Mustard's Retreat

Everything Mustard's Retreat does on a stage is aimed at pleasing, moving and engaging their audience. Whether singing their own gentle love songs and vivid ballads, telling tall tales or offering treasures from America's vast traditional song bag, a Mustard's Retreat show always feels like it's designed for the people who have come to see them that day, in that coffeehouse, school, concert hall or festival. Audiences sense this from the moment David and Michael hit the stage, are drawn to it like hungry kids to Sunday supper and reward it the best way they know how. They come to see Mustard's Retreat again and again. And again.

In a folk world so peopled by somber, confessional songwriters, Mustard's Retreat are wonderfully unafraid to get silly with their audience, spinning out smartly goofy parodies, too-tall tales of wily rabbits and stupid frogs, hard-traveling cadavers and marauding techno-nerds. Whether performing for large festivals, tiny coffeehouses, at special shows for children or families, it clearly pleases them to please their audiences.

In their serious songwriting, that desire to connect with listeners is as evident as it is in their robust sing-along and witty ditties. The moments upon which they hang their songs are moments all of us have felt: hands held in the kitchen during a quiet moment of rekindled love, the careless remark that reveals too much about a relationship withering from inattention, the hectic symphony of a busy city street, the timeless pleasure of gathering in shared song. And leave it to these guys to pen a glowing ode to the coffeehouse volunteers whose enthusiasm keeps the folk embers glowing. "I work with them several times a year and always wish it was more." Said Canadian songwriter Garnet Rogers, among the most popular performers on the folk circuit. "The thing that always impresses me is the incredible openness they have with the audience. They stand up there and just radiate friendliness; the audience is included in the whole process, encouraged to sing along and talk back. I've learned a lot from them in that sense."

They met in 1974, both working as cooks in the Brown Jug café in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "David and I were a pretty good team in the kitchen, even before we had music in common," Michael Hough recalled.

The first time they sang together was at a 1974 open mike at the Ark coffeehouse in Ann Arbor. Once they discovered their shared love of folk music, they worked up three songs and took them to the club. They were immediately asked back for a showcase night, and within a couple of months were the "house band" at a local bookstore. Within a year, they were gigging full time at pubs, colleges, concerts and coffeehouses. The group's name does not come from a historical event or old fiddle tune, as is often believed, but from a musical chum named Nancy Mustard, who taught David a guitar slide, around which he wrote an instrumental called "Mustard's Retreat".

Through the years, they have released six records, including an often hilarious live CD called "5 Miles or 50,000 Years," and a warmly reflective set of original songs called "Wind and the Crickets," which offers convincing proof of Tom Paxton's thesis that their stage antics work because they have the musical chops to go with them.

Visit the performers site at: www.mustardsretreat.com