Mustard's Retreat, Back to Back (Red House Records, 1995)
Mustard's Retreat, 5 Miles or 50,000 Years (Mustard's Retreat Music, 1993)
Mustard's Retreat, The Wind and the Crickets...and the South Texas Moon, and the Tune from an Old Country Waltz (Palmetto Records, 1997)
Interviews and correspondence with Mustard's Retreat (David Tamulevich and Michael Hough), Ann Arbor, Michigan, February, 2002
Mustard's Retreat, The Ark, Ann Arbor, Michigan, February 2, 2002
I first heard Mustard's Retreat in the winter of 1981, in a dimly lit and smoky rathskeller in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on my second date with the man whom I'd marry later that year. I suppose one could say that Michael Hough and David Tamulevich have been a part of my life almost as long as Bill has. During the next twenty years, when we often lived far from Michigan, Mustard's Retreat would bring us a taste of home. Now that we're back in Michigan, we get to hear them more often and are glad of it. It has been a pleasure and an honor to study and discuss their music for The Greenman Review. Both Michael and David kindly talked to me before a show at their "birthplace," The Ark, and also shared thoughts with me in correspondence.
Mustard's Retreat is Michael Hough and David Tamulevich, who have played together as a duo since 1974, when they joined up to perform at an Ark coffee house open mike night. Dave Siglin, manager of The Ark, calls them "the godfathers of the Ann Arbor folk music scene--but in a good way!" Since then, they have created several recordings and played some 3,000 shows over the past 28 years. Starting out in Ann Arbor restaurants and bars, they advanced to folk clubs and coffeehouses and are favorite performers at national festivals. David states that "After all these years we know who we are, what we do, and what our job is...and fortunately our job is our joy."
This job will be keeping them extremely busy during 2002. Their current schedule shows about 50 shows this year. These shows are taking them to prestigious places such as The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Wolf Trap as well as the less-well-known Lakewood Branch of the Ocean City Library. This is a heavy schedule for people who also have other occupations. Michael is a successful commercial photographer, running the Ivory Photo studio in Ann Arbor, and David is part of Fleming/Tamulevich and Associates, a premier folk music talent agency.
There's a common misperception that music managers and promoters are all failed musicians. When asked if his association with Fleming/Tamulevich has helped or hindered Mustard's Retreat, David acknowledges that he's felt that misperception. He modestly notes, though, that his access to venues and other artists is a great asset, and that any reservations about Mustard's Retreat's musical abilities vanish as soon as the doubter hears the tape.
To speak in broad terms before examining Mustard Retreat's recorded work, their music differs from the usual singer/songwriter work for two main reasons: partnership and outlook. As a duo, their great strength is that each man complements and contrasts with the other, both in songwriting and performance. David notes that he writes most songs from an emotional starting point, whereas Michael is more of a storyteller. The synergy between the two approaches results in songs and performances that are complete in all facets. As Michael says, "That's why David and I make a good team. He'll start with a picture or a feeling, and I'll say, ?all right, now what happens...? He's better with original melodies than I am, and my bias toward action and character can make some of his emotional things stand up and grab you."
Together they're stronger than they might be separately. Michael even refers to this in concert when he brings up David's shoeboxes full of scraps of songs (which David apparently considers complete) and likens them to doors--he wants to pass through the door into the room beyond. Michael roots through the shoeboxes and catalyzes David into finishing the songs. It's not uncommon for one to bring a song to the other for critiques and polishing. As Michael says, "David and I have figured out how to help each other when we get stuck, and we have learned to respect each other's contributions. Other times the song writes itself as if I was just the inkpen." Over the years they have learned to write together and this is seen in the song credits, where more and more songs are dually credited over the years. This partnership is rare in the world of folk music, where perhaps an over-emphasis is placed on solo creativity and tortured individualism.
Also unlike many singer/songwriters, Mustard's Retreat is generally content to express sincere emotions, pleasure and beauty. There's not a whole lot of irony happening here, and that's a relief. Their stories and songs are straightforward. While they do not shy away from social criticism or dark events and emotions, it's a pleasure in turn to have music that's not ironic or cynical, with beautiful images reinforced by rippling sound.
However, that's not to say that when the song calls for darkness, there's none to be had. One of the darkest and most disturbing songs I know (and I'm a Richard Thompson fan) is found on Mustard Retreat's live album Five Miles or 50,000 Years. "The New Pioneers" envisions a post-apocalyptic future that can be seen today in parts of the world. On Back to Back, "The Luck of the Irish" is a clear-eyed and bitter look at Irish patriotism that after years of listening to, I still turn over and pick apart for meaning. As their work and lives change, it may be that the music and emotions will change as well.
Musically, both David and Michael shine. Both play guitar, with David adding pennywhistle and dulcimer in concert. Michael has been adding electric bass to the music over the years to great effect and only self-consciousness seems to be keeping him from adding electric guitar to the three instruments he carries onstage. Their voices blend with ease, David's with a slightly lighter but equally warm tone than Michael's. The crisp phrasing on "Gather the Family" shows an understanding of the importance of emphasis and enunciation to singing, and a testament to both men's childhood histories in choral singing. After so many years of performing together their timing is bone-deep. While they've done enough shows together that they recently met a person at an elementary school show who, as a child, had seen them perform at that same school, their songs remain fresh.
Their first album, an LP titled Mustard's Retreat, (1979) was re-mastered onto cassette tape in the 1980's but has since sold out. A possible future project may be the re-issue of this album in CD format. An intriguing notion of Michael Hough's is to re-record songs from this album instead of re-issuing them; using their greater depth of experience and musicianship to add dimension to early work. However, as a longtime listener, I can attest that their early work did not lack dimension. I'd learned American folk songs in music classes as quaint and stiff little songs without much heart or soul to them. When Mustard's Retreat covered "Shenandoah," on this first album, they brought the song to life again, with a new and beautiful harmony line. While some of their early writing could be hokey ("Last Meal" and a song about a CB operator at the interchange of I-96 and US 23), these songs had the imagery and humor that mark Mustard's Retreat's songs today.
They next recorded Home by the Morning (1983), and Midwinter's Night (1987), which Red House Records re-issued on a single CD titled Back to Back in 1995. Home by the Morning captures the songs I recall from those earlier restaurant and bar shows, including songs they still perform in concert today.
Home by the Morning starts with a bright song, "Step It Up Joe," a maritime call to dance at a wedding. This happy brightness is followed by the truly creepy ballad of an Irish lad whose encounter with a terrifying presence is more frightening for the presence's never really being seen. This song, "Mallon's Bridge," is a favorite on folk radio programs at Halloween. "Part of Me Remembers" is a long time favorite of many fans; it's a song of regret at the passing of a relationship beyond repair.
"The Great Lakes Fishing Trade," one of many songs about Michigan and Michigan history, returns to the bright mood of the album opener with an evocation of the lake fishing boats of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Michigan is again referenced in "Powerline Trails," possibly the only sexy song about cross-country skiing in existence. Michigan and Michigan history appear in many other Mustard's Retreat songs; while both David and Michael were born elsewhere, they've become naturalized to the Great Lakes State. David has found that as the duo plays in other parts of the country, the Michigan songs are very well-received . "People like hearing stories about other places," he says.
"The Minstrel and the Bear," written in response to a painting, creates in itself an image of cold darkness and warm bright rooms. The album returns to a quiet, poetic mood with "Moonlight Through Clouds," a rippling musical evocation of the lyrics of pebbles washed in rain and fire. Their cover of Dick Pinney's "Motherlode" sets the men's close harmony against Libby Glover's soaring voice, and underlies it all with a fluid guitar and bass line. The album closes with a cover of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More." It's very typical of Mustard's Retreat to take a folk song standard like this and enliven it with close harmony and real enjoyment of feeling. In order to fit onto the CD, two songs, "The Courtship of Big Bess" and "Captain," were dropped from the LP. While I don't miss "Big Bess" at all, I truly miss "Captain," a song about a dog so real and so typical of Ann Arbor, with its bandanna and all, that I hope it finds its way onto a new release somewhere.
The second half of Back to Back is a reissue of Midwinter's Night, an album that displays Hough and Tamulevich's growing songwriting and musical abilities. The two earlier albums featured Michael and David on guitars, bass, vocal, and pennywhistle, with assistance on harmony vocals and fiddle by local Ann Arbor musicians. On the original album the female singer was not even credited; this was the basis of my first conversation with Michael Hough! By Midwinter's Night, the duo is connected to a larger and better-known cadre of friends and musicians who add to the recording's polish and warmth. Garnet Rogers, Claudia Schmidt, Mark (Mr. B.) Braun, and Peter Ostrushko each provide a friendly hand.
The opener, "Moody Monday," is another eerie story by Michael Hough, with a circular structure and an almost Latin beat. "Countin? on You" is a venture into blues followed by the historic ballad "The Wreck of the Julie Plante," altered by Michael from its original French-Canadian into more standard English. The duo covers "The Banshee" by Jim Perkins as a nice bookend to "Mallon's Bridge." "There's a Dance," dedicated to the folks of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, has been covered by several musicians. The mood of this album becomes a bit more contemplative in the second half. "Desole (The Rain Song)," a song realizing that a relationship is about to end, is framed in the childhood rhyme. "The Sonnet Song" takes the formal sonnet form and sets it to music with a quiet dulcimer accompaniment. One of my favorites from this album is "Jeremy Brown," a story about growing up in hard times and loss. Where other songwriter might have resolved the story in a trite conclusion (mysterious hired man marries the widow, everyone lives happily ever after), David Tamulevich creates a much more satisfying conclusion wound around a haunting train-whistle refrain. This is lately being introduced in concert with a spine-tingling a cappella harvest song.
Nineteen ninety-three's Five Miles or 50,000 Years CD captures a 1990 live performance at The Ark, and includes two longtime Mustard's Retreat live favorites: "16 Tons" and "One Meatball". This album includes a few of the spoken-word pieces ("Reincarnation," "Sandy Raccoon," and "Jake and Ten Ton Molly") which Mustard's Retreat started to include in concerts after having attended storytelling workshops. While these are a pleasure to listen to live, on a recording they are the bits I tend to skip over. David acknowledges ruefully that "a good story is hard to find" when taxed with the need to retire "Sandy Raccoon" from the playlist. However, if you're at a concert of theirs with a kid, be sure to request this story!!!
Their sense of humor is given a major workout on this album. "The Ballad of Elmer McCurdy" was written on a dare, and is macabrely gleeful. Two covers, Greg Brown's "Barbershop Blues," and Andy Breckman's "Railroad Bill," range in humor from the sublime to the ridiculous. "Detroit 1763" is another Michigan history song , and one which is for me the centerpiece of the entire CD. It tells the story of a French man with an Ottawa wife during the fighting between the British and Indians, and is based on true events. An audience favorite, "Part of Me Remembers," is included because "the audience sounded so good we couldn't resist including it."
For me 5 Miles or 50,000 Years is not Mustard Retreat's best work; I'd advise anyone to just go and see them live. Mustard's Retreat's connection with live audiences is phenomenal, and somehow this does not translate on this recording. Their concerts today are simply better and better and hopefully Michael and David will do another live album soon. When they take the stage, Michael is generally more "up" and scans the audience with a smile that seems to say how glad he is to be there. David comes through in a quieter way but forms no less strong a relationship with audience. The audiences in turn beam attention and energy back to David and Michael, and the room gets charged. Mustard's Retreat has even written a song about this phenomenon, "Welcome Back," which is not as narcissistic as you might think. Bill and I are not alone in being long-time fans of Mustard's Retreat who return again and again for this connection. This song of thanks is rare among artists and reflects the people who made it.
"Welcome Back" is recorded on their most recent CD, The Wind and the Crickets...and the South Texas Moon, and the Tune From an Old Country Waltz. Henceforth to be referred to as The Wind and the Crickets! This recording landed on several top ten lists in 1997 and 1998, and Sing Out! Magazine conferred landmark status on the album. This album, produced by Garnet Rogers, includes Rogers, Kitty Donohoe, Lucy Kaplansky, Jennifer Kimball, and other musicians on harmonies and accompaniment. Kitty Donohoe's voice blends particularly well with David and Michael's and I hope she appears with them again!
I'd have to say this album is a masterpiece. Polished in performance and production, it's one of the albums I turned to after September 11th, for the comfort of the voices, the harmonies, and the songs like "Gather the Family." This piece opens the album and sets the tone: "Gather the family, here we belong, and a welcome, good stranger, come in. Our voices together all singing one song, it's here that the future begins."
This album is the most thematic of Mustard's Retreat's work to date, with two threads running through the music. One thread is that of life at "midlife"--those feelings of ambivalence, maturity, acceptance, and regret that come with that territory . A talking blues, "Talking Midlife," has it best -- "I long ago grew out of youth and searching for some cosmic truth." One of the finest pieces on this album is the quiet "Well Here We Are," which nearly any married couple will recognize as the expression of having to consciously find that old romance between the dishes and the TV. Garnet Rogers? fiddle flies above the melody in a piercing descant. A cover of John Gorka's "Faded Blue and Gold," closes the album with a heart-filling look at the ultimate midlife crisis, the high school class reunion.
The other thread of this album is that of folk and singer/songwriter music and the subculture surrounding it--the festivals, the smoky coffeehouses and bars, the singing in a silver light. Many of these songs were written traveling to and during the Kerrville Folk Festival. "Remembering My Incarnations" manages to rhyme "incarnations" with "wreck of nations" and not be silly. I think nearly everyone knows someone like the person in "Gone Again.." He's the person you shake your head over and make explanations for, who is wound and wrapped in sorrow but masks it with chatter and oddity.
"Let's Hear it for the Volunteers," is a thank-you to all the hundreds of people who spend themselves so that this sort of music will live. The intent of this song, Michael told me, was that each local volunteer folk music club would add a verse or two to make this song their own; he's still waiting to hear these, so send them on to him when you've got one!! "Festival Night" is a charming and sexy story of a love found, lost, and found again between tunes at folk festivals.
I'm anxiously awaiting the next Mustard's Retreat album. The basic tracks have been sent to Garnet Rogers for another joint production effort. David says "we have far more material than we have ever had going into a recording, which is so exciting, especially as we feel it is a lot of the best work we have done." Michael agrees: "our new recording looks to be the best one yet."
Some of these new songs appeared at Mustard's Retreat's recent concert at their birthplace, The Ark, in Ann Arbor. On this weekend winter evening, about 150 people gathered, most of whom, like me, were long-time fans. This makes David and Michael nervous. "There's a lot of history we have with people here," they tell me. It's difficult to know what to play, they both say--to air new work or bring out expected old favorites. In the end, they played new work in the first set and honored requests in the second, a pleasant compromise.
They began the concert after an opening set by a Grand Rapids woman, Lucy Webster, whose sweetly warm voice and battered guitar reminded me a bit of Christine Lavin, but had a disarming character of her own. Her songs used metaphor and humor to charm the audience.
Mustard's Retreat then began with "Road to Nowhere," a song referencing Michigan, and then moved into a new work, "Stars on My Left." Michael noted that he'd spent twenty years or so writing this song; "I just had to live through it." A song of realization and memories, it tells the listener: "There's no rage inside me, no vengeance, no blame; the ghosts of the past are still chanting my name. But the time has now come when there's nothing to do but let go of the old and so hold something new."
A novel approach to songwriting is featured in the next song performed. A poetic compilation of phone messages left on Michael's machine, its title is apparently a point of contention. However, the song is a fascinating and somewhat enigmatic way of telling a story. While continuing the discussion of songwriting, the duo note that Michael dabbles not only with David's song scraps but also with folk song standards. As I've noted before, Mustard's Retreat generally gives these old chestnuts a new and lively gleam. They've done it with "The Water is Wide," by re-working the verses to have new meaning. The audience added to the chorus on this one, and I hope it's recorded on the new album.
The theme of songwriting continued with "The Night Goes On Forever." David and Michael have attended writing workshops and are now teaching some themselves. A class they taught at a northern Michigan high school on songwriting brought this song to life. With a class of 24 kids from all the cliques and strata in a typical American high school, they brought kids together who might not normally interact. The workshop had the kids develop lines and verses for a song, but the kids never saw the whole song as a concept. David and Michael worked the song up during the lunch period and played it for the school in the concert that day. The first set concluded with "Solitary Beach," a vintage Mustard's Retreat sound with David's rippling guitar set against Michael's sturdy bass.
The second set was mostly requests, with David airing a brand-new instrumental piece that he said he was still working on, followed by "The Pig," a brief but hilarious encounter. One of Michael's numerous sonnets was presented to David's dulcimer accompaniment ("my part is always the same," he mourns). The guys lightened the mood with their cover of Joel Mabus "Hopelessly Midwestern," but then darkened it again with a song that David noted was the first they'd written together. They haven't sung it for a long time but felt after September, it was pertinent again. Another post-apocalyptic vision, it carries an introduction by David Mallett.
"Mindy's Song" followed, and gave the audience a look into the life of a highway crew flagger. Old favorites "The Wreck of the Julie Plante" and "Mallon's Bridge" pleased the audience. A slower-than-usual pace was taken for "Mallon's Bridge" and made it just as, if not more, spooky. Another hair-raising moment followed, but for other reasons. The duo's close and intense harmonies on "Down Where the River Flows" gave me gooseflesh as they refreshed the introduction to "Jeremy Brown." They closed the set with "Faded Blue and Gold" and "Gather the Family," two of the best of the latest album.
Not surprisingly, they were called back for an encore. Hollered-out wishes brought out the railroad spikes from their protective bag for "Sixteen Tons." The audience was brought together powerfully to help sing "Blowin' in the Wind" but were left in a bright attitude with "Volunteers"--though we did not in fact have to put the chairs away.
