Dance like it’s 2 a.m. at a wedding reception. Have your palm read by a towering woman named Miss Claudette. That nagging worry in the back of your mind? The fear that keeps you from getting your groove on or polishing of the last slice of pizza because someone might stare and whisper? Ignore it. This is Old Town.
More specifically, it’s Thursday night at Sir Pizza’s Grand Cafe. Lansing’s resident female rocker, 52-year-old Kathy Ford, arrives around 6:30 p.m. Her dark hair stops just past her chin, framing a face that breaks into a song or a smile with ease. She orders a pizza to share with her entourage – a few friends and her mother. They sip diet sodas until Kathy has to take the stage.
The Kathy Ford Band formed 23 years ago when Kathy teamed up with Elayne Schroeder on guitar, Mike “Razz” Rosetos on drums and Bill Fuller on bass.
“It’s the longest relationship I think any of us have ever had,” Kathy says with a smirk.
At her day job as a consultant with the Ingham Country Intermediate School District, Kathy struggles to find work for transitioning teenagers with special needs in an economy where jobs are scarce.
She’s put off pursuing a Ph.D. in experiential learning so she has more time to care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s. Her sister died three years ago after a lifetime of dealing with mental illness.
Seeing her sister battle mental illness is what makes Kathy work so passionately to help students with special needs for the Ingham Intermediate School District.
It’s also why she sings the blues so well.
Contagious performer
By the second song of their set, the stress has melted from Kathy’s face as she sings a soulful rendition of Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia.” Elayne and Bill are missing tonight, so a couple of old friends sit in on guitar and bass. Between sets, they mingle with friends and pester people to get out on the dance floor.
Musicians often credit the enthusiasm of their crowds for feeding them energy. Here, the reverse seems true. Kathy and the band exude a friendliness and funkiness that’s contagious.
For some in the crowd, it’s a Thursday night ritual. Others, inspired by the long-awaited summer weather to venture out, stumble across the haven and stop inside. They’re intrigued by the smell of pizza and the soulful voices that spill onto the sidewalk.
As daylight fades, the pizza joint transforms from a place where customers order coffee in a bottomless mug to beer by the pitcher.
By 10 p.m., an old man who’s been dancing from the very first drum beat of the evening with a style that’s part pop-and-lock, part Looney-Tunes character, is joined by a diverse crowd. The crowd blends young and old. Black and white. Gay and straight.
Kathy and the band play here every Thursday night, and welcome guests to sing or bring an instrument to sit-in. They call it Kathy-oke.
They’ll play just about anything, from Motown to country.
“This band is extremely good with dynamics. There is enough of the old rocker in everybody that we can pull it off,” Mike says.
Leader of the band
Mike credits Kathy’s attitude for keeping the band going after all these years.
“We’ve watched children grow, we watched people come and go, we’ve watched some of our friends pass away. We’re going to keep playing,” Mike says. “It’s such a good relationship with Kathy, she’s so open-minded about things. She has no problem with going to really nice venues. She doesn’t just want to do nightclubs in town. That can get really dull really fast.”
The Grand Cafe is many things, but dull isn’t one of them. They never know who will get up to sing, tell a joke or jam on an instrument. Harmonica players and fortune tellers take turns at the microphone, and Kathy goes with the flow.
“It gives us opportunity as a band to listen,” Kathy says. “It keeps us on our toes.”
Mike still marvels at how versatile Kathy is as a musician.
“We’ve had to do some jobs where members can’t make it and one of us isn’t there, and there times when Kathy’s playing lead guitar and having to sing and do everything. It’s amazing to watch her,” he says. “I’ve watched her grow as a piano player, watched her change styles. She’s gotten to be a real good blues player.”
‘Music is a hard, hard job’
After graduating from Michigan State University in the ’70s, Kathy found it easier to find paying gigs as a performer than a teaching job. Her band played everything from biker bars to corporate parties, festival crowds to weddings on Mackinaw Island.
They only played one tractor pull – and once was enough, Kathy says.
“(It was) the strangest thing we ever played. It was mud, mud, mud. It was raining that day. We were in this covered thing and it was just the grossest experience I ever had in my life. All the fumes from the tractors were coming in to where we were playing, not to mention all the mud and the water. Afterward, we said, ‘Let’s never play a tractor pull again.’ ”
The biggest crowd they’ve played was opening for Waylon Jennings at the Michigan Festival for 30,000 people. Kathy says it’s her favorite performing experience.
“That was a real special event because I had worked with him before when he was not sober and this time he was sober and that was quite a change of personalities,” Kathy says. “The night was beautiful, there was a harvest moon. I think that was something that I will never forget, just that whole experience. It was picture perfect.”
She recorded some records in Nashville, toured the Midwest and South, and even broke onto the Billboard charts.
But when Kathy had to slow down as she recovered from a surgery, it gave her a chance to reflect.
“I thought, ‘I can’t do this the rest of my life. I can’t continue to put myself through these paces.’ Music is a hard, hard job,” Kathy says. “People think it’s fun. You are having fun when you are playing, but it’s the ancillary stuff that goes on around you in terms of setting up, tearing down, dealing with club owners, dealing with people, keeping the band working. As anybody who works for themselves knows, you’ve got to keep it going.”
So, Kathy started working part-time for the Ingham ISD, and two master’s degrees later, she is a full-time transition consultant for secondary students with special needs. Her focus is finding them work and a means to independence after high school.
“I love getting kids jobs and seeing their faces when they get a check,” Kathy says. “The point is to get them out in the community, working so they can get a paycheck and live on their own and be a part of the community instead of hidden away somewhere.”
The Grand Cafe has hired Kathy’s students, and so has just about every local bar or restaurant where she’s played a gig.
“I’m not afraid to go knock on a door and say listen, here’s this kid, give him a break, let him work here,” Kathy says.
‘Still going to play’
A combination of day jobs and family commitments caused the band to pare down its performance schedule. It only plays on weekends, with a loyal bunch of friends and fans who come out to listen.
The other band members add vocals, but Kathy’s voice takes the lead.
“She’s got a voice that nobody else has,” Mike says.
Kathy loves Motown and “real” country music, the originals like Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. Ella Fitzgerald. Carly Simon. The powerful female voices of the ’70s inspired her to learn to play instruments and sing.
On stage, Kathy switches effortlessly from keyboards to guitar. She plays drums and fiddle, too. And it bugs her that more women don’t play instruments.
“You see all these great singers, but most don’t play anything. That’s what back in the day you had to be to promote yourself,” Kathy says. “During the ’70s, the women’s revolution, that was a big part of it. It was we’re going to play instruments, we’re going to show that we can play drums and bass. That’s not there anymore. I’d like to see that (more).”
The band doesn’t rehearse anymore – they call it the “R” word – but they’re perpetually learning new material, swapping CDs and studying YouTube clips.
“We have to learn new material or it drives you crazy. And new styles, you have to keep up on the new stuff,” Kathy says. “It’s funny because whenever we learn something new, they don’t want to dance to it. They want to dance to the old stuff.”
The band takes only the gigs it truly enjoys now, making time to play for Kathy’s students or residents at local nursing homes.
“It’s something that we just can’t stop doing,” Kathy says. “We will either get paid for it or not get paid for it, but we’re still going to play.”
Mike agrees. They’ll play on, whatever the future holds.
“I’m seriously thinking of welding some drums to a wheelchair,” he jokes.
“We’re never going to break up,” Kathy says. “We’re just going to fall apart.”
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