New Column: Steven J. Athanas – Paid to be a musical fool
There’s a scene in Godfather III in which Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is in the kitchen of his home, strategizing with some of his henchmen. He’s had it with all of the killing, deceiving and nastiness of the Cosa Nostra family business, and he’s trying to distance himself from it all.
He’s stressed, big time. With anger, grief and no small amount of resignation, he leans on the kitchen counter, and says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” gritting his teeth, with consistent peals of thunder rumbling ominously in the background.
Now, please don’t get me wrong, I would’ve been nothing in this life without my years – nay, decades, in rock’n’roll. But some 27+ years after “retirement” and the demise of The Homewreckers, I’m still asked to dip my toes again.
The Raisin Band, featuring Steven J. Athanas, bottom left, in the early 80s.
When I succumb, it’s rarely a bad thing. The recent Loved By Millions Reunion Concert, which I was the frontman, at Toledo School for the Arts was fun beyond all my wildest expectations. Seeing all of my former bandmates was so exhilarating! So much so that we’re talking about doing it again next summer (God willin’ and the creek don’t rise).
And there have been other impromptu musical gatherings. But I’ll confess: it ain’t as easy as it once was. Whereas I used to be able to jump up on stage and let loose, my vocal cords these days take a little simmering, some time to warm-up. It’s also not as easy to jump around, climb on top of speaker columns or bars, or make a doofus of myself. Whodda thunk?
Along comes TFP 2.0. When I first heard about the original TFP back in the 90s, I contacted them. Michael Miller, the former editor in chief, was gracious enough to run my one-panel cartoons back in the day. Seeing as how my visual art is my passion these days, I approached the current regime, Lori King, to gauge any interest, and again, to my surprise, was received warmly and enthusiastically.
Imagine my surprise, when in addition to the one-panels, and because of my past musical endeavors, there was interest from Lori to do a monthly column, regurgitating the debauchery and chicanery that went on in an attempt to be a rock star from my big-fish-small-pond days.
Believe me, after five+ decades playing in local bands, there are gobs of tales! From Jell-o (my first band) to the aforementioned Homewreckers, there are many a tale. Some may be edited by the censors, some I may have to remind myself of, and some (hopefully) you will recall having been there with me.
MAUMEE – Seeking to bring clarity to a new controversial sewer inspection ordinance in Maumee, Mayor James MacDonald held a special meeting on July 16 at the Maumee City Administration building.
The meeting, attended by more than 140 concerned residents, was a follow-up to the July 15 meeting, when hundreds of residents showed up to voice their opinion on the ordinance that was passed during an emergency city council meeting on June 17. The ordinance requires property owners to pay for repairs to their sewer lines if they fail inspection.
At the start of the meeting, MacDonald thanked everyone for showing up and told the standing-room only crowd that he had only been mayor for six months and inherited this problem. He then invited Maumee City administrator Patrick Burtch to explain the history of the situation.
Burtch said the problem with the city’s sewer and storm systems dates back a few decades. He also explained that the city reported themselves to the EPA in 2020, which triggered the criminal investigation. The sewer system was pumping water into the Maumee River, which is a 20-year federal felony.
For some residents, the cost of repairs could cost tens of thousands to fix. Both Burtch and MacDonald explained that the city has applied for a few grants to the EPA in hopes of being able to provide financial relief to residents of Maumee. All of them have been denied.
Along with home owners, the city must also pay to fix sewage systems on public property. Maumee will spend $60 million to reline every sewer in the city in the next 12 years.
MacDonald then explained the next steps for applying for grants to help with the financial burden. He said his administration is continuing to look at grant applications. In fact, in a meeting he had with the city administrator on the same day as the July 16 meeting, he asked if there were other ways, other than grants or loans, that the city could offer financial assistance, and could their sewer account handle it.
“And that is something we are waiting to hear from our finance director. We’re still open; we haven’t shut that door and I’m encouraged we’ll come up with something.”
Maumee Mayor James MacDonald
After explaining the history of the problem, the mayor and Burtch offered clarity on the sewer ordinance. They said the only residents who must have their homes inspected are those who are trying to sell their homes. This only affects about 50 residents in the city.
For homeowners who are not planning on moving, the inspection is voluntary only. Once a resident fails an inspection, however, they have 90 days to correct it. Currently, it is on the property owner to repair their sewage system.
The hope for MacDonald is that fixing their properties before their reevaluation in August is enough to appease the EPA. The city will submit a plan to the EPA at the end of the month.
Mayor James MacDonald addresses residents during a special meeting to discuss the sewer inspection ordinance. (TFP Photo/Scott Grau)
MacDonald also addressed questions posted on an online community page. The question that drew the most attention was why the city can’t raise the income tax from 1.5 percent to 2 percent so that no one person must pay for the repairs themselves. The mayor explained that would not be nearly enough to cover the cost.
When asked how much the tax increase would need to be, he said, “I believe that the city administration said that we can’t use tax money to fix private properties, so even if we were to raise the taxes your asking public money to fix a private property, and that’s not feasible.”
After the meeting, Dan Hengle, 26-year resident of Maumee, said he found out about the new ordinance a week ago. He said it provides some comfort knowing that this only applies to sellers.
When asked if only sellers have to follow the ordinance, he replied, “If that’s the truth, yes, because we’re not selling our house anytime soon. The way I’ve read the ordinance online, I don’t see that being the truth for very long.”
Hengle does not, however, put all the blame on the mayor, and said he understands that he is stuck in the middle of this.
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Photos by Scott Grau
Maumee mayor James MacDonald address concerned residents during a July meeting.
Author Kate Michaelson displays her inaugural novel, Hidden Rooms, at the Gathering Volumes bookstore in Perrysburg, where she’ll read excerpts for the Wine and Words Book Club on Oct. 1. (TFP Photo/Lori King)
Toledo academic and poet lends talents to mystery genre
PERRYSBURG – Riley Svendson enters the home of her friend and future sister-in-law, Beth, expecting to pick up her bridesmaid dress and be on her way. Though everything looks normal, even idyllic in a very Midwest Living kind of way, Riley’s sister-in-law is nowhere to be found. As she continues to look around the property, a sick feeling comes over her as she finds signs of foul play.
In this opening scene of Hidden Rooms, the main character’s internals unveil another important part of the book: that Riley doesn’t quite trust her instincts anymore due to a mysterious illness. Both that illness and the fate of her friend are central to this character-driven debut novel by Toledo’s own Kate Michaelson.
Michaelson’s Medical mysteries
Michaelson began having symptoms of Lyme disease in 2009, though it took a significant amount of time and testing to finally receive the diagnosis.
“I had a CT scan, an MRI and nerve conduction studies,” she says. “Everything came back basically normal. A neurologist told me that she was testing me for MS, she said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you neurologically.’ I just started crying because it’s so hard not having an answer.”
Author Kate Michaelson signs one of her inaugural novels, Hidden Rooms, at the Gathering Volumes bookstore in Perrysburg. (TFP Photo/Lori King)
Michaelson uses her personal search for a diagnosis to ground us in the main character’s world. The undertones within the loving-yet-dysfunctional family surrounding Riley are unsettling, even more so as we get the sense she’s not taken seriously in her health struggles. It’s subtle at times, but it’s there. Add that to the backdrop of a violent crime, and you’ve got yourself a page turner.
“It inspired me to write the book: the search for answers and how you start to not trust your judgment. You feel like something’s wrong, but you don’t get an answer,” she said.
The real North Haven
Though Kate has lived in Toledo for many years, she is originally from Greenwich, Ohio, a rural community that inspired the fictional town of North Haven, the setting for Hidden Rooms. She recently did a reading at the Greenwich Library, where she had a telling conversation with her first grade teacher about her literary aspirations.
“She reminded me that in first grade we did this young authors program, and I told her then that I was going to be an author. So I wouldn’t say I began the journey [as a writer] then, but it’s something I’ve always wanted,” Michaelson recalled.
Literary genre fiction
Michaelson grew up reading Agatha Christie mysteries and watching Murder, She Wrote and Columbo, but her writing pursuits as a young adult veered more literary and academic. She has an MFA in poetry and a Ph.D. in educational psychology. During the height of the COVID lockdown, she realized she wanted to pursue this idea for a novel that had taken root in her mind.
I was writing academic articles that are so labor intensive, and hardly anyone’s reading them. And I thought, ‘Why am I doing all of this work on writing that nobody wants to read?’ That’s not to say there’s no point to academic writing.
Kate Michaelson
“I was writing academic articles that are so labor intensive, and hardly anyone’s reading them. And I thought, ‘Why am I doing all of this work on writing that nobody wants to read?’ That’s not to say there’s no point to academic writing.
Michaelson decided that if she can write a 300-page dissertation, she could at least try to write a 300-page novel.
That led Michaelson to seek out help from the Toledo Writer’s Group, where she brought in drafts of her first couple of chapters. She began to feel confident in the direction she was going with Hidden Rooms.
“They gave me great advice,” said Michaelson. “They said, ‘If it’s a mystery, it needs to have a hook. We need to turn the page at the end of the chapter. This isn’t your beginning.’ But they were very complimentary about the writing, and it was exactly what I needed to hear.”
It was actually during one of sessions with the Writer’s Group that Michaelson saw a missed call from Cam Cat Books. They offered to publish Hidden Rooms and Michaelson enthusiastically accepted. Since then, the author has been spending much of her time doing readings and speaking to the press about her book, which has been a huge hit among mystery lovers.
Part of what makes Michaelson’s work exceptional is the ease in which she employs figurative language. That’s not surprising for someone with a MFA in poetry, but it’s typically not what readers of literary fiction think of when they consider genre fiction. Michaelson embraces the tropes and format of the medium while asserting that mysteries can be as character-driven and richly written as any novel.
“The mysteries I love are just as compelling emotionally and have just as much of a character arc as any literary fiction to me,” she says. “That inspired me to write a mystery that isn’t solely about its plot-driven elements.”
What’s next?
Michaelson is working on the sequel to Hidden Rooms, also featuring Riley Svendson. This time, after human remains are discovered in North Haven, Riley investigates what may have been the murder of her long-lost childhood friend.
Along with this highly anticipated novel, Michaelson is working on a stand-alone novel about a professional mourner (yes, there is such a thing!) based in Sarasota, FL.
BGSU students and professors play during a Wednesday night jazz session at Arlyn's Good Beer. (TFP Photo/Lori King)
BG bar serves up good beer and live music
BOWLING GREEN – Eric Jones loves music, especially jazz.
In fact, he loves it so much that he opened Arlyn’s Good Beer to give local musicians a steady place to play.
Before Arlyn’s opened on Feb. 5, 2020, students and faculty from Bowling Green State University were forced to jam in different local venues for decades. Jones said he attended their Wednesday night sessions for five years.
“They were kind of at the whim of bar owners who would let them play or pay them enough to play,” Jones recalled. “I had the chance to enjoy the jazz every Wednesday night. It looked like they were having trouble getting a place to play so I started talking about opening a bar.”
“And lo and behold, he did it,” said Jeff Halsey, a jazz bassist who plays regularly at Arlyn’s.
Jeff Halsey, center, performs with students and professors at Arlyn’s.
Jones retired as a professor of special education at BGSU and decided to take the plunge and open the bar, mainly to support live, local music.
Jones and his wife, Akiko Kawano Jones, teamed up with brewer Roger Shope and business partner Sean Brennan to buy a building and several acres of property on Hankey Ave., a side street just three blocks from downtown.
The new owners decided to name it after the building’s former owner, the late Arlyn Snyder, who ran a wood-milling shop.
The Joneses and partners opened Arlyn’s about a month before the world came to a screeching halt because of COVID. But Arlyn’s survived the pandemic and patrons know they can count on the venue for live music – and good beer.
Jazz is featured on Wednesdays, and blues and rock on Fridays and Saturdays, Jones said.
“It’s a fantastic place,” said Halsey, who just retired as a BGSU music professor and plays there on Wednesday nights. “It’s really cool, a beautiful space, and the beer really is good.”
“The community really likes it,” Jones added. “We hear frequently how much people really like the place.”
Somewhat surprisingly, Jones said the age of the patrons typically range from their mid-20s to 70+.
“People ask me if it’s popular with students. Well, not really. It’s kind of a mature adult hangout,” he said.
The beer brewed by Shope is mostly German and English ales and lagers.
“We decided early on to keep it simple, no fruity beers or sours. The only fruity beer we make is a raspberry ale. And we don’t have clever names; we just name them what they are,” Jones said.
The biggest night for students is Wednesdays. They come for the jazz. Many of the BGSU music students often join the band after the first set.
“The music students, they love it. They come there to play and to see each other,” Jones said.
He said about a third of them don’t drink because they’re under the legal age, but they can bring in their own soda pop.
Arlyn’s does not charge admission.
There is a half-acre beer garden outside with tables and chairs and picnic tables, and there is ample parking. The bar also doesn’t have a kitchen but food trucks open shop on the weekends and on many Wednesday and Thursday nights.
Arlyn’s Good Beer is at 520 Hankey Ave., Bowling Green, OH 43402. More information is available on its Facebook page.
BOWLING GREEN – Jeff Halsey studied trumpet and piano as a child but found his instrument of choice by chance.
“I didn’t really pick it. I mean, it just happened,” he said.
His father, Tracy Halsey, worked full time in a day job and led his own band in the evenings. One night, which happened to be the biggest night of the year for musicians, his bass player called in sick for a New Year’s Eve gig.
“I was 13 years old and his bass player called in sick on that day,” Halsey recalled. “My dad said, ‘I want you to play bass tonight.’ I didn’t even know we had a bass in the house; it was upstairs or something and it only had three strings on it, one string was off.
“I didn’t know anything about the bass. My dad said I want you to go ‘doom, doom, doom, doom’ all night long,” Halsey said, singing a progression of four notes. ‘Try to lock in or synch with the drummer, what he’s playing on the ride cymbal.’
“I didn’t know what I was doing but the guys in the band seemed to like it. And then some of the older guys spent a lot of time with me.”
It wasn’t long before Halsey found every note that could be plucked on that big standup double bass.
That was the start of his long and illustrious career as a bass player.
Halsey has performed with some of the most respected names in jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie, Budd Johnson, Yusef Lateef, Pete Siers and Stanley Cowell, to name just a few.
Meeting the late great pianist Claude Black was the turning point in his career, Halsey said.
Black, who was from Detroit, is a legend in Toledo for playing all over town, but especially at Murphy’s Place with bassist Clifford Murphy. Black passed away in 2013 at age 80.
“Claude was really the first training ground for me,” he said.
Black hired him to play at a club in Grand Rapids, Mich. six nights a week for two or three years.
“Through Claude I got to play with a lot of great people, including J.C. Heard.”
Heard, also from Detroit, was the drummer for the prestigious Jazz at the Philharmonic.
“Everybody knew him and when I played in his big band, we traveled around the world and were kind of like the ambassadors for the Detroit Montreux Jazz Festival.”
Jeff Halsey, center, performs with students and professors at Arlyn’s Good Beer in Bowling Green. (TFP Photos/Lori King)
Halsey also “climbed over the fence,” as some jazz artists call it, landing a teaching job at Bowling Green State University early in his career.
He found that performing and being a music professor were two sides of the same coin. The teaching job provides a steady income and gives him the opportunity to help young musicians. Performing allows him to collaborate with other artists and create something special.
“People ask me, ‘What do you do for a living, do you have another job?’ They don’t think you can make a living playing music. My vocation is my avocation,” Halsey said. “And basically, throughout my life, I’ve been able to play my bass with a whole lot of great musicians, and then I get to come home and talk about it with my students.”
Now, after 42 years teaching at BGSU, Halsey is fully retired. But he has a lot of work to do before he leaves the campus.
“I kept every piece of paper back when paper was, well, when we didn’t have the internet and there was no email. I kept every piece of paper in a folder,” he said, adding, “This is not fun!”
It’s actually the second time he retired from BGSU.
“I put my in papers in November 2019 to retire June 1, 2020. They started a search for my position and then COVID hit in February 2020 and [BGSU] froze all the positions,” he said.
BGSU students applaud Jeff Halsey and performers.
The university asked him to stick around, but instead of keeping his full-time tenured position he was offered a part-time job as an adjunct professor.
“A nice thing about being an adjunct is you don’t have a lot of the pressures of being a full-time tenured faculty,” Halsey said. “There was all the documentation and promotion and that kind of stuff, and I had none of that as an adjunct, so I enjoyed those four years.”
While he also enjoyed performing regularly with his jazz colleagues at BGSU, Halsey said it’s time to step aside and make way for the new jazz faculty members.
“We’re very cohesive,” he said of the music department faculty.
“We enjoy performing with each other. It’s kind of a diverse group of very talented players. So, I will miss that aspect of this, playing with them and working with them, because they were great.”
Halsey will still keep performing, of course. Bass players are always in demand, and a stellar musician like Halsey is always getting calls for gigs.
He recently played four nights at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich., and said he loves playing at Arlyn’s Good Beer, a brewery and jazz haven in Bowling Green just a mile from Halsey’s home.
“I’ll be busy on many weekends, and I’ll be quiet sometimes and I’m fine with that. If somebody calls me to do a wedding, I’m not going to jump on it. I only want to play creative music or play music with creative musicians.”
Jeff Halsey reacts with students in the crowd during a Wednesday night jam at Arlyn’s Good Beer in Bowling Green.
Former TFP writer Jeremy Baumhower is memorialized by daughter MacKenzie
It has been five years since June 7, 2019. That’s when my world came crashing down around me. My dad, Jeremy Baumhower, lost his battle with influenza. It was a long four months from the beginning of his sickness to the end, and I can still feel the incredibly heavy weight of it today.
My dad described himself as a “father. Writer. Dreamer. Toledoan.” In the 25 years I knew him, I cannot think of a better or more true description. My dad loved being a dad. He lived a life full of baseball, basketball and soccer games, endless bouts of laughter at his own jokes, homemade spaghetti sauce and Toledo pride.
I have many great memories of him, but one of my favorites has got to be watching the 2018 Winter Olympics. We planted ourselves on the couch and decided we suddenly loved curling. We figured out the rules of the game and that we really liked the couples from the USA and South Korean women’s teams. We both laughed until we had tears in our eyes from our own ridiculous commentary.
Jeremy Baumhower
My dad was and always will be Toledo’s biggest fan. He believed in Toledo and, most importantly, the people in it. His love of our community was contagious and there wasn’t a singular trip to Kroger without someone stopping him to talk. He, of course, would talk to everyone who came up to him, no matter if he remembered who they were or not. He was the biggest and loudest social butterfly. Since his passing, Toledo has been through a lot, and I have so missed his commentary about this beloved community.
I think I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my dad’s love for all things Toledo Mud Hens (and the Detroit Tigers), The Old West End Festival and Project IAm, specifically their event Acoustics for Autism. He could always be found at the Old West End festival and at every Acoustics for Autism, which he proclaimed is “the best day in NW Ohio.”
He could also be found in the Village Idiot in Maumee with a slice of pizza and a Yuengling. My dad wrote passionately about how Project IAm helped our family and how there aren’t many nonprofits like it. He also loved the musicians who play and support the now larger-than-life event, and he predicted early on that Conant St. would need to close down in order to support the always-crowded event.
In my opinion the greatest gift my dad was given, besides my siblings and I, were the gift of words. My dad claimed he was not a writer but his ability to perfectly capture the hearts of thousands would say differently. He wrote his first article for the Toledo Free Press in March 2012, when his passion for writing emerged.
Over the years he wrote many articles with many different topics that ranged from Toledo’s worst winters, to specific community members showcasing their big hearts, to our own family, and to his dentist-finding endeavors.
The Toledo Free Press gave him a platform to share Toledo’s greatest hits and gave him a chance to be vulnerable. My dad was controversial to some but well-intentioned and good-hearted to most. From this paper he was able to open up more than I had ever seen him, and he was able to share his life with the readers. When he wasn’t writing about the pride he had for his favorite city, he shared his struggles with marriage, being a father and being human.
He would be so happy to see the Toledo Free Press making a well-deserved come back, and I’m willing to bet that if he were here today his article would be front and center with the highest praise and adoration. He loved the office above The Blarney Irish Pub in Downtown Toledo and would be more than elated it will be in use there once again.
One of my favorite articles he wrote was Toledo is Better with a Free Press. In the article, he describes how the Toledo Free Press helped him find his voice in the world and gave him a sense of belonging. He describes how he was able to make the transition from working for over a decade in radio to writing.
He discussed the ways in which this paper is extremely beneficial for the city by writing:
“TFP dedicates its ink to news without a hidden agenda while highlighting the heart of a city learning how to walk again. It provides a vehicle and voice for many previously unrepresented communities and people dreaming of change. It’s helped champion the ‘You Will Do Better in Toledo’ campaign, which now welcomes all those who visit the Glass City.”
“TFP dedicates its ink to news without a hidden agenda while highlighting the heart of a city learning how to walk again. It provides a vehicle and voice for many previously unrepresented communities and people dreaming of change. It’s helped champion the ‘You Will Do Better in Toledo’ campaign, which now welcomes all those who visit the Glass City.”
While my journey with grief has been far from easy, I am thankful every day that my dad’s words are immortalized by the Toledo Free Press. I am forever grateful that I can read his words and that generations to come will be able to, as well. I will never be able to fully put into words how thankful I am that we live in a community as welcoming and supportive as Toledo. Grief is not easy, but it gets easier with every story shared of my dad and every laugh (or eyebrow raise) that inevitably follows.
I am excited to see what journey the Toledo Free Press will be on next, and I am honored to be a tiny part of this come back. I miss him every day and I hope to always keep his legacy alive.
