Mustard’s Retreat’s Libby Glover and David Tamulevich performing at the Ark in Ann Arbor (Photo by Michael Fleshman)
A reviewer once called the folk group Mustard’s Retreat “music to cure what ails you.” Now they are dedicating that cure to Flint, a community like so many others wracked by COVID, in a virtual performance to benefit East Village Magazine.
The popular duo featuring David Tamulevich and Flint native Libby Glover, plan to stage a virtual concert to benefit EVM at 7 p.m. Jan..23.
Cover of Mustard’s Retreat’s most recent (2018) album.
The concert is part of the duo’s “Defiantly Hopeful Series,” launched during the pandemic as opportunities for in person concerts dried up,
The concert will be on Zoom, which gives everyone there the opportunity to see and talk with each other and the artists. You can connect on Zoom using ID and passcode as follows:
Meeting ID: 856 9805 3474
Passcode: 354769
Or, for a direct link, write David@mustardsretreat.com.
The concert also will be streaming on Facebook and YouTube. The links to those connections are:
Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/
While clicking into the concert is free, viewers will be invited to donate to EVM and Mustard’s Retreat through a link available during the event. After covering costs for technical support, MR and EVM will split the donations fifty-fifty.
The folk duo have a special connection to East Village Magazine. Mustard’s Retreat this year supplied the closing song for “Faces of Flint: A Message from the Anvil of American Democracy,” a get-out-the-vote video produced by EVM‘s Ted Nelson and Jan Worth-Nelson. The song, “(Ours is a) Simple Faith,” was written by Tamulevich and has been extensively performed and recorded nationally.
While based in Ann Arbor, Mustard’s Retreat has been a fixture in the Flint music scene for 40 years, with memorable performances in many downtown bars, at the Flint Public Library, at the Flint Folk Music Festival and many other locales in Michigan and around the country.
For many years the group included Michael Hough, who left due to family issues two years ago; he still occasionally appears in the group’s virtual events.
At the 2015 Folk Music Festival, the group co-headlined with Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary.
“They’ve traveled more than a million miles and performed more than 6,000 shows, from pig roasts and pool parties to Lincoln Center Out of Doors, The Barns at Wolftrap and the Kennedy’s Center’s Millennium Stage,” according to their website.
Their first album, called simply Mustard’s Retreat, was recorded in 1979 in Clio and is a Flint fan favorite, Tamulevich said. They have since produced 17 albums, the latest being Make Your Own Luck in 2018.
As described on their website, Mustard’s Retreat “recently begun referring to their career and touring as ‘Defiantly Hopeful.’ In part due to their long career, but more as a statement about what the music has meant to them. ‘Folk music is, at its heart, defiantly hopeful!’ Tamulevich says. ‘We came of age in the 60s, at the confluence of Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan and the singer/songwriter revolution. We care much more about what we do and stand for and finding that common ground with our audiences, than fame or money: this is our community of choice, and we consider ourselves so fortunate to be here.”
It was the Michigan Times, University of Michigan student newspaper, who concluded Mustard’s Retreat produces “music to cure what ails you.”
East Village Magazine, founded by the late Gary Custer in 1976 with an all-volunteer crew, is a monthly nonprofit community journalism publication which features coverage of Flint neighborhoods, neighborhood preservation, and the “Democracy Beat” focusing on local government.
Asked why it is called “East Village,” Custer linked the magazine to Marshall McLuhan’s notion of the “global village.” Custer lived in the Central Park neighborhood east of downtown. Some came to call it “East Village” — some say because of the presence of the magazine’s office. That neighborhood lies between I-475 and Crapo Street, but the magazine has always covered other nearby neighborhoods as well, and in recent years has adopted a wider range, while still wholly focused on Flint. However it is defined, Custer stressed the need for a communitarian “village” ideal that he contended we all need, and often commented, “Everybody lives east of somewhere.”
The magazine is delivered door-to-door in several neighborhoods by volunteers, and has an expanding online presence at eastvillagemagazine.org. It was featured in a 2016 Columbia Journalism Review piece by Anna Clark available here.
“We are so delighted and touched that our friends of Mustard’s Retreat offered to partner with East Village Magazine for this concert,” said EVM Managing Editor Tom Travis. “We know they love Flint and they love community journalism. We’re honored to have their joyful, positive and unifying music come into our homes Jan. 23.”
More information about Mustard’s Retreat is available here.
To Zoom into the Jan. 23 performance:
Topic: The Defiantly Hopeful Series and East Village Magazine in Flint present Mustard’s Retreat!
Time: Jan 23, 2021 07 p,m.
Meeting ID: 856 9805 3474
Passcode: 354769
For a direct link, write David@mustardsretreat.com.
–EVM Staff
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