MUSIC & TALENT
2023 PERFORMERS
​Alice Sun
Alice Sun is a Detroit-based musician of indigenous and immigrant roots working to use sound to reconnect the line of spirit to our humaness. She hopes to create a space, through music, in which to experience oneself growing and watered. An emphasis is placed on breaking through limitations and with this she is inspired and explores all musical lineages. She will be joined by fellow musician Mattijane Brooks. Mattijane is a Kalamazoo-based songwriter, bassist, synthesist, and facilitator.
Bad River Youth Drum
Eliza Thorp
Northern Michigan based Singer/Songwriter, Eliza Thorp, has been weaving stories and finding home in the warmth of the Mitten music family. She writes songs about dreamers, her community and growing up with a wild heart. A Berklee Alumni, with a voice married to the piano notes, Thorp has been known to bring the raucousness of a basement party to a reflective silence with only a few verses.
Ellie + Haley: Sound Bath
Sound Healers Haley Benson and Ellie Esford both discovered their love of sound healing during their 200 hour Yoga teacher training in 2019. While they have enjoyed collecting their own instruments and playing solo, they quickly realized that playing together brought an added layer of magic to the power of sound. They have a particular love for leading meditation and sound healing experiences in nature where the sounds of the Earth and the instruments can come together in harmony.
Eoin Small & Sunni Leilani
Eóin Small is a singer/songwriter, multimedia artist, activist & community organizer living nomadically on the ancestral homelands of Dakota & Anishinaabe people in what has come to be called Minnesota and the broader “Midwest”. Much of Eoin’s work centers on climate justice & supporting indigenous-led movements against extractive industry.
Eoin’s contemporary indie/folk music infuses his experiences in movement spaces with lyrical themes of anger, love, calls for justice, guidance and healing with the occasional romantic interlude. Standing for Water Rights & Earth Rights; Sunni Leilani’s Community Stretches Across Turtle Island,
Extending to the Various Places & Lands She Calls Home,
Along With Their Indigenous Peoples.
After Spending Approximately 5 - 6 Months In Standing Rock,
She Started a Self Funded & Self Sustained,
Ancient Love Story Journey & Tour
Across Turtle Island & the Hawaiian Islands,
Collecting Sharing Documenting Witnessing & Communing With Indigenous Peoples
https://sunnileilani.bandcamp.com/album/ancient-love-story
Michelle Chenard
Michelle Chenard is a Michigan Emmy® Award Winning Songwriter and performing music artist who has been continually voted a favorite in Northern Michigan as Best Solo Performer, Best of the Best and more in Northern Express, Northern Michigan’s largest newsweekly. Michelle scored a Michigan Emmy® Award for musical score on the TV documentary Sacrifice and Honor: A Tribute to our Northern Michigan Veterans. She continually performs hundreds of shows across the state each year, including some of the most well known Music Festivals in Michigan.
Robin Lee Berry
Robin Lee Berry has been hailed as reflecting “northern Michigan's feminine soul, blending themes of strength, courage, and vulnerability in her songs, all rendered with the spirit of awe and optimism." –Robert Downes, Northern Express
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Robin is an accomplished guitar player, a seasoned lyricist, and fearless performer. Her new work is energized and direct. Robin is aiming for the marrow of your bones.
Samantha Cooper
Samantha Cooper’s voice is a gentle force. Her songs speak for their sound; from contemplative respites to keen PSA’s. A veteran session musician, her voice and violin appear on over 70 Michigan made albums. She's also a 2021 Newsong Songwriting finalist. Her latest video single is a love note to the water is life movement and the rights of manoomin (wild rice) titled “Let The Wave (feat. Shara Nova, Jaike Spotted Wolf, Holly T. Bird & Frank Bibeau)”. Sam is from the Huron & Kalamazoo River watersheds. She works as a songwriter, a session musician, an organizer, a mediator and a teaching artist via Youth Arts Alliance. She also co-produces Hearth & Hymn with Elisabeth Pixley-Fink.
SETH BERNARD
Music Maker. Water Protector.
Founder and Co-Executive Director of Title Track, working for clean water, racial equity and youth empowerment.
Founder of Earthwork Music, encouraging community healing through collective musicianship, and the Earthwork Harvest Gathering, a celebrated annual cultural that takes place on the family farm where I grew up.
The Sister Tour: Amber Hasan
“The Water Remembers” is a performance by Flint-based artist collective, The Sister Tour. This special event is a performative ethnographic experience that reframes and illuminates the spiritual and physical connections (and at times complicated relationships) between Black Women and Water.
The Sister Tour is a community organization of artists from Flint, Michigan, who present a mix of spoken word, comedy, and music as an expression of resilience to the ongoing water crisis. Activists Shea Cobb and Amber Hasan are featured in LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photographic series, Flint is Family In Three Acts. The Sister Tour has performed across the country including SF MOMA, Flint Institute of Arts, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI.
The Thirties
The Thirties are a three-piece rock band driven by a full sound, playful, yet relevant lyrics and educated angst. They cut the fat and add no filler, leaving only what’s needed to drive the song home. Each choice word and every carefully arranged progression serves its purpose. Falling on controversial topics such as equality, environmental change, mental health and corporate corruption, The Thirties use hope, realism, and sarcasm as a crutch to arrive in one piece and right on time. Please welcome The Thirties!
Tyler Dettloff
Tyler Dettloff is a singer/songwriter, poet, and professor raised on the edge of the Delirium Wilderness. He currently lives in Gnoozhekaaning (Bay Mills, MI). Tyler Records with Lost Dog Records and released his full length "Dynamite Honey: Northern Folk & Blues" in 2019. His next LP titled "Reconcile" is expected Fall 2023. Tyler teaches College Composition and Native American Literature at LSSU. His poetry has been featured in The Rumpus, ISLE, Frontier Poetry, River Heron Review, Cutthroat, and elsewhere. Mostly, he enjoys walking along rivers and beaches with his family and through swamps his dogs Banjo and Fiddle.