Contestants on TV talent shows often tell extraordinary personal stories about the hardships they endured before they got the chance to participate in a TV talent show.

Even in that context, the story that singer-songwriter Mandy Harvey told on the “America’s Got Talent” stage last summer was unusual.

Harvey will perform on May 22 at C2G Music Hall.

In 2006, Harvey was a vocal music major at Colorado State University when the unthinkable happened. She lost her hearing to a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, type 3.

Most people in her position would sink into despair and Harvey admits that she did sink for a while. Most people in her position would try to find a way to accept that they would never sing again.

But Mandy’s father, a minister who had been performing music with her since before she could speak in complete sentences, encouraged her to learn the vocals for a song called “Come Home” by a pop band called OneRepublic. As it turned out, Mandy could still sing in near perfect pitch.

The fact that Mandy’s talents remained undiminished in the wake of total hearing lost stunned Cynthia Vaughn, one of Harvey’s former vocal teachers. Vaughn put Harvey in touch with a jazz pianist named Mark Sloniker and Sloniker subsequently decided to make Harvey his vocalist for weekly gigs at Jay’s Bistro, a jazz-and-tapas place in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Much astonishing success ensued: albums, awards, an autobiography and Simon Cowell’s coveted Gold Buzzer.

Harvey ended up taking fourth place at the end of season 12 of “America’s Got Talent.”

In an email exchange, Harvey told me she keeps tempo on stage by feeling vibrations through the floor. She performs in bare feet to facilitate that synergy.

When practicing, Harvey said she uses “visual tuners” to help govern her pitch. When performing, she depends on her bandmates to an extent that most other vocalists probably don’t depend on theirs.

“There is a lot of communication that is happening on a constant basis,” she said. “Some that you see are head nods and a lot of eye contact. We have solos planned out beforehand and we all look at the musician playing while I am counting each measure. It’s a full team effort!”

Harvey said she “keeps track of the starting note of each song.”

“Several times,” she said, “you will see me look behind me at my bassist and I hum my note and he nods to tell me, ‘Yes,’ or helps me find my place if I am off. It’s a lot of unseen work but it’s a part of my routine.”

Harvey’s bandmates are Alfred Sheppard on piano, Daniel Navarro on bass and Dave Hamar on drums. Will Scecina fulfills the role of “electric guy,” she said, and provides backing vocals.

“As part of my concerts, there is ASL interpretation for every song,” Harvey said, “which I feel brings music more to life and shows the meaning behind the words.”

The Fort Wayne concert will consist mostly of original songs with “a peppering of some of my favorite covers,” she said.

Asked about how her enjoyment of music has changed since she lost her hearing, Harvey answered by typing “hahaha.”

“Music is different is almost every sense of the word,” she said. “I have spent a lot of years learning to love music in the way I experience it now and I’m happy with who I am! Music is much more touch, lyrics, emotion and intensity. I think everyone should kick their shoes off and feel music – pay attention to the vibrations and enjoy the subtleties.”

Harvey described encounters with fans as the greatest joy of touring for her.

“There have been countless memorable experiences and stories people have shared with me about them breaking down barriers on their own journeys,” she said. “A lot of hugs and happy tears! We’re all in this crazy world together and the goal is to lift each other up and encourage!”

A person who has cleared as many significant hurdles as Harvey has really doesn’t have a whole lot to fear going forward and Harvey said she has numerous goals, small and large.

“In the short term, I want to release a lot of beautiful music,” she said, “and I’m working hard for that to be happening very shortly! In the long term I want to make a real difference on inclusion and help change how people view disabilities so they see that we are not broken … just different. I want to work with kids and help encourage the arts in the education system … so many goals!”

I told Harvey that her life story tends to make people who mope readily and get discouraged easily, like me, feel like they really don’t have anything to complain about.

She responded with a lengthy “Hahahahahaha.”

“Well, everyone’s life is theirs,” she said. “Everyone has their own barrier and my goal is just to show that it’s OK to fail. It’s OK to have to start over and reinvent yourself.

“Beauty exists in the pain,” Harvey said, “and it’s such a great opportunity to grow! I love music more now than I ever did before. The reason is simple… I got out of my own way and I am not allowing judgment and fear prevent me from expressing myself.”

 

If Billy Joel went out on tour promising not to play any of his hits, he might meet with some resistance.

It’s hard to imagine a musician of any caliber who could pull that sort of thing off.

Well, there’s one guy who is pulling that sort of thing off as I type this.

His name is Weird Al Yankovic.

Yankovic’s “Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour” will pay a visit to the Honeywell Center in Wabash on April 12.

Per the title, the tour eschews the songs that made Yankovic famous (the pop song parodies) in favor of the songs he wrote from scratch.

It also forgoes the costume changes and elaborate trappings that have come to be associated with a Weird Al tour.

“This is certainly not something I could have done early on in my career,” Yankovic said in a phone interview. “No one would have stood for that. This is something I have the luxury of doing now that I have a 35-year career and 14 studio albums behind me.”

Of course, Yankovic’s originals aren’t exactly emo laments. With titles like “I’ll Sue Ya,” “Mr. Frump In The Iron Lung,” “Nature Trail to Hell” and “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota,” they’re clearly parody-adjacent. They’re parodies that serve as their own source material.

The improbability of Yankovic’s place in music history and prominence in the current music climate cannot be overstated.

Yankovic had his first hit in 1984. Other artists who charted that year include Twisted Sister, The Smiths, The Style Council, Billy Idol, Pat Benatar, Kenny Loggins, Culture Club, Duran Duran and Sade.

If one were to travel back in time to the mid-1980s and ask of room full of people which of those artists would still be generating headlines in 2018, none of them surely would pick Weird Al Yankovic.

That’s no knock on Yankovic. It’s just that the occupation of musical parodist has not traditionally paved a sure path to fame and fortune.

Yankovic doesn’t offer any explanation for his success. He just says he is grateful for it.

“Every single day, I wake up and I can’t believe I still get to do this for a living,” he said. “I don’t ever get jaded by it. The novelty never wears off.”

The not-so-secret truth about Yankovic is that underneath his goofy exterior are a savvy businessman and a sharp reader of the cultural zeitgeist.

Yankovic doesn’t come right out and say it but it sounds like he feels that he has earned this tour.

“I just felt like I needed a change,” he said, “and I thought it would be good for the band to kind of mix things up a bit and really challenge ourselves as musicians.

“So instead of doing yet another iteration of the big, multimedia extravaganza, I thought, ‘Well, the next time, let’s go in the whole other direction,’” Yankovic said. “Let’s have us just walk out on stage as musicians and play.’”

Given Yankovic’s professional persona as a comedian, his longtime band doesn’t often get enough credit for being as excellent as it is.

“I think on this tour particularly, the musicianship really shines through,” he said. “It’s really on full display. It’s not about the theatrics. It’s not about production. It’s 100 percent about the music.

“If people weren’t sold on my band before, I think this will do the trick for them,” Yankovic said.

When he speaks of the tour, Yankovic uses phrases like “deep cuts” which are almost never uttered by anyone who is actually trying to make a living in the music industry these days.

This tour is for diehard fans, he said, which means it may alienate some people.

“This tour is not really designed for a mass audience,” he said. “But the people who it does appeal to are going to go crazy for it.”

Last year, Yankovic got a chance to do something more ostentatious for diehard fans.

He released a career-spanning boxed set called Squeeze Box.

Squeeze Box collects 14 studio albums and one album of rarities into an accordion-shaped case. It comes in two versions: CD and 150-gram vinyl.

Again, if you were to travel back in time about 30 years or so and tell people that Yankovic’s parodies would one day be lovingly remastered for a collection retailing for $500 or more dollars, they might call you crazy.

Well, some of them might call you crazy. One person who doubtlessly would not call you crazy in 1988 is 8-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Miranda, now a celebrated 38-year-old Broadway composer, recently fulfilled a lifelong dream by having his work parodied by Yankovic.

“The Hamilton Polka,” a five-minute spoof of the entire score of Miranda’s hit musical “Hamilton,” was released by the composer and Yankovic in early March.

“Lin actually asked me to do it about a year ago,” Yankovic said. “It kind of got put on hold and then in January, he said, ‘OK. We’re doing this. We need it next month.’”

While he worked on it, Yankovic said he purposefully didn’t share any demos or excerpts with Miranda.

“I wanted him to hear it for the first time as a finished product,” he said. “When he did, I think it blew his mind. There’s actually a video of him on YouTube listening to ‘The Hamilton Polka’ for the first time.”

Unlike many music careers, Yankovic’s seems to have moved inexorably in the direction of greater and greater artistic freedom.

“Mandatory Fun,” the 2014 album that was in several respects the biggest of his career, was his last release for RCA. Yankovic departed the label under his own steam.

“Which means I am basically a free agent,” he said. “ I don’t have to get anyone’s permission to do anything. I can literally do anything I want. I don’t need to do whatever’s the most commercial thing. I’ve done OK. My family’s always going to have something to eat.”

“So now I am just driven by what sounds like the most fun,” Yankovic said.

It all started as a senior project.

It will likely grow into a regularly recurring series of distinctive events combining visual art, music and the performing arts.

“Black & White,” the first show in an initial four-show spring series, happens March 29 at the so-called Cube House, designed by architect Michael Graves.

It will feature the art of Lauren Castleman, Michael Ganser, Reggie Johnson. Suzie Suraci, Sara Conrad, April Weller, Dee Dee Morrow (and others) and musical performances by the Sean Christian Parr Trio, The Turn Signals (and others).

The title is an entreaty to attendees to wear their Sunday best to the event but its organizers say that guests are free to interpret the dress code any way they wish.

“Black & White” is the brainchild of three University of Saint Francis students: Jacob Ganser, Carrie Hart and Bee Kagel.

Ganser is on the verge of earning a music technology degree at the school and he proposed a series of four events as a way of fulfilling his senior seminar requirement.

Some students elect to record an album for their senior project, Ganser said. But that wasn’t something that interested him.

He felt that organizing these events would challenge him in a rewarding way.

Ultimately, though, he decided he needed some help.

So he enlisted the aid of Hart and Kagel.

It wasn’t long before the trio started talking about expanding the concept beyond the initial four events.

Hart said she has been inspired by the “shared bohemian poverty” espoused by British philosopher Alan Watts – collaborating with like-minded people to maximize minimal resources.

“There are a lot of things we’re doing (with Black & White) where we’re just putting it together with what we have,” she said. “We’re building our own walls, for example. We want to prove that we can make an event like this work while spending as little money as possible.”

Ganser said a lot of artists and musicians with big plans are frustrated by lack of funds. So one of the goals of this endeavor is to look for ways to circumvent that real or perceived roadblock – by pooling resources, by fostering collaborations, by devising workarounds, by seeking out previously untapped performance and exhibition spaces.

Most gallery spaces plan exhibitions a year in advance, he said. But artists in their teens and twenties don’t tend to think that far ahead.

So one of the ideas here is to create something that’s a little lighter on its feet.

“(People in their twenties are) so focused on the now,” he said. “We’re not thinking about a year from now. So we want to find spaces that will work with that mindset.”

“We just want to provide opportunities for artists and musicians where there aren’t so many tight constraints involved,” Hart said. “Where people can just show up and say, ‘You know what? This isn’t half bad. I am really enjoying myself.’”

The learning curve for this first event has been steep for the trio, Ganser said.

“We have three people doing the work of 20,” he said. “Most committees have people who do advertising and people who set up the meetings. There are delegated responsibilities. Each job has its own little focus.

“What we have is two people from the studio arts and one person from the music tech department doing the promotion, doing the networking, doing the meetings,” Ganser said. “We’re testing our comfort zones a little bit. This is an area that we have never physically been in.”

Ganser has been studying psychology as well as music technology at the school. Hart’s academic focus is photography and Kagel is in museum studies.

Those are some disparate interests and aptitudes but Hart said the trio has worked surprisingly well together.

“I can’t think of another instance in my life where three people with the skills that they have and the resources that they have have come together so well,” she said.

The final three events in this initial series will happen April 14 at the Crimson Knight Tattoo and Art Gallery, 1804 W Main Street, April 27 at the Cube House, 10220 Circlewood Drive and the USF Performing Arts Center, 431 W Berry Street.

The details of each are still being worked out. For the Crimson Knight show, Hart envisions having artists create work live during the event and then showcasing the finished pieces near the end of the event in some dramatic and technologically savvy way.

“So that it’s not just an art show,” she said. “It’s something that plays off experiences and emotions.” Hart and Ganser say they want these events to mix professionalism with spontaneity and an element of surprise.

Ganser will take a year off between college and grad school. The trio plans to begin devising themes for future events this summer.

If enough people can be brought on to help, Ganser said it’s not fanciful to imagine one event per month or several events per month at various venues.

“The more people we can bring onto the committee, the more we can delegate certain actions,” he said.

Hart said some of what the trio envisions is hard to put into words. But their passion is palpable.

“I don’t know exactly how clear our message will be,” she said. “But we definitely have an intentionality behind all this.”

 

There are many reasons why a theater director might want to produce an all-female production of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in 2018.

But Thom Hofrichter’s reasons are entirely practical.

The interest in Shakespeare among female actors hereabouts is inversely proportionate to the number of roles available.

Translation: Too many great female actors, not enough female roles.

One solution is to be less strict about gender specificity.

Hofrichter, the minister of drama at First Presbyterian Theater, said the meaning of Shakespeare’s work doesn’t really change when a director plays fast and loose with time, gender, nation and/or setting.

“If you put him in Elizabethan times verses putting him in the 1920s,” he said, “it really doesn’t matter. The wisdom and the humanity is there.

“I have seen ‘Hamlets’ where they whip out guns,” he said. “It comes down to how humans behave and Shakespeare does that better than anyone else. Why shouldn’t women have a chance to play some of the greatest roles ever written?”

Why not, indeed?

In fact, there is a rich tradition in theater of women playing the lead role in this play.

Sarah Bernhardt, a French actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who was as famous in her time as Helen Mirren is in ours, played Hamlet on stage and screen.

”I cannot see Hamlet as a man,” the New York Times quoted Bernhardt as saying. ”The things he says, his impulses, his actions, entirely indicate to me that he was a woman.”

Local actress Kate Black, who may be Fort Wayne’s Helen Mirren, is playing Claudius in the upcoming First Presbyterian Theater production.

Black is no stranger to gender-switch Shakespeare. She played the title role of Othello in a First Presbyterian Theater production of that play in 2000.

And she played Gertrude, the wife of the character she is now playing, in a 1999 Civic Theatre production of “Hamlet.”

“It’s pretty exciting,” Black said of playing Claudius. “It’s exciting to have the opportunity to climb into the character because he’s such an evil guy. He’s such a slime bucket, such a politician.”

Playing Claudius has helped Black understand the play better.

“It is such a wonderful and interesting thing to be coming at it from such a different angle,” she said. “A much more acrimonious angle.

“From a purely selfish standpoint,’ Black said, “it’s such a joy to have the opportunity to put my arms around character as large and well fleshed-out as this role is.”

An all-female cast exudes a different energy than a mixed cast, Black said.

The challenge for this particular all-female cast, she said, has been to strike a balance between hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine interpretations of the characters.

There are a number of lines that have suddenly become problematic in this context – “Frailty, they name is woman,” “’Tis unmanly grief,” etc. – and the actors have to figure out how to deliver them.

One of the singular pleasures of being involved in this production, Black said, is that every actor brings intense passion to her role and to Shakespeare’s work in general.

“I would say that every single person who comes to rehearsal every night is invested in making it as good as they can make it,” she said. “You always really want that.”

It was a natural affinity for Shakespeare’s words that convinced Hofricher to cast Halee Bandt as Hamlet.

“I never thought I would get an opportunity to play this role,” Bandt said. “I do love Shakespeare. I have loved the entirety of his work since I was a teenager. I was one of those nerdy kids who liked it when no one else did.”

Hamlet remains one of the most divisive characters in theater. Scholars and thespians still argue over his merits and failings, rarely agreeing on which is which.

Bandt said she sees Hamlet as an intellectual thrust into a situation that does not call for an intellectual.

“At the root of it, at the end of the day, Hamlet is an overanalytical overthinker,” she said. “He is a thinker who has been put into a situations that demands action. That causes all the turmoil we see in the play.”

“Hamlet” is one of the few thinkers in western theater whose thought processes are there for the audience to see, Bandt said.

“If to think is feminine, then Hamlet is feminine,” Hofrichter said. “Hamlet is someone who usually does not act rashly. It’s kind of ironic that the one point he does act rashly – because literary people are always busting his chops for not being a man of action – he kills the wrong guy.”

“It’s not unlike when you take quick action, you might actually attack the wrong country,” he said. “There’s a lesson there. Slow methodicalness is not necessarily a bad thing.”

As Hamlet, Bandt said she and Tara Olivero as Laertes get to engage in the traditionally male theatrical activity of fighting with swords.

“How often do two women in theater – or on film, for that matter – get to engage in truly physical combat?” she said.

Bandt shares the stage in this production with some of Fort Wayne’s greatest actresses and she said it’s been quite an education.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “I sat down for our first table read, and I am just listening to their voices speaking this text. I thought to myself, ‘How lucky am I to be with these women and we’re all working on the same thing?

“They have such a natural grasp of this text,” Bandt said. “And they make such beautiful sense of the language. Just being around them, I pick things up. Their home is on the stage. They feel very natural up there. They actively listen. It’s just a lot of fun.”

The challenge of casting Shakespeare, Hofrichter said, is finding actors who can bridge the gap between the play’s language and the audience’s understanding.

“This idea of – I don’t want to say translating Shakespeare, because that’s not quite it,” he said. “But interpreting Shakespeare in a certain way. Part one is the actor has to know exactly what they are saying with all the implications. Part two is ‘How do those words come out of your mouth?’ and ‘How is your body reinforcing the meaning so the audience understands?’”

The cast of “Hamlet” is uniquely suited to these aims, Hofrichter said.

Hofrichter doesn’t think there is any one way to look at “Hamlet” because it’s one of those puzzles where perspective changes interpretation.

“It’s like that old story about the three blind men who touch different parts of an elephant and come up with wildly differing descriptions,” he said. “In some ways, that’s ‘Hamlet.’ It’s the first piece of dramatic writing to do that. And I’m not sure it’s not still the best piece of dramatic writing to do that.”

In January, Fort Wayne’s Addison Agen did something that few national touring acts ever do: She sold out the Embassy Theatre.

She sold out two shows, in fact.

“It’s one of the greatest feelings,” Agen said. “I am super excited for this. This is the first big show that I am headlining. It’s a huge show for me.”

Last fall, this Fort Wayne high schooler went off to Hollywood to compete on the NBC singing competition, The Voice. She placed second in a contest that draws thousands of auditioners nationwide each season.

When Addison, 16, returned to Fort Wayne in December, she was a star.

She will perform at the Embassy at 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Jan. 21.

Becoming an overnight celebrity in one’s hometown must be a strange experience.
Last summer, Addison was a typical Hoosier teenager (albeit one with an atypically great singing voice and stage presence).

Now, Addison can’t walk down the street without people wanting a picture with her.

While insisting that she is “the same me” she’s always been, Addison said she is enjoying the interaction with fans.

“It’s really fun,” she said. “People say, ‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ and I’m like, ‘It’s not a big deal.’ This is the fun part of it all.”

With celebrity of this televised sort comes a swiftly accumulating international fan base.

“People from all over, like Brazil, Argentina, everywhere,” she said. “I’ll go on Instagram and they’ll just comment, ‘Support from – ‘ and put their country.”

The exact nature and makeup of the Embassy shows had not yet been decided when I chatted with Addison.

For the time being, NBC will have some input into what songs Addison can perform and where she can perform them.

“Our attorney is figuring out what we can do and what we can’t do for the Embassy shows,” she said.

What Addison could say is that she’d be performing with “at least a four-piece band: a cello player, a drummer, a bass player, a piano player, and me and a guitar.”

“It’ll sound very full,” she said. “I might have dancers and I might not.”

Given the mercurial and rapidly cycling nature of the entertainment business these days, Addison knows she has to strike while the iron is hot.

“The next season starts in a month and a half, so you kind of take this moment and go,” she said. “That’s why we planned a big show so soon.”

These two shows are the start of something big. But what, exactly, is not yet clear.

Right now, Addison is assembling her team, with help from Adam Levine, her coach on the show.

“We’re trying to figure out what the next step is,” she said. “He’s a super smart dude. Luckily, he is not wanting to disappear.”

Addison plans to record a follow-up to her debut CD, “New Places,” and she plans to record it locally.

“We’re lucky enough to have such a great recording place in Fort Wayne,” she said. “Sweetwater is huge and to have it in my backyard – I am extremely lucky to be from here. I think it would be a waste not to work with them.”

But other things that ensue should have a more national scope.

Addison said second place in the contest was the ideal spot for her to land.

“It would have been good in the moment to win,” she said. “But I am really happy that I didn’t, because if you win, there are a whole lot more contracts that you have to carry along with you.

“Coming in second has the most freedom,” Addison said. “It’s such a bigger picture than having a confetti cannon thrown at you.”

Because Season 13’s winner, Chloe Kohanski, is over 21, she will better be able to fulfill her obligations to the show, Addison said.

Despite the competitive and high skates nature of the show, Addison said the contestants were all close and supportive behind the scenes.

“I grew some of my closest friendships of all time on this show,” she said. “Brooke Simpson is one of the greatest friends of my life and will be for all time.”

Addison was raised in a musical family and she says she wouldn’t be where she is today were it not for her parents’ interests, passions and encouragement.

“There’s no way I would have made in on the show in first place without them,” she said. “They’re the ones who taught me about music and taught me to love it. They are the starting points. If I had grown up with any other family, I wouldn’t have made such a great impression.

“Having them cheer me on at home and having them be able to come out sometimes and cheer me on there – it was just one of the greatest things knowing that family is there and that home is somewhere close,” Addison said.

Addison recalled the night before the “blind auditions” broadcast when her family watched with an understandable mix of emotions: pride, but also protectiveness.

“Everyone is the room was praying and crying and my mom said, ‘It’s hard to let go of this gift and this secret that you have held onto for so long.’ It was a huge thing to get over. It was terrifying because you don’t know what people are going to think and say and do.”

 

In the choppy wakes of “Twin Peaks: The Return,” “Game of Thrones: Season Seven,” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” I have begun to think about what it means for creative persons to engage in what is known as fan service.

Fan service is a term that was originally coined to explain why Japanese animators and artists might want to add gratuitous nudity and near nudity to anime and manga.

They do it to “service the fans” (largely male, in that case, and apparently afflicted with an unnatural sexual interest in cartoon characters).

The phrase has since been expanded to address whenever a creator does something with a TV series or movie that may benefit fans more than it benefits the plot or the dictates of coherent storytelling.

“Game of Thrones: Season Seven” was widely acknowledged to be chock full of fan service: It largely jettisoned the deliberate pacing, crackling dialogue and careful world building of past seasons in favor of big, splashy (and often illogical) revelations and action sequences.

This strategy rewarded some fans and alienated others.

Fans of deliberate pacing, crackling dialogue and careful world building did not feel well serviced.

Different fans have different expectations, which is why providing “fan service” is a trickier undertaking that it might seem to be on its surface.

Case in point: David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: The Return.”

“Twin Peaks: The Return” consists of roughly 1000 utterly surprising minutes. Whatever a fan’s expectations were going in, they were not met (except in a philosophical sense, which I will go into later).

Superficially, Lynch provided fans with little that qualified as fan service.

Lynch doesn’t seem to care much about our nostalgia. He wasn’t interested in cooking up the meal we know and love. He wanted to challenge our pop cultural palates. He wanted to whip up something worth whipping up.

The sequel series disappointed some fans of the original “Twin Peaks,” fans who apparently wanted nothing more than to see FBI agent Dale Cooper sit around for 17 hours eating cherry pie and talking about “damned fine cups of coffee.”

But for fans of Lynch – fans of the way Lynch has dependably frustrated and offended and amused and astonished and bewildered us – “Twin Peaks: The Return” was an improbably satisfying and stimulating reboot.

Which brings me to “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (Spoilers to follow).

First of all, it would be difficult to make a “Star Wars” movie that pleased everybody because filmmakers are competing with adults’ idealized and rose-colored memories of having loved “Star Wars” as kids.

The older a fan is, the longer those memories have had to grow fat and a little crazy.

One of the biggest complaints leveled against “The Last Jedi” by the people who claim to hate it has to do with the character of Luke Skywalker (played by Mark Hamill).

Unlike Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda before him, Luke did not age into a placid spouter of Jedi axioms.

In “The Last Jedi,” he is a tortured, bitter guy with skeletons in his closet.

Let us consider for a moment how bona fide Jedi were generally portrayed in Lucas’ films.

The last time we really got a good look at Luke was in “Return of the Jedi.” Gone were the sense of humor and range of emotions he’d demonstrated in Episodes Four and Five.

Lucas hamstrung Hamill in “Return of the Jedi” because he required the actor to shift into bland guru mode.

All the Jedi in Lucas’ prequels are insufferable, humorless bores. Lucas apparently has this idea about holy men: That true enlightenment leaches them of charisma, charm, nuance and any interest in taking or making jokes.

Imagine what a long slog “The Last Jedi” would have been if Luke had spent its duration uttering cookie fortunes in a bland, expressionless monotone.

Instead, “Last Jedi” director Rian Johnson gave Hamill some meat (and scenery) to chew.

And Yoda!

Johnson resurrected Yoda from the creative graveyard of the prequels where Lucas used CGI to set the wizened wizard free only to bring him crashing back to earth with thudding dialogue and a prissy personality makeover.

Say what you want about Disney: The studio brought something back to the franchise that it hadn’t been seen in decades.

Namely, recognizably human (and humanoid) characters.

But here is something I understand because I am a nerd: Nerds are a little defensive about their proclivities.

They’re used to being mocked for the things they love, so when they see humor, irreverence or brazen narrative doglegs in “The Last Jedi,” they mistake it for disrespect.

They almost prefer it when their beloved characters are rendered as one-dimensional. That’s the only way their integrity can be ensured.

This is why there is so much nostalgia for the prequels in certain nerdy circles: Because they’re reverent at the expensive of everything else: surprise, suspense, emotional investment, etc.

Well, nerds need to lighten up.

I am as big a “Star Wars” fan as a person who hasn’t purchased any new action figures in a while can be.

And I loved that “The Last Jedi” was as surprising and unpredictable as it was.

It took what we thought we knew and made it fresh without spoiling its substance.

This is the key to the longevity of movie franchises: Bringing in self-assured creative people who aren’t afraid to take a few chances.

That’s the epitome of “fan service,” it seems to me.

Two years ago, I brought my wife to a Colin Mochrie/Brad Sherwood improv show for her birthday and Mochrie apologized to her on my behalf for my lack of gift-giving acumen.

Two years later, I am planning to do it again.

“You really don’t put any thought into her presents, do you?” Mochrie asked me by phone recently.

Mochrie and Sherwood will return to the Honeywell Center in Wabash on December 8 with a reconfigured show called “Scared Scriptless.”

Mochrie and Sherwood are both veterans of the long running, globetrotting TV series, “Whose Line is It Anyway,” which began in England in the late 1980s and which can still be seen on the CW.

“Whose Live Anyway,” another live show featuring some of Mochrie’s and Sherwood’s cohorts, came to the Embassy Theatre in September and it is interesting to contrast the two.

The “Whose Live Anyway” crew, funny though it was and is, played the “dazzling urbanites in a rusting setting” card in a way Mochrie and Sherwood never do.

Mochrie and Sherwood don’t try to generate comedy by pretending their audiences are rubes. There’s much more of a “we’re all in this together” vibe to their shows.

Mochrie and Sherwood have been touring together for 15 years and the Honeywell Center in Wabash has become one of their regular stops.

Mochrie, who was born in Scotland and who grew up in Montreal and Vancouver, has become one of the more recognizable improv comics in the world.

He said he didn’t dream of this life when he was a kid because improv comedy wasn’t a job then. Interestingly, both he and Sherwood once aspired to become marine biologists.

Looking back at his life from his current sexagenarian vantage point, Mochrie said he realizes that he somehow stumbled upon the only thing he is a good at.

“I shudder to think what would have happened to me if I’d tried harder to study whales,” he said.

Standing backstage before every show, Mochrie still gets a little nervous because he is thinking about how there is no show.

“There are people out there expecting to be entertained and we never know how we’re going to accomplish that or if we’re going to accomplish that,” he said.

Except for certain improvisational frameworks, each show is conceived on the fly based on audience suggestions.

Mochrie said that he and Sherwood are always looking for new ways to make themselves uncomfortable.

“We have found that that’s when we have the most fun with the show,” he said. “It’s best for us when we get ourselves into some sort of trouble and have to find a way out of it.”

The duo also tinkers with the process by which audience suggestions are procured. They want to make the process as easy as possible and they also want to encourage the audience to be creative.

“We want to try to steer them away from suggesting that we play proctologists and gynecologists,” Mochrie said.

Mochrie said they have had good luck choosing people to bring up on stage, but there are extremes they try to avoid.

“We want someone who isn’t going to be a showboat or come up thinking, ‘This is going to be my big chance’ – although God knows why anyone would think that; chance for what?” he said. “We also don’t want anyone who will freeze up.”

Mochrie loves it when people are nervous at first, end up having a good time and walk away having been “bitten by the bug.”

Asked if he ever imagined he’d still be doing improv comedy 40 years after he first started studying it, Mochrie replied, “I never imagined that I’d get so incredibly rich doing it.”

“Be sure you add the ‘Ha, Ha, Ha’ to that,” he said. “People always assume that if you’re on television, you’re rich. First on all, I am on the CW.”

The droll, mild-mannered and self-effacing Mochrie isn’t usually a magnet for controversy or intense national scrutiny, but he found himself at the center of a media and social media kerfuffle earlier this year.

Mochrie decided to announce public support for his transgender daughter Kinley on Twitter and there was an enormous response, both positive and negative.

“The positive part has been overwhelming and great,” he said. “ I have been on so many flights where flight attendants have come up to me and said, ‘I just want to thank you. I read about your daughter. We’re going through the same thing in our family.’ Or they had friends who were going through something similar.”

Mochrie said he didn’t really think it through when he “put it out there.”

“It was around the inauguration and, for some reason, things were really negative,” he said, wryly. “I thought, ‘This will be a nice thing.’ My wife and I were shocked that our extended families were so supportive because we do have a conservative element in both our families.

“But they’ve all been incredibly supportive,” Mochrie said. “None more so than our mothers – 91 (years old) and 87. So I just put out this tweet expressing my gratitude for that. The older generation really has no reference point for this sort of thing.”

Mochrie wasn’t surprised by the negative comments, just disappointed.

“I find it so frustrating that there are still so many of the ‘–isms,’” he said. “Racism, sexism. Every week it just gets worse and worse. By this point, we should be well into the ‘Star Trek’ years.”

Mochrie is troubled that so many social media conversations devolve into insults.

He said he once posted something on health care and followers who apparently disagreed with his stance on that issue started criticizing his appearance, among other incidentals.

“It became this horrible slagging,” Mochrie said. “I sat there thinking: ‘Why are you insulting me? Why don’t you just say you don’t agree and present your points?’”

A subsequent post about how we should all try to be nice to each other also devolved into sniping, he said.

“I mostly use social media to publicize the shows,” he said. “But it’s also hard not to say things these days. I think it’s important to get it out there and at least get people talking about it. There’s always going to be trolls who are just there to stir up trouble. But maybe you can give a few people something to think about.”

It is one of the most anticipated nights of the year in Fort Wayne and it just keeps growing bigger and grander.

It’s Night of Lights, the night when many downtown attractions unveil their holiday events.

It’s also the night when northeast Indiana residents are given an opportunity to revisit the cheerful ghosts of Christmases past.

It happens this year on Nov. 22 – Thanksgiving Eve, as always.

Night of Lights consists, primarily and appropriately, of many ceremonial lightings around the downtown area: a turret, a nativity scene, a bread factory, a Santa sign and a wreath.

The lightings are scheduled in such a way that one can stroll from one to the next without missing any.

New this year is an “illumination” at 6:40 p.m. of the Ash Skyline Plaza, according to Rick Zolman at the Downtown Improvement District.

“We’re excited about that,” he said. “It’s just a natural fit with Ash and the Skyline building and the lights that they have. So to kind of make that a part of our evening is really cool. We want to celebrate having them downtown.”

The 155-foot-long sign featuring Santa and his reindeer debuted on the side of the Wolf & Dessauer department store in 1940, went dark during World War II, was welcomed back in 1945 and endured as a local holiday tradition until 1958.

It was rediscovered in a warehouse by a GTE phone installer in 1979 and was laboriously restored by volunteers.

The sign made it’s triumphant late 20th century debut on the side of what was then known as the Fort Wayne National Bank building in 1980.

National City Bank did an extension renovation of the sign in 1999.

It now appears every year on the side of what is now called the PNC Bank building.

Earlier this year, the City of Huntington announced that it had commissioned Huntington Sheet Metal to create a smaller version of Fort Wayne’s Santa sign for its holiday celebrations.

The giant wreath that is lit every year on the side of the I&M Power Center is another former Wolf & Dessauer decoration that was rescued and refurbished.

Zolman said he believes the wreath predates the Santa sign.

The official start of every Night of Lights happens at the History Center, where the turret has been festively lit for 7 years.

The evening always marks the launch of the History Center’s venerable, two-week-long holiday event, the Festival of Gingerbread.

A new Night of Lights feature this year, is hot beverages in the Barr Street Market, which the History Center owns.

The History Center’s executive director Todd Pelfrey said he isn’t sure what the hot beverages will be exactly.

He just doesn’t want anyone thinking they’re toddys or spiked ciders.

“I am thinking more along the lines of hot chocolate and coffee,” he said.

Inside the History Center, he said, there will be special holiday displays devoted to antique toys and the history of Wolf & Dessauer.

There will also be the annual exhibition of Philemon (Phil) Steigerwald’s Santa Claus costume.

Steigerwald, who died in 2004 at the age of 76, was Fort Wayne’s official Santa Claus for more than 40 years, working out of a Sears on Rudisill Boulevard initially, before graduating to Wolf & Dessauer.

His Santa Claus portrayal came to an ignominious end in 1985, according to a 2004 Journal Gazette obituary, when the city decided it no longer wanted to pay Steigerwald his customary fee.

When he wasn’t playing Santa Claus, Steigerwald was a realtor.

“Innumerable residents remember sitting on Phil’s lap,” Pelfrey said. “It’s always really special to see that generation of resident look at the suit.”

The next two stops on the lighting procession are a nativity scene on the Ross Building and Aunt Millie’s bread factory on Pearl Street.

Aunt Millie’s first got involved in the Night of Lights in 2005 according to Melissa Dunning, senior director of marketing for the bakery.

Initially, they decorated the factory with a storybook house façade, but many of the panels blew off in a windstorm one year, so they abandoned that approach in favor of a lighting display created by Winterland of Marion, Indiana.

Winterland’s lighting display is a “green decoration,” said Dunning.

“It uses less than 15 amps of power,” she said. “Two hair dryers use more power than the entire display.”

The lighted area of the building is about 41 feet high by 226 feet long, Dunning said.

There will be a tent with free hot cider and slices of cranberry swirl bread, she said. The tent opens at 5 p.m.

There’s a possibility that this will be the last year of the bread company’s involvement in Night of Lights.

Aunt Millie’s Bakeries announced last week that it would phase out production at the Pearl Street factory by April of 2018.

Dunning said she didn’t have any information about future plans for the building.

“There are a lot of rumors floating around,” she said. “What I can say is that we’re a Fort Wayne company and we’re staying in Fort Wayne.”

The community center’s lights, the Santa sign, the Ash Brokerage display and the wreath are the next stops in chronological order.

The Embassy Theatre always opens its Festival of Trees during Night of Lights and the Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory kicks off its annual holiday showcase exhibit that same evening.

The theme of the showcase this year, according to the conservatory’s manager, Chad Shaw, is Snow Days.

“It’s a look in on getting a day off of school,” he said. “We’ve got a variety of snow people throughout the facility who will be doing the typical day-off-of-school things in the wintertime: skiing, sledding and ice-skating.”

Poinsettias will be on display throughout the conservatory as well, Shaw said.

The conservatory recently completed a patio renovation project and there will be fire pits out there for the first time during Night of Lights this year, he said. S’more kits will be available so interested visitors can grill themselves up a treat.

Light displays will be synced up with music on the conservatory’s terrace again this year, Shaw said.

The Grand Wayne Center will be hosting its annual Holiday Open House throughout the evening, Zolman said, with entertainment, decorations and refreshments.

The Night of Lights ends with the ringing of the downtown church bells at 7:30 p.m. and fireworks at Parkview Field at 7:45 p.m., he said.

Three days later, the Downtown Improvement District will be celebrating Shop Small Saturday (aka Small Business Saturday) by offering Holly Trolley Shopping downtown.

Small Business Saturday is sort of an antidote to the menacingly named Black Friday. It’s an opportunity to highlight – and help people discover – small, local businesses.

Holly Trolley Shopping consists of six free, heated trolleys traveling three shopping and dining routes in and around downtown.

“(One route) is called the green line, one is called the red line and one is called the silver line,” Zolman said. “The red line is basically focused on downtown. The silver line is focused on the Broadway and Main Street areas. And the green line is focused on the Wells corridor.”

Two hundred riders will receive a free gift tote, he said.

Night of Lights Lighting Schedule:

5:30 pm – History Center Turret Lighting (Barr Street)
5:45 pm – Christ Child Festival Nativity Lighting (Ross Building on Main Street)
5:50 pm – Aunt Millie’s Northern Lights (Pearl Street)
5:55 pm – Community Center Santa’s Workshop Display (Main Street)
6:20 pm – Santa and His Reindeer at PNC Bank (Main and Calhoun Streets)
6:40 pm – Ash Brokerage Holiday Illumination (Harrison and Berry Streets)
7:00 pm – Wells Fargo Holiday Display and Indiana Michigan Power Merry Christmas Wreath (I&M Power Center Plaza at Calhoun and Wayne Streets)
7:15 pm – Botanical Conservatory & Embassy Theatre Displays (Jefferson Boulevard) 7:30 pm – Ringing of the Bells (Downtown Churches & ACPL)
7:45 pm – Parkview Field Holiday Fireworks (Jefferson Boulevard)

The first Festival Of Trees happened either in 1984 or 1985 depending on what source one consults.

It has since become the Embassy Theatre’s largest and most beloved annual fundraiser.

In 1985, the first major renovation of the dilapidated theater was still a decade away, so the Festival of Trees was vitally important.

If those early festivals hadn’t been successes, there may never have been any later festivals.

The 2017 edition of the Festival Of Trees starts November 22 and runs through November 29.

It is particularly appropriate now to look at the recent and distant past of the venue because the Embassy will be celebrating its 90th anniversary next year and it is using this year’s Festival of Trees as a launch party of sorts.

“We’re using Festival of Trees to announce all of our programming for that celebration,” said the Embassy’s marketing director, John Hughey.

I asked him to give me a sneak preview of the big reveal but he wouldn’t budge.

“We’re using the Festival of Trees as a bookend,” Hughey said. “We’ll start the celebration with this Festival of Trees and we’ll wrap it up at next year’s Festival of Trees.”

The 2017 Festival of Trees will showcase almost 60 trees, sponsored by local businesses and decorated by professional decorators.

As always, the trees will line the theater lobby, the theater mezzanine and the Indiana Hotel lobby.

The festival’s trees can be scrupulously traditional. And they can be fairly untraditional.

In the past, the Fort Wayne TinCaps offered a baseball-themed tree and a local bank once covered a tree with dollar bills.

There has been a TV-themed tree and a tree with lights that attendees could power by riding a bike connected to a generator.

In 2009, the Embassy had a tree that could be played like a pipe organ.

A new wrinkle this year is a two-tree display devoted to Australia, Hughey said.

The Fort Wayne International Airport is sponsoring a “Christmas in New York” tree, thematically linked to the direct flights to Newark that the airport started offering in 2016.

There will also be a “Star Wars” tree timed to capitalize on the release of “The Last Jedi,” Hughey said.

For most attendees, the Festival of Trees is a beloved holiday tradition. But for some, it’s also a chance to crib holiday decorating ideas from the pros.

That’s OK. There’s no law against it.

And there are also no laws governing the tree trimming process, Hughey said. The sponsor/decorator teams are given no rules to go by.

“We want the creativity to rule,” he said.

The only time the Embassy ever rejected a team’s concept was when they wanted to make a wreath in lieu of decorating a tree.

The venue has the setup of Festival of Trees down to a science, Hughey said.

“Each decorator has an arrival time and a departure time,” he said. “That way each decorator can focus on his or her space.”

The overall holiday preparation process at the Embassy begins in mid-September, Hughey said.

The items that will occupy the animated windows are inspected and tested.

Animated department store window displays have been a Christmas tradition in the United States since the late 1800s when Marshall Fields in Chicago and Macy’s in New York established the custom.

Throughout much of the 20th century, the place in downtown Fort Wayne to see animated Christmas windows was the Wolf & Dessauer department store.

Allen Bixby was the chief window decorator for the store for three decades, according to Fort Wayne historians Jim and Kathie Barron, and he traveled to bigger cities to get ideas.

Many thought Bixby’s creations were superior to any and all others, the Barrons have said.

Scenes featuring animated store window displays are a staple of such Christmas films as “Miracle on 34th Street,” “A Christmas Story” and a number of screen adaptations of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

So it was a shame when the downtown L.S. Ayres department store (which had taken over the Wolf & Dessauer space in 1969) closed in the late 1970s.

Thankfully, the Embassy eventually resurrected the tradition.

In 2005, the Embassy recruited Walter Tharp Jr., one of Wolf & Dessauer’s latter-day window designers, to decorate the venue’s windows.

These days, that job is done by Stan Sheets, Hughey said.

“He rotates the collection each year, creating new vignettes,” he said.

Speaking of holiday films, the Embassy has decided to host a screening of one as part of this year’s festivities.

Hughey said this has been a big movie year for the Embassy.

In late October, the theater hosted a screening of “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” with live accompaniment from the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

At 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, the theater will offer a showing of the 1954 Michael Curtiz film “White Christmas,” starring Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Danny Kaye.

The movie was a spin-off, of sorts, of the 1942 film, “Holiday Inn,” which also starred Crosby and featured Irving Berlin’s music.

Berlin’s song, “White Christmas,” was first introduced in “Holiday Inn” and proved to be a monster hit. It won the Oscar that year for Best Original Song.

The massive popularity of the song spurred the creation of a second, holiday-themed movie featuring different characters.

The score for the movie “White Christmas” was the last Berlin composed for the silver screen.

Admission to the film is free with a Festival of Trees admission.

A stage musical based on “White Christmas” debuted on Broadway in 2008 and is currently being offered at the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre through November 19.

Live entertainment provided by local arts groups (and by the Embassy’s Grand Page Organ) will happen more or less continuously throughout this year’s Festival of Trees on the Embassy stage, Hughey said.

A venerable associated event, Breakfast with Santa, will also return.

Children can visit with Mr. and Mrs. Claus throughout the festival as well.

Some of the hot toys that the Clauses can expect to hear requests for this year include (according to the Today Show, the Independent newspaper and Toys-R-Us): a build-your-own R2D2, finger monkeys, a Luvabella Doll, a Movi robot, a Sqweeks robot, Hatchimals, Nintendo Switch and (believe it or not) Teddy Ruxpin.

Yes, Ruxpin has risen from the retail dead.

The Festival of Trees is different from other Fort Wayne festivals that happen around this time of year and that can create confusion.

Whereas holiday events at the History Center and the Foellinger Freimann Botanical Conservatory (for example) can last several weeks, the Festival of Trees is only 8 days long.

The reason for this is the nature of what Embassy does, Hughey said.

“As a concert venue,” he said, “we really can only do it one week. We do usually get at least one call in December and people are disappointed.”

Despite only being a week long, the Festival of Trees attracted 22,000 visitors last year, Hughey said.

“We do try to grow that number every year,” he said.

The Embassy was saved in the late 20th century by the work of dedicated volunteers, Hughey said, and events like the Festival of Trees still couldn’t happen without the venue’s volunteers.

“It’s really a community endeavor,” he said. “We could not do this without the volunteers. We could not do this without the sponsors. Really, that community love of the Embassy — that’s how it started 33 years ago. And it still continues.

“And we see no indication that the love affair is ending.” Hughey said.

The live entertainment schedule for the Festival of Trees:

Friday, Nov. 24

12 p.m. – Ellie Paige Dance Academy
1 p.m. – IPFW Saxophone Quartet
2 p.m. – DancinKids Dance Studio
3 p.m. – Fred Astaire Dance Studio
4 p.m. – K. Monique’s Studio of Dance
5 p.m. – New Millennium Jazz Orchestra
6 p.m. – Dance Ltd.
7 p.m. – IPFW Jazz Ensemble

Saturday, Nov. 25

12 p.m. – Dance NY Style Studio of Dance
1 p.m. – The Dance Dolls
2 p.m. – Deer Ridge Vocal Voyagers
3 p.m. – Amaneceres de Mexico Dance
4 p.m. – Tiffany & Co. Studio of Dance
5 p.m. – Julie’s School of Dance
6 p.m. – Smooth Edge 2
7 p.m. – SheeKriStyle Dance Academy

Sunday, Nov. 26

12 p.m. – Starz Dance Academy / Gymnastics in Motion
1 p.m. – Starz Dance Academy / Gymnastics in Motion
2 p.m. – Center Stage Academy of Dance
3 p.m. – North Side High School Choir
4 p.m. – Northeast School of Dance
5 p.m. – Fort Wayne Dance Collective
6 p.m. – Janice Dyson Dance Studio
7 p.m. – Pulse Dance and Performance Center

Fort Wayne seems to be a good launching pad for musicians of an Americana and progressive bluegrass bent.

The Avett Brothers, who recently were the focal point of a documentary by Judd Apatow, performed on a makeshift stage at a convergence of downtown streets in Fort Wayne in 2006.

The Band Perry performed at a now-defunct country bar here in 2010 and the Wailin’ Jennys, who were a favorite of Garrison Keillor when he hosted “A Prairie Home Companion,” performed twice in Fort Wayne in 2006: at a fabled (and long shuttered) coffeehouse and at C2G Music Hall.

Now it’s the Accidentals turn to make the most of a Summit City boost.

They will perform at C2G on November 5.

When the Accidentals first appeared here in early 2016, only a few local and non-local people knew who they were.

A lot has changed in the last twenty or so months.

The Accidentals came about because two self-described orchestra geeks, Savannah Buist and Katie Larson, were thrown together by happenstance. The Traverse City, Michigan teens volunteered for a high school assignment and a forced collaboration soon became an enthusiastic one.

They decided to call themselves The Accidentals (a double entendre referencing a musical note and serendipity) and later added drummer Michael Dause.

The Accidentals were “discovered” by rocker Marshall Crenshaw and producer Stewart Lerman in 2015. The gentlemen signed the band to a production deal.

But the band declined to renew that contract in 2016.

“It didn’t really work out,” Larson said. “We decided to move in a direction that was mutually agreed upon.”

The Accidentals subsequently self-produced the 2016 EP Parking Lot and offered it as a free download. In early 2017, the band announced that they had signed with Sony Masterworks.

Their major label debut, Odyssey, was released in August. It features guest appearances by The Decemberists, Keller Williams and Carbon Leaf, among many illustrious others.

It is not uncommon to hear horror stories of music ruined by major label imperiousness, but Larson said that was not The Accidentals’ experience with Sony Masterworks.

“We were super lucky,” she said. “Before we signed the deal, we literally sat down with the head of the label at the time and he told us he believed in our creativity and our vision and the songs.

“We told him we wanted to capture the energy of our live shows,” Larson said, “and broke any rules of any genres. I feel like we had a lot of creative control and the end product is something that we’re really proud of.”

The band that Fort Wayne fans saw in 2016 is different from the one they will see in 2017.

“We’ve been on the road for three years now, full-time,” Buist said. “That’s definitely changed our music a lot. When you play it every night, it gets a lot tighter than it used to be. When you play it hundreds and hundreds of times, it really solidifies the arrangements. It also strengthens the bond between the three of us.”

Opening for, and collaborating with, such artists as Crenshaw and Williams has increased the band’s confidence, sophistication and professionalism as well, Buist said.

Williams, especially, has taken the band under his dexterous wing, she said.

“We played on his album and we asked him to play on ours,” Buist said. “We said, ‘What do you charge?” and he said, “Exactly what you charged me.’ We didn’t charge him at all.”

Buist said Williams recently asked them to be his back-up band for a series of shows in Colorado.

The whole notion of being anyone’s backup band is still a relatively new one for the Accidentals, Buist said.

A few years back, the band was opening for cellist Ben Sollee at City Winery in Chicago. Sollee’s backing musicians got stuck in a snowstorm in Kentucky and he asked the Accidentals to provide musical support in their stead.

“At first, we were absolutely terrified,” she said.

“At that point,” Dause said, “I had only been in the band a couple of months. Suddenly it was like, “What? Back up Ben Sollee? What is what is even going on right now?”

Buist said they recently had to improvise a set with a horn-filled Toronto funk band called Turbo Street Funk.

The collaboration was the brainchild of a Canadian event coordinator who has traditionally filled the final night of a music festival with such stunt alliances.

“We actually successfully improvised a set together but only because, between songs, we would shout the key signatures across the stage to each other,” Buist said.

Heavy touring can be a strain on band cohesion, but Buist said the members of The Accidentals remain close.

“It’s actually pretty easy,” she said. “In a lot of ways, we’re really similar. We’re introverted, so we know how to respect each other’s space. We all kind of want to do the same things on our days off.”

“Today we’re probably all going to go to a science museum and then eat a lot of food together,” Larson said. “It helps that we’re all so much alike.”

“We bicker like siblings sometimes,” Buist said. “But our love for each other is really strong.”

Creative collusions with new musicians and unfamiliar genres have made the band bolder and more ambitious artistically, Larson said.

“I feel more inspired to create,” she said. “We have aspirations to tour with horn players and bring out more string players.”

Larson said the band will be doing a couple of album release shows in Michigan soon and they plan to add lighting and video components to their live mix.

“The more you see and experience on the road,” she said, “the more ideas you get. The same happens in our songwriting.”

Increased experience hasn’t entirely eliminated stage fright, however.

“I still have stage fright,” Larson said. “It is more situational than it used to be. But all of us suffer from our own anxieties and social worries. I find myself all the time overanalyzing the audience reaction, overanalyzing our performance. We’re all perfectionists.

“I’ll psych myself out,” she said. “Then there are the times when I know we had a great show and even I can’t talk myself out of it. I love the crowd at C2G. They’ve very supportive, very engaged, very encouraging. You can tell that everyone in the room is sharing a positive experience. I am really looking forward to coming back.”

Even though the band’s national profile has been raised considerably in recent months, they are still very much a part of the Traverse City music scene, Larson said.

“We still live there,” Buist said. “We are still very much tied in to our Michigan home life.”

“Coming home” after a tour always means returning to Traverse City, she said.

“When we come home for our (album) release shows, I already know that at least six people are going to make us homemade cookies,” Larson said. “So I am really looking forward to that.”