Mystic Shake

Mys­tic Shake was an incred­i­bly inno­v­a­tive, eclec­tic, and fun band from the Lans­ing, MI area. Due to the relo­ca­tion of their founder and per­cus­sion­ist Dick Rose­mont to Santa Fe, NM — they played their farewell show on Decem­ber 5, 201o which was attended by a flock of fans shak­ing their cans! Mys­tic Shake will live on in the mem­o­ries of their devo­tees and in their three CDs; but keep an eye out for an occa­sional reunion show, you never know when and where they might pop up! Below is the story of Mys­tic Shake

In the late 1980’s, Lans­ing MI-area gui­tarist Dick Rose­mont decided to take up drums and looked for fel­low musi­cians to jam with. A core group devel­oped of Dick, Bruce Lan­drick on gui­tar and vocals, and Phil Throop on flute, per­cus­sion, and vocals. After invest­ing time with a suc­ces­sion of would-be bass play­ers, they decided to move for­ward with Glenn Hookey.

Mys­tic Shake offi­cially became a band by play­ing a party on April 12, 1990. A few songs per­formed that evening still showed up in the band’s reper­to­rie for years, includ­ing “Run Joe” and “Com­ing Home Baby”. The band’s name was coined by Rose­mont, who thought it was intrigu­ingly vague while offer­ing a hint of the band’s rhyth­mic About this time, Dick took the oppor­tu­nity to join a new group, The Down­town Blues Band, with a reg­u­lar week­end gig play­ing at Tango’s, a club in Lansing’s old Knapps build­ing. For about six months, Rose­mont gained drum­ming expe­ri­ence while con­tin­u­ing to develop Mys­tic Shake.  By the end of 1990, Dick parted ways with the Down­town Blues Band (who sub­se­quently became Root Doc­tor) and con­cen­trated on Mys­tic Shake. The group billed their style of music as “Rockin’ Rhythm & Reg­gae”, but, just as now, incor­po­rated many diverse styles. Play­ing pri­vate par­ties, Rick’s Amer­i­can Cafe in East Lans­ing, and munic­i­pal events such as art fes­ti­vals, Mys­tic Shake gained wider expo­sure and solid­i­fied its sound. A three-song demo tape gar­nered radio play on the Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity radio sta­tion WDBM-FM.

By Fall 1991, Glenn decided he was inter­ested in join­ing another local band, Dia­tribe. For­tu­nately, Dick John­son was able and will­ing to jump into the bass void, adding his vocals to the group. By this time, Dick R. was also con­tribut­ing backup vocals. The group started trav­el­ing more, with gigs in Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo.

While play­ing at the Rivera Cafe in East Lans­ing in the spring of 1993, Mys­tic Shake was joined on stage by a sax player named Steve Miller (quickly named the “Space Cow­boy”). About the same time Steve joined the group, Bruce left to pur­sue film school. Replac­ing him was Ben Has­sen­ger on gui­tar, vocals, and key­board. The sound of the group was grow­ing more broad and Ben’s orig­i­nal songs were quickly added to the setlist. This line-up had a live ver­sion of Hassenger’s “Can’t Believe”, recorded at East Lansing’s Small Planet bar, released on the Yikes Record’s com­pi­la­tion CD So This is East Lans­ing Vol­ume II.

Back in late 1992/early 1993, Mys­tic Shake recorded ten tracks for a CD of their own. By the time the disc was mixed and ready, per­son­nel had changed to the point that the mate­r­ial didn’t rep­re­sent the cur­rent band, and it was never pressed and released. Later, Steve decided to get even more pro­fes­sional with his music, and after a stint with the band Soul­stice, relo­cated to New Orleans. Before he left, he con­tributed a mighty sax solo to a live record­ing of “Wind Cry”, fea­tured on Impact 89’s Live Har­vest — Down in the Base­ment. The search for another horn player led to Tim Alteri a.k.a. Jay Bif­fler. He not only played sax and flute, but trum­pet and trom­bone as well. The sound of the band was shift­ing with a more light-hearted approach evolv­ing into a style they called “Rhyth­mic Fun”. Phil then decided to go into other direc­tions with his music and left the band.

The sound of Mys­tic Shake under­went a big change in 1995 when they played their first “unplugged” set as part of the Elderly Instru­ments show­case at the 10 Pound Fid­dle folk soci­ety. (Dick J. was then employed at the store, Ben was an alumm­nus.) They were joined by Elderly’s owner Stan Werbin on ukulele for a rous­ing ren­di­tion of “The People’s Key” (C of course) and “Two Women” (a song Stan’s wife Sandy just loves — not!). Play­ing acoustic-style became Mys­tic Shake’s pre­ferred per­for­mance mode, the band started appear­ing at the Cap­puc­cino Cafe on a reg­u­lar basis, and fewer and fewer gigs were played as a full-blown elec­tric band.

Later in 1995, another gui­tarist was added to the band — the local vet­eran Pat Mal­loy. He quickly fit in, adding a whole new palette of sounds to Mys­tic Shake with his pro­fi­ciency and ver­sa­tiltiy, and began con­tribut­ing to the orig­i­nal com­pos­ti­tions of the band. A ver­sion of “Marie (A Hard Luck Story?)” was included on  So This is East Lans­ing Vol­ume 5. Tim left, semi-retiring from music, and another horn player hunt led to the young wun­derkind Greg Bloy, a grad­u­ate stu­dent at MSU. Not only was he a whiz on tenor/alto/soprano sax, but he could also play per­cus­sion and sing back­ground vocals. He was later recruited to play whis­tle on “Woman Like That” and sing lead on “All Night Long”.

In 1997, the first Mys­tic Shake album Shake Your Can was recorded at the Edge­wood United Church in East Lans­ing, where Greg was the organ­ist. (Is there noth­ing this guy can’t do?) Accor­dion­ist Mike Lynch and pianist Mike Skory lent their con­sid­er­able tal­ents to three songs on the CD. Shake Your Can was fin­ished at Glenn Brown Pro­duc­tions and released on Wally Pleasant’s Miranda label. Fea­tur­ing 12 orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions, the songs “Can’t Believe”, “In Between Truth”, and “Lois” quickly became live favorites and appeared on the playlists of adven­tur­ous regional col­lege radio sta­tions. The album rep­re­sented the elec­tric sound of Mys­tic Shake, even as the band was play­ing more acoustic-style gigs.

Mys­tic Shake expanded their audi­ence with appear­ances at the Michi­gan Fes­ti­val, Demo­c­ra­tic Party func­tions, back­yard luaus, wed­ding recep­tions, children’s con­certs, schools, cor­po­rate events, and even a wake for the respected lawyer-poet Ted Swift. A high­light of this period was the oppor­tu­nity to open up for one of their favorite and inspi­ra­tional bands, NRBQ, in Fer­n­dale, Ann Arbor, and East Lansing.

Their sec­ond album All Night Long was recorded by Glenn Brown at their Ten Pound Fid­dle show on Feb­ru­ary 5, 1999 and was released that sum­mer. This acoustic-based per­for­mance fea­tured eight orig­i­nals, two par­o­dies, and a wacky cover of “The Banana Boat Song”. A high­light (or low point, depend­ing on your sense of humor and fash­ion) was an appear­ance by the rarely-seen, polyester-clad Five Guys Named Dick, singing their theme song and a hilar­i­ous “YMCA” rip-off called “Y2K” — an anthem of the upcom­ing mil­len­nium dooms­day scenario.(Y2K” was retired from per­for­mances , for obvi­ous rea­sons, after Jan­u­ary 1, 2000 — revived only once by a request at a wed­ding reception.)

Jan­u­ary 15, 2000 was Greg’s going away party. He had grad­u­ated from col­lege, taken a good job in Texas, and pre­pared to move with his preg­nant wife Lisa. It was a tear­ful, yet joy­ous gig that night at the Cap­puc­cino Cafe. Greg had played an inte­gral role in the pro­gres­sion of Mys­tic Shake, and while every­one was happy for him and his fam­ily, they were surely going to miss his friend­ship and musi­cial tal­ents.  Rather than try to replace Greg, the band decide to carry on with the four remain­ing mem­bers Dick R., Ben, Pat, and DIck J. (“Five Guys Named Dick is still played, with an audi­ence mem­ber often fill­ing in for the fifth Dick.) Each mem­ber had to cover more ground styl­is­ti­cally and musi­ci­cally, espe­cially Pat who shoul­dered more lead gui­tar and har­mon­ica work. While the sound had changed some­what, it still main­tained that infec­tious “rhyth­mic fun”.

Ben pur­chased some record­ing equip­ment, and in the spring and sum­mer of 2002, Mys­tic Shake began work­ing in his den on their third album. The eight-song Seri­ous Fun was released that Sep­tem­ber, just in time for the Ernie Har­well trib­ute tune “Voice of Sum­mer” to be fea­tured n Fox Sports tele­vi­sion and National Pub­lic Radio’s Only a Game, cel­e­brat­ing the cul­mi­na­tion of Ernie’s long and cel­e­brated base­ball broad­cast­ing career. (Ernie called Ben to thank him for the song; a big thrill for Ben!) The par­ody “The Bal­lad of Cokie Roberts” was a big hit on the nation­ally broad­cast Mitch Albom Show and their remake of Stan Freberg’s “Tel-e-vee-shun” was played on the leg­endary Dr. Demento radio show. (How can it get any bet­ter than that!) The album, while acoustic-based, fea­tures elec­tric instru­ments on a cou­ple of tracks as well as a guest appear­ance by Greg Bloy, who played one evening with the band at the Cap­puc­cino Cafe and was recruited (kid­napped?) to con­tribute a great sax part to “Paws” late that night. (He didn’t get much sleep that night — he had to drive back to Texas at 6:00 the next morn­ing!) The CD was also graced by the ver­sa­tile Brian Hef­feran play­ing banjo on “Cokie” and man­dolin on “Because of You”. (Brian has become the “fifth Shake”, play­ing man­dolin, banjo, ukulele, and sax­o­phone with the band on var­i­ous occas­sions.) Another guest high­light was the appear­ance of vio­lin­ist Karl Pestka on “Back to the Sea”. (Karl, an East Lans­ing High School grad­u­ate, totally knocked out Ben and Dick R. when he nailed his part for the record­ing, and is now a grad­u­ate of the music pro­gram at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan.) Seri­ous Fun also led to a “Best Local Folk CD” Jam­mie award nom­i­na­tion for the Grand Rapids, MI com­mu­nity radio sta­tion WYCE. Arti­cles on the band were also fea­tured in the news­pa­pers City Pulse and the Lans­ing State Journal.