Madcat & Kane at the Ark

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Madcat has been a well-loved mainstay of the local music scene since the early 1970s, when he moved here from Chicago to join New Heavenly Blue, a blues/rock/jazz band formed by Chris Brubeck, son of jazz immortal Dave Brubeck. That band, though short lived, led to an ongoing association with the Brubeck family that brought Madcat national and international fame as one of the finest harmonica players in the world. Although he's continued to work with Chris Brubeck in a number of different bands ever since — he's with Brubeck now in a trio called Triple Play — and has also performed solo and been an invited guest with countless other musicians in many genres, the Madcat & Kane duo is his longest-running group.

Shari Kane also arrived in Ann Arbor in the mid-1970s to go to school at the U-M, but music soon became her main focus of study. She absorbed avidly from the entire range of blues guitar players — traditional Delta, the Chicago giants, and contemporary. And not only from blues players: she credits Pat Donohue, house guitarist for radio's A Prairie Home Companion, with introducing her to the concept of simultaneous running bass and lead lines, which allowed her to accompany herself when she took solos in the duo.