Alley Door Club 4/10/09

We just got home from playing the Alley Door Club in Muskegon Michigan's beautiful Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts. Set up on the third floor in a large rehearsal hall, it's a great place to play. The cash bar, free munchies, and BBQ for sale help to make the atmosphere friendly. The sound crew lead by Mark Gorter does a fabulous job.

We shared the bill with Eric Glatz and Mike Snell. Eric is a wonderful Travis style guitar picker, tending toward the jazzier side of the tracks. His renditions of San Antonio Rose, Walk Don't Run, and his original music knocked us out. Mike is a fine singer and song writer. We love his original stuff and were also struck by his cover of the Paul Koss tune Last Of The Leelanau Schooners.

We had a wonderful time during our set. The crowd of around 150 seemed very receptive and several shouted out requests for Specific Ruth penned songs. Naturally, we made mention of the two brand new bluegrass festivals coming to West Michigan this summer, Green Food Bluegrass Festival on July 19 and Bluegrass On The Lakeshore on August 1. The crowd clapped and cheered at the idea of bluegrass in west Michigan! YES!

We called Eric up to join us for the Willy Nelson song, Crazy, and Mike led us in a rousing version of John Denver's Country Roads. Mike is a big Denver fan and even sounds a bit like him. Ruth followed that with her tribute song, I Remember John. Mike helped us out with his great 12-string picking on that one. We finished the set with Ruth's I Know Love, Sometimes, the great Clare Lynch tune He Don't like to Talk About It, and Ruth's Merlefest winning gospel song By The River. For the encore we did Ruth's Put Down That Beer And Dance. By that time the bar was closed and the wonderful crowd cleared out pretty quick with quite a few stopping by the CD table for a chat.

Many thanks to the Alley Door Club for having us in and to our many friends and fans that came out to the show. We hope you had as good time as we did.