local musicians with you, and I ask for your support: purchase the book, visit the website, and help me spread the word.
Some final pictures from our Upper Peninsula vacation.
The trip has me thinking about growing older and the kind of life I’d like to live, even though retirement is a ways off. I have all kinds of thoughts about owning an orchard and living quietly by a lake. Up here, both may be possible.
During our holiday, we spent time inside and outside the park, exploring the wooded paths down sandstone bluffs as well as cruising past the cliffs along Lake Superior. Both were scenic and humbling.
It’s a long drive, and a long boat ride, from one end of the park to the other. Along the way, we tried to take in as much as we could.
On the cruise, we sat next to a German couple, the guy had one of those big Nikon rigs with a couple of the big zoom lenses. I did the best I could with my aging (but still handy) Canon EOS M with a 22mm (35mm equiv.) lens.
Cross the bridge into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and you come into a different world.
Vast stretches of nothing. Straight, empty highways for as far as you can see. Water and forests and wetlands surrounded by three Great Lakes. Quiet and old and wild.
After our trip to Door County, Wisconsin, last year, we wanted a similar upper Midwest experience. We picked Munising as our home base, with a little cabin out in the middle of the Hiawatha National Forest, and ventured out into God’s Country to see all of that different world stuff.
We started the trip halfway there, in St. Ignace, right across the Mackinac Bridge from Mackinaw City. Like its neighbor across Lake Michigan, St. Ignace is a tourist town, but much quieter, and much less gaudy. After one night, the sun came up over Lake Michigan and we made the long trek through the U.P. to see Whitefish Point, sticking out into Lake Superior, and then on to our cabin in the woods.
Each day was an adventure – and a drive, since nothing was close by up here. That meant a lot of time in the car, and a lot of entertaining little kids, but once we got out and into the fresh air, we did our best to tire them out.