We are raffling off 3 autographed copies of City Tour Detroit founder & author, KARIN RISKO’s new book ‘A History Lover’s Guide to Detroit‘!
*3 winners will be selected at random. Enter now for your chance to win!* https://detroitbookfest.com/enter-to-win/?prizeid=10The raffle will run from Monday, November 12 to Sunday, November 18.
Detroit is one of the most fascinating cities in America and Karin Risko is a well-known and well-loved tour operator & author here in the city where she helps people explore cool things, unknown history and hidden gems. She is a former teacher who taught high school, middle school history and German language.
In 2009, Karin founded the immensely popular City Tour Detroit.
Based in Downtown Detroit, City Tour Detroit takes people on immersive walking, car and bus tours of Detroit. They offer several different tours. One of their most popular is the spooky Notorious 313 true crime & ghost tour.
In 2015, Karin and David Ingall co-wrote ‘Michigan Civil War Landmarks‘, a phenomenal tour guide for anyone interested in Civil War history.
Karin’s new book, ‘A History Lover’s Guide to Detroit‘ is another indispensable tour guide for one of America’s great cities and is packed with over 90 beautiful photos taken by Rodney Arroyo.
Both books were published via Arcadia Publishing subsidiary The History Press.
Karin Risko is a Detroit native. She graduated from Central Michigan University. She has been delighting thousands of people over the years with her must-experience tours, tales and books. Check it out!
You can also purchase an autographed copy of her book for $25.00 (includes s/h) from City Tour Detroit.
Homepage https://citytourdetroit.com/Buy A History Lover’s Guide to Detroithttps://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467135672Buy Michigan Civil War Landmarks guide bookhttps://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9781626199408/Michigan-Civil-War-LandmarksCity Tour Detroit facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/citytourdetroit/?ref=br_rsThe History Press facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryPress/
We are raffling off 3 autographed copies of City Tour Detroit founder & author, KARIN RISKO’s new book ‘A History Lover’s Guide to Detroit‘!
*3 winners will be selected at random. Enter now for your chance to win!* https://detroitbookfest.com/enter-to-win/?prizeid=10The raffle will run from Monday, November 12 to Sunday, November 18.
Most people have heard of Garden Fresh Salsa. What many people don’t know is how difficult it was for former vice chairman Dave Zilko and founder Jack Aronson to grow Garden Fresh from a bankrupt startup into a $231 million-dollar business.
I’m sitting at Fuel Leadership headquarters in Downtown Birmingham with Dave Zilko.
Dave is now CEO of Fuel and graciously invited me to talk with him about his life. I read his amazing tale ‘Irrational Persistence’ and was very impressed by his uncompromising perseverance and it’s an honor to be here.
Dave is a Detroit entrepreneur and business veteran who helped grow Michigan’s own Garden Fresh Salsa into the dominant # 1 fresh salsa brand in the world. All the odds, however you look at them, were stacked against Garden Fresh but they prevailed over seemingly impossible odds.
Reading Irrational Persistence is akin to taking an MBA course. It’s an honest account of real-world experience and it doesn’t get any more authentic than personal experience as told from an entrepreneurial fighter’s perspective.
If you’re thinking of starting a business, you should read this book. It should be required reading for all MBA programs as a real-world case study.
Business can be warfare. Entrepreneurial Warriors need to suit up for battle, while forging an advanced morality, so you’re not heartless or slimey in your dealings with others. Business is the Art of Aligning Compatible Relationships for Mutual Profit.
When Dave and Jack pooled their resources together, they were millions of dollars in debt.
However, they were talented, hardworking, had great products and assembled a great team and they were able to grow Garden Fresh into a $231 million-dollar company, which they eventually sold to Campbell’s in 2015.
The success of Dave Zilko will change your conception of what is possible if you’re a hardworking and persistent entrepreneur.
Biography
Dave Zilko is an enterprising Detroiter. He received his B.S. in Finance from Michigan State University, and his MBA in Marketing from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
He’s an operating partner with Huron Capital and serves on various boards like Forgotten Harvest (USA’s largest food rescue organization), Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Enterprises charity arm Singing for Change, Grow Michigan venture fund, the WSU Ilitch School of Business and more.
Dave Zilko went thru hell to get where he is. In the early days, he was up to his eyeballs in student loan debt, selling marinades and life insurance and cracking hundreds of thousands of eggs by hand.
This is his tale.
“I was born and raised in Warren, Michigan, grew up at 11 ½ Mile Road and Van Dyke. I have wonderful parents and was the first one in my family to go to college. Worked my way through school. I used to be a bagger at Great Scott (now Kroger) for $2.14 an hour.”
“In terms of money management, I’m self-taught. I saved money on my own because I really wanted to go to college. I had paper routes when I was 12.”
“Always been drawn to writing. I was even the editor of my high school newspaper. Putting my personal story on paper in book-form was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my entire life because it’s tough knowing what to include and not include.”
“My ultimate goal with the book is to help aspiring entrepreneurs understand just how hard it was and how long it took to build a successful business. We struggled hard for over a decade to build the company.”
“After MSU, I spent a life-changing summer in France and fell in love with the food and wine culture there. Came home, did an internship at GM in Downtown Detroit. Then went to Washington, D.C. for grad school. I lived in Georgetown and had a great time.”
“After graduating, I decided to follow my passion and start a specialty food company called American Connoisseur, where I started making marinades. My first order was for 96 cases. Only problem was I had nowhere to make them.”
“So, I found a spot in Sylvan Lake, Michigan, a tiny medieval dungeon of an office, and got right to work. The good people at Discover credit card company soon discovered that I couldn’t qualify for a loan, so I asked my girlfriend to help me out. She thankfully did and yes, we’re married now.”
“After that I bought Mucky Duck Mustard Company. The owner, Michelle Marshall, was retiring and she owned a forklift, which we badly needed, so I bought the company from her with an $108,000 loan from my dad. Michelle originally started the company in the 1980’s at her house in Franklin, Michigan.”
“Mucky Duck is a British pub-style mustard, so eggs are an ingredient. For years, every day at 5 a.m., I had to personally break eggs for the mustard. I estimate that I’ve broken over 800,000 eggs over the years. Mucky Duck won the world championship of mustard one year and I still own the company.”
“11 years later, after my lost decade, I met world softball champ and Detroit entrepreneur Jack Aronson in 2002 at a food industry show at the Javits Center in NYC. Jack and I were both in debt, both Detroiters, both food lovers and we became friends immediately.”
“Jack is an amazing individual. He’s an energetic dreamer and unrepentant softball fanatic and I’m proud to be his friend. Together, we made Garden Fresh Salsa internationally popular.”
Garden Fresh Salsa: You get what you pay for
Salsa originated centuries ago among the Incas and Aztecs. It wasn’t called “salsa” until 1571 and it wasn’t brought to the United States until 1916 when they started making it in New Orleans. Jack started Garden Fresh in 1997.
Fans of Garden Fresh Salsa say, “it’s worth it, it’s like you made it yourself.” Garden Fresh uses all-natural, high-quality ingredients which creates a memorable and almost addictive flavor profile.
In June 2015, Campbell’s bought Garden Fresh for $231 million dollars.
$231 million dollars is a lot of money. Picture 231 piles. Each pile has $1 million dollars. What’s harder to imagine is how incredibly difficult it is to generate that kind of money. Especially from an originally bankrupt startup making salsa in the unlikely city of Ferndale, Michigan, which, being a small Midwestern city, had zero salsa street cred.
Garden Fresh Salsa was launched by Jack Aronson in the back of his now-closed restaurant, Clubhouse Bar-B-Q (22016 Woodward, Ferndale, MI). Jack was making the salsa in 38-lb. batches inside 5-gallon buckets and had $4.6 million dollars in annual sales when he met Dave.
In 2002, when Jack formed a partnership with Dave, their goal was to get to $10 million dollars in ten years. Instead, Dave helped get them to $110 million dollars. Garden Fresh became the #1 brand of fresh salsa in the United States, making up 31% of all US salsa sales.
Then they became the largest brand of tortilla chips sold in deli’s, and after purchasing Inkster-based Basha Hommus in 2007, they became the 3rd largest hummus manufacturer in the US.
“Jack Started making the salsa at Clubhouse. One day, Jim Hiller of Hiller Markets showed up, he tried the salsa, loved it and started carrying it at his 6-store grocery chain. That’s how it got started.”
“When I joined Jack in 2002, we did everything together. Jack and I were strategically in sync. For the first 5-years, I was in the plant daily. Then gradually, I handled deals and traveling, while Jack handled operations, which was getting the products made and to market.”
“Our absolute uncompromising commitment to high-quality helped create an almost legendary brand loyalty among customers. For instance, some analysts told us that we could save $213,000 per year by not hand-peeling the onions. We didn’t listen to them because we refused to compromise the integrity of our flavor profile.”
“Also, to this day, 75 tons of Garden Fresh salsa are made daily in 5-gallon buckets. Back in the old days, it took us 20 minutes to make 6 pints of salsa. Now, assembly lines make 6 pints every 9 seconds. That’s 1,500 pints of salsa every 10 minutes.”
Garden Fresh: Turning Points
“Bringing in a Creative Director to get the branding right was essential, as was the strategic pivot to become a full-service deli supplier. We bought a tortilla company, a hummus company, we did the Margaritaville deal, etc. We were on a roll.”
“Another huge turning point was the introduction of the High Pressure Processing (HPP) machines. HPP helped Garden Fresh become the world’s largest fresh salsa company.”
“Jack has always loved fresh, natural ingredients and hated preservatives like sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate. However, we had a big problem.”
“Garden Fresh had managed to get into Costco, which is an enormously difficult thing to do in and of itself, and within 18 months, we were the #1 salsa. Costco was our largest customer, they were buying $20 million dollars’ worth of product annually.”
“Problem was that our products were literally exploding on the selves at Costco. We had to make larger 48oz. Costco club format bottles of Garden Fresh salsa and we couldn’t keep the salsa fresh for a long period of time, so gases would build up and they would explode.”
“HPP changed everything. HPP machines apply 87,000 pounds of pressure to food, killing all bacteria, which makes the food last 5x’s longer. No preservatives are needed. HPP machines are developed by Avure in Columbus, Ohio and manufactured in Sweden.”
“The machines are not cheap. They’re $2 million dollars each. And they weigh 105,000 pounds each! You have to have at least a 6-inch thick concrete floor just to support them.”
“In order to get the machines, we had to secure an Industrial Revenue Bond. When I showed up to sign the documents, I found myself in an office, staring at a large conference table. On the table were 43 stacks of paper, each stack about 6-inches high. It was worth it because HPP’ing the salsa changed everything.”
Garden Fresh: Sold to Campbell’s for $231 Million Dollars
“It was not easy to sell Garden Fresh to Campbell’s because we had worked so hard building our company over the years. Myself, Jack, his wife Annette and their 5 kids worked there. Jack grew the company from nothing. We were very attached to Garden Fresh.”
“However, we felt we had taken the company as far as we could. Competing for shelf space with giants like Nestle and other Fortune 500 companies is wicked. For instance, recently, Nestle, the world’s largest food & drinks company, paid Starbucks $7.2 billion dollars to sell its coffee. These are monster companies with inconceivably vast resources.”
“Campbell’s secret internal name for the deal was ‘Project Diamond’. It took awhile to finalize the arrangement and close the deal but eventually we signed the 104-page purchase agreement and Campbell’s added Garden Fresh to their product portfolio.”
“In business, you try to create the best products you can and gain market share. You also have to know when to hold and when to fold and due to uncontrollable market forces, it was the right time for us to exit.”
“After the deal, I did consulting for Garden Fresh for 6 months. Jack still consults with them on occasion. Jack’s big focus now is his company Clean Planet Foods in Clinton Township. Jack and I remain great friends and we still talk at least 2-3 times per week.”
Fuel Leadership
“After Garden Fresh, I joined Fuel Leadership as CEO. Fuel is a video-centric digital media company and we’re bringing a fresh perspective to leadership development. We target millennial professions ages 18-34 and storytelling is our preferred method of communication.”
“How it works is we sit down with an individual for 45 minutes and film them as they tell us about their life and work. We distill the final interview down to 2 minutes. We’ve interviewed over 50 people so far, including AOL co-founder Steve Case and clothing designer John Varvatos.”
“We’re also working on Fuel U. We’re reinventing the university newsletter model to make it more relevant, interesting and easily digestible for busy people. Launching this Fall, four University of Michigan Ross business students will make an UM specific newsletter at Fuel.”
Huron Capital
Located in the beautiful art deco Guardian Building in Downtown Detroit, Huron Capital is a private equity company. They have a “buy-and-build” investment model and have raised over $1.7 billion dollars by investing in 130+ companies through 6 private equity funds.
“Huron has a diverse portfolio. I’m an Operating Partner, which means I don’t have a formal association. They buy companies and they send me food deals and I analyze the deals for them.”
“For example, in 2011, they bought Brooklyn-based Victoria Pasta Sauce and I joined the board. They fixed up the company and sold it in 2016.”
“Huron Capital is a class act, both personally and professionally. I met Jim Mahoney, one of their senior partners. He introduced me to the founding partners and that’s how I came onboard.”
Dave’s Final Thoughts
“Sometimes you have to be irrationally persistent to be successful in business.”
“95 out of 100 new businesses fail. So, by definition, starting a new business is not rational, since it only has a 5% chance of succeeding. If you believe in it, you must persist. If you can make it to the 10-Year Mark, you’re doing good.”
“Fresh salsa was an emerging market at the time and we had the best flavor profile by far. Garden Fresh went from $4mil to over $100mil in a decade.”
“I look for the holy grail of American capitalism: emerging markets that are not yet saturated. My advice to you is look for the holy grail and build that company with strategic layers that your competitors can’t match.”
“I’m also a huge fan of higher education. The most valuable thing I got out of MSU was my social development skills. Being immersed in a university environment took me out of my shy protective shell. During my grad school years at George Washington, they had the Harvard Case Study format, where they presented cases that we had to solve. It was there that I truly learned how to trust my strategic instincts.”
“During my summer in France, I came to enjoy European “stealth service” at restaurants, where they don’t interrupt you. The European approach to food is fundamentally different than ours. Americans are optimistic by nature, Europeans are more pessimistic because their countries are older and more experienced. They think tomorrow will be worse than today, so they live more in the moment than we do. Americans are gradually becoming more European though, especially millennials.”
“My wife and I love Chardonnay, good conversation and good food. We also love Michigan. The Traverse City area is especially beautiful.”
“Never thought in my lifetime that Detroit would be where it’s at right now. I’m absolutely thrilled. Detroit was in decline for 50 years, now it’s coming back strong. During my travels, I’ve really cultivated a deep appreciation for the Detroit ethos, people, beauty, low cost of living and all of the amazing resources we have here.”
“I have a passion for business. I love food. I am driven largely by the intellectual stimulation of trying to create value. I love the art of business. There is definitely an underappreciated art to good business practices.
“Part of me is achievement-oriented, I need to be busy and creating value, so I don’t know if I’ll ever fully retire.”
“Whatever you do, in both your personal and professional life, commit to a standard and never deviate from it. It’s better to have clearly defined values and stick to them, rather than compromise your own personal integrity.”
The raffle will run from Friday, August 10 to Thursday, August 16.
The winners will be announced Thursday, August 16th.
Wayne Kramer will be in Downtown Detroit on Saturday, August 18th @ the Motor City Muscle USA Festival. He will be in the Underground stage located beneath Hart Plaza from 6pm-7:30pm.
He may be able to give you the book there in-person.
Otherwise, it will be mailed to you.
We are raffling off 3 personalized autographed copies of Detroit rock music legend & founder of the MC5, WAYNE KRAMER’s new memoir ‘The Hard Stuff‘!
*3 winners will be selected at random. Enter now for your chance to win!*
*Special thank you to Book Beat & Street Corner Music for allowing us in your stores*
Wayne Kramer probably shouldn’t be alive right now.
A normal human would’ve folded up and exploded decades ago from a pulverizing combination of “Hard Stuff,” like hard music, hard drugs, hard living and hard lessons. Thankfully, however, Wayne is here with us, alive and well enough to tell the ongoing tale of his fascinating existence.
Wayne Kramer and his Detroit rock band the MC5 changed rock music by cranking the dial to totally immersive no-holds-barred high-intensity levels of DNA-mutating volume and they’re also widely credited with inadvertently creating what was later labeled as the genre of ‘punk music’.
While the band itself disintegrated in 1972 in a cyclone of heroin, revolutionary Sinclair politics, disenchantment and becoming alienated and disconnected from each other, the MC5’s music has withstood the brutal and purifying test of time. They came, they saw, they melted faces with blistering full-body knockout attack music and helped forge Detroit’s enduring sobriquet, Detroit Rock City.
It has been said that listening to the MC5 live was like having an out-of-body experience, like exorcising daemonic barnacles and freeing your soul, like a psychedelic journey to pre-birth regression, a glorious stripping away while being thrashed to the point where you suddenly Wake Up, Fully Emerged.
I’m sitting here right now with Brother Wayne Kramer in the back room at Book Beat bookstore.
Wayne is in town from Los Angeles and bookstore owner Cary Loren, formerly of Ann Arbor arthouse band Destroy All Monsters, has kindly given us a fun space to chat.
We’re discussing Wayne’s life and memoir ‘The Hard Stuff,’ which will be published on August 14th by Da Capo Press.
Later this year, Wayne is going on a 35-city tour with his band MC50 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of MC5’s Kick Out The Jams. Their tour will culminate in an October 27th show at the newly renovated Fillmore Detroit.
Wayne is also a prominent solo recording artist and has done countless collaborations with people like David Peel, Johnny Thunders, Don Was, etc.
“Parts of my life have been written about extensively, especially my time in the MC5. Less so my time in prison and my work with Jail Guitar Doors. Just wanted to have a record from my perspective, straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“I wanted to understand myself better and chronicle the realizations. To sort out the order that things happened in and review some of the stupendously terrible things I’ve done in my life. For years, my friends have prodded me to write a book but I could never figure out how to end it, since the story isn’t finished. The arrival of my son Francis, who is turning five soon, the whole life I’ve lived up to his arrival was one life, so now I can begin the other life. If I die tomorrow, I want my son to have a record of my life straight from me not vicariously from news articles.”
“I started writing the book in 2006. Started just casually jotting down thoughts and memories in a notebook. A lot of stuff was in the front of my thoughts and therefore easily accessible. Then I got about forty 3 x 5 cards and put them on a corkboard and created a chronology of events.”
“After a while I had the shaping of what looked like an actual book on my hands, so we engaged an agent and secured a publisher. I’m a musician. Telling stories is my business and lifelong passion and it’s always a pleasure. The book was completed in November 2017.”
MC5: The Motor City 5
Born April 30th, 1948, Wayne Kramer was the founder and guitarist of rock band The Motor City Five, which was later shortened to MC5 in honor of being more in tune with the Detroit auto industry.
Wayne started the band in 1963 at Lincoln Park High School in Lincoln Park, Michigan, a Downriver suburb of Detroit.
At the time, Wayne was the band leader of The Bounty Hunters. He met Fred Smith of The Vibratones and Fred soon merged his band with Wayne’s band into The Bounty Hunters. They played venues like The Crystal Bar on Michigan Ave & Central in Southwest Detroit until changing their name to The Motor City 5 in the Fall 1964.
The MC5 consisted of:
Wayne Kramer guitar, Rob Tyner vocals, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith guitar, Michael Davis bass, and Dennis ‘Machine Gun’ Thompson drums.
Wayne explains:
“It started off innocently enough with ‘Hey, any kids want to be in a band with me?’ Ultimately, we ended up with the MC5.”
“The MC5 started at Helen and Gregory avenues in Lincoln Park, Michigan. Tyner lived 4 blocks away, Dennis lived 10 blocks, Fred lived 10 blocks in another direction. My Mom’s house was the center for all of us and she kindly let us practice in the basement.”
“Rob Tyner and I could draw. Rob’s friend Gary Grimshaw could draw chrome, the finish on hot rod cars. So, Gary and Rob ending up designing a lot of our handbills and posters, especially the Grande Ballroom ones. Rob was indeed a gifted artist and cartoonist, not many people know that.”
“And yes, it’s true, Rob reinvented everything. He nicknamed Fred ‘Sonic’, shortened our name to the MC5, nicknamed Dennis ‘Machine Gun’, even renamed himself from Bob Derminer to Rob Tyner. He was a very creative man.”
“The MC5 used to play everywhere: school cafetoriums, dances, record hops, bars, clubs, outdoors, indoors, sideways, upside down, you name it, we were there. When you love to play music, it doesn’t matter where you play it. You just establish a good band and put your 10,000 hours in playing your asses off anywhere-anyway you can.”
“The MC5 played 400-500 performances over the lifespan of the band. I was 16-20 years old when all this happened, my formative years. At 19 or 20, you’re pretty crazy since your brain isn’t done growing. You’re basically insane until 30.”
“We all have powerful experiences and changes at that age and to be in the center of larger forces at that time like the youth culture movement, government oppression, phonetaps, the FBI building a file on us (yes, I have a copy of the file), was just overwhelming. I remember when I caught my federal coke case, the officer said to me, ‘Kramer, we got shit on you going back to the Sixties’.
“What set the MC5 apart from our contemporaries is we addressed the audiences concerns directly. Since we all shared the same concerns, we felt it our responsibility to help voice these concerns and voice them LOUDLY.”
“We were a rock band in a time when rock music came of age and we were a part of a community of young people in agreement to reject the established ideas of how life should be. The hypocrisy and corruption we saw was unbearable as a community. We were being forced to fight a war 30,000 miles away when there was no direct threat to the United States. It was illegal, it was immoral and America, which claimed to stand for equal rights, didn’t give equal rights to all citizens, only a chosen select few.”
“And even 50 years ago, we felt and knew that weed was less toxic than the government claimed. We were commenting directly on this stuff and we were the only band doing so heart to heart, face to face. You felt our music, boy, and you could never un-feel it. Hearing the MC5 live touched you deeply and forever.”
“In terms of people considering the MC5 and The Stooges as the “godfathers” of punk music, I can see where you can connect the dots. The Clash, The Damned, The Ramones, etc, when you asked all those early punk bands who they listened to and were inspired by, almost all of them say the MC5 and The Stooges. To me “punk” has always been around, we just didn’t use that expression. Beethoven, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, all those guys were punks in the sense that they had to reinvent music for their generations. It’s important to have your own sound and be original.”
“The MC5 was not frilly, not snobby, not elitist, it’s just in your face, grab you by the throat, rock and roll.”
“MC5 played opening night at the Grande, Detroit’s psychedelic ballroom, thanks to Russ Gibb. The Grande was a magical place.”
“We all lived together in the same house as a band. We lived in Detroit, then we moved to Ann Arbor to a place called the Hill Street House for a while, then we had a house in Hamburg, Michigan on Hall Road. It was not far from Hamburg Lake. Beautiful, remote spread in the middle of 10-acres of wooded land, just absolutely spectacular. We loved it. We were a bunch of maniac musicians. You could run around with no clothes on, shoot guns, smoke weed, do whatever you wanted to do, it was great.”
“Our bassist Mike Davis wrote a memoir about his life and MC5 and many stories in Mike’s book are consistent with mine, at least, the fundamental facts. I don’t blame Mike for some of the stuff that was written. I’m sure I was an absolute nightmare to be around. The bad behavior was rampant and eventually, the MC5’s shared creative vision had disintegrated into drugs. Heroin was all-pervasive in Detroit back then and we were young musicians, so everywhere we went, it was already there waiting for us, in our face, you couldn’t escape it.”
“Rob tried quitting the MC5 for 2-3 years. Every year, he’d make a declaration that he didn’t want to be in the band anymore, but he never left. Finally, he and Fred got into a fistfight, and he said he’d had enough. Our last show was New Year’s Eve 1972 at the Grande. I walked off stage mid-show and that was that. The end of an era.”
The MC5 Eat LSD with Timothy Leary at Tim’s House in California
“On March 23rd, 1969, we played a free concert in Provo Park. Timothy Leary was there, he liked our show and invited us back to his house in the Berkeley Hills.”
“He had all this liquid LSD that we poured into a big bottle of dark red wine and we drank LSD wine with him in front of a roaring fire in his living room, while his mother-in-law was there!”
“The band wanted to go out carousing. I wanted to stay with Leary and have the total LSD experience with the guru and then the funniest thing happened.”
“Machine Gun Thompson and I are sitting in front of the fire with Tim’s mother-in-law, Tim walks in with his wife Rosemary and announces “welp, we’re going to bed, you guys have a good night.” He walks away, Machine Gun and I look at each other and I’m thinking, ‘Whoaaaa. I’m tripping my brains out with Timothy Leary’s mother-in-law’. Then I say to Dennis, ‘Maybe we should go back to the hotel.’ Dennis agrees and he somehow drives us back to the hotel.”
Wayne’s Favorite Authors
“Dozens of favorites. I read a lot. They run the gamut: Philip Roth, Christopher Hitchens, Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Hemingway, Sam Harris, Luc Sante, etc. My son is going to be five soon and he’s reading some elemental stuff already. I told him that the whole world will open up to you through reading. Plus, you can travel in time through books.”
Wayne’s Parents
“The MC5 was formed during our teen years when we were young and trying to break out and establish our own identity beyond our parents, which is important.”
“I had a father that abandoned our family when I was little. I was an angry little boy who grew into an even angrier young man. I thought changing my name to “Wayne Kramer” was the perfect revenge, since he would never share in my glory.”
“Later, in my 40’s, I met my father. He was a community activist in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania and he was in the hospital. We built a relationship, I mean you can’t dial it back and recover what was lost to time, but I got to have a more mature perspective on this man whom I was biologically connected to.”
“He had been a U.S. Marine in the South Pacific during WWII. He came back profoundly damaged and treated what we now called “PTSD” with alcohol, which he said kept the daemons at a distance. It didn’t stop the endless horrors, but it helped create a cloudy buffer.”
“The hole in my development as a boy, not having a model of what manhood is, being left to deal with challenges, responsibilities, dangers without a father was very difficult.”
“My Mother did a great job as a single working mom. She’s my hero to this day. I also had 2 younger sisters. My Mom raised us three kids on her own. Single working mothers are the hardest working humans on planet earth.”
Wayne Helps Iggy & The Stooges Get Signed
“I was responsible for getting The Stooges a record contract with Elektra Records. Danny Fields asked me if I knew any other group like the MC5. I said ‘No Danny, there’s nobody like the MC5. But, you should see our brother band The Psychedelic Stooges.’”
“We loved Iggy and The Stooges, all of us hung out together, got high together, listened to the same free jazz music. Before then, Iggy was a drummer in a great blues band called The Prime Movers.”
“I actually tried recruiting him into the MC5 one time but he left for a brief stay in Chicago with The Prime Movers. Iggy and I are still great friends to this day and I’m proud of how successful he is.”
Wayne Gets Arrested During the Detroit Riots
“In July 1967, we were living on Warren and Forest in Detroit by Wayne State University and we had a telescope in our upstairs window. The Riots kicked off and the cops saw the telescope and thought we were snipers.”
“Next thing I know, my doors being busted down and there’s a U.S. Army tank pointing its canon at our house! It’s in the street, right outside our front door! The cops swarmed in, slammed us down and took us to 1300 Beaubien Street, the Detroit Police HQ. They eventually let us go but it was an experience that stuck with me.”
On Being Incarcerated in America
From 1975-77, Wayne Kramer did time at Lexington Federal Prison in Lexington, KY for selling cocaine. The experience had a profound and negative impact on him.
MC5 bassist Mike Davis, Stooges roadie Hiawatha Bailey, writer William S. Burroughs, actor Peter Lorre, musicians Red Rodney, Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, etc, all did drug time at Lexington.
“Going to prison is a traumatic experience. You are discovering for the first time what it means to not have liberty, to not be free, to be totally under the control of systems and people.”
“You never feel safe. You’re surrounded in very close quarters by dangerous people with mental health issues constantly. You have no power over your own life. The sort of helplessness and hopelessness you experience in prison is impossible to accurately communicate unless you yourself have experienced it directly.”
“The prison experience is embarrassing and shameful and I don’t know anyone whose come out better. Prison has never helped anyone, myself included. It’s a medieval concept that just lives on and on and on and on. 90% of inmates can be held accountable for breaking the social contract in their communities but imprisoning people runs against a sense of fairness, which really doesn’t exist in America.”
Jail Guitar Doors USA
In 1978, London punk band The Clash wrote a song about Wayne Kramer called ‘Jail Guitar Doors’. That song title served as inspiration for Wayne Kramer, his wife Margaret Kramer and his friend Billy Bragg in naming his non-profit Jail Guitar Doors USA in 2008.
“Jail Guitar Doors is a non-profit with a mission to help rehabilitate prison inmates by teaching them to express themselves positively through music.”
“Since my release, I’ve watched the prison population rise for over 40 years. There were 350,000 people in state and federal prisons combined back then. Today, in the United States, we have 2.3 million people in prisons.”
“This tragedy has deeply affected every single community in the country. Sending people to prison is not a deterrent. You come out worse, not better. With Jail Guitar Doors, we try to mitigate the damage by helping the individual rehab through music and change for the better.”
“Just think about it: 600,000 prisoners are released every year. Who do you want standing in line with you at the store? Someone bitter, defeated, revengeful or somebody who has hope and music?”
“Earlier today, we took some local musicians to the Ryan Reentry Center in Detroit to establish a songwriting workshop. Today we wore a song about freedom, we helped inmates there talk about childhood trauma and forgiveness. Doing the work itself is the reward.”
“I don’t ever expect to see true justice reform in my lifetime. It’s like turning the Titanic away from the iceberg. But we will continue doing what we can to help.”
Detroit to Los Angeles
“I’ve been in L.A. for 25 years, it suits my activities. I pay the rent by writing film and TV music. You have to go where your job skills are marketable.”
“Most of the year the climate is spectacular, but it’s been very hot lately. Great community in L.A., lot of friends there.”
“Jail Guitar Doors is based there. We’re on 10 prison yards in California and we have acoustic guitars in 120 prisons in America.”
“I visit Detroit often to see family and friends and play gigs and the city will always be in my heart forever.”
1963-Wayne Kramer forms The Bounty Hunters. Fred Smith merges his band The Vibratones with Wayne’s band.
1963-Gary Grimshaw moves to apartment building 633 Prentis St, Detroit. Michael Davis moves to the same building and Rob Tyner’s girlfriend lives across the hall from him. Mike meets Rob and gradually becomes the bassist for the MC5.
December 1963-The Bounty Hunters play The Crystal Bar (Michigan Ave & Central St, Detroit)
Fall 1964-The Bounty Hunters are re-named The Motor City 5
May 1965-Rob Tyner shortens the bands name to MC5
1966-MC5 move to the Warren Forest neighborhood in Detroit’s Cass Corridor near Wayne State University at apartment (659 W. Canfield)
September 1966-Plum Street (Detroit’s Haight-Ashbury psychedelic district) opens
October 7th, 1966-Russ Gibb opens the Grande Ballroom. MC5 plays opening night.
October 1966-LSD made illegal
November 20th, 1966-MC5 & Velvet Underground play ‘Carnaby Street Fun Festival’ @ Michigan State Fairgrounds, Detroit
1967-MC5 move to Detroit Artists Workshop building and live upstairs (1252 W. Forest) and The Lodge at Warren
1967-John Sinclair morphs Artists Workshop into Trans-Love Energy Collective
April 30, 1967-Trans Love produces Love-In concert on Belle Isle @ Remick Music Shell. MC5 plays for 6,000 people. The Outlaws motorcycle gang starts riot.
Summer 1967-The Stooges live at first Stooge house (1324 Forest Ct, Ann Arbor)
June 9th, 1967-MC5 blow main act Cream offstage at the Grande.
July 1967-Detroit Riots
August 1967-John Sinclair becomes manager of the MC5
Halloween 1967-The Psychedelic Stooges first show ever @ UofM Student Union
November 22nd, 1967-The Who play Southfield High School
November 24-26, 1967-The Fugs & MC5 play the Grande
January 4th, 1968-Russ Gibb finances the MC5 recordings of Looking At You and Borderline @ United Sound System studios (5840 2nd Ave, Detroit). Gary Grimshaw designs the cover. Jeep Holland’s A-Square label releases only 500 copies.
February 23rd, 1968-Jimi Hendrix, MC5 & Soft Machine play the Masonic in Detroit
March 3rd, 1968-The Stooges first play the Grande
April 11th, 1968-MC5’s first-ever show with The Stooges @ UofM Union Ballroom
May 1968-Trans-Love move from Detroit to Ann Arbor’s Hill Street House (1510 and 1520 Hill Street). MC5 join the commune.
July 1968-MC5 play free concert at the West Park bandshell in Ann Arbor
August 25th, 1968-MC5 play Lincoln Park, Chicago during riot
September 7th, 1968-JC Crawford first introduces the MC5
September 21st, 1968-Danny Fields sees MC5 live at the Grande
September 22nd, 1968-Danny Fields sees The Stooges @ the Union Ballroom, Ann Arbor
September 1968-Danny Fields gets Elektra Records to sign both bands: MC5 sign to Elektra for $20,000 and The Stooges sign for $5,000. Elektra is known as the label of The Doors.
October 30-31, 1968-MC5 record debut live album ‘Kick Out the Jams’ at the Grande Ballroom. The Stooges were the kicker act. Free show.
November 1st, 1968-John Sinclair creates White Panther Party based on idea from Pun Plamondon
November 1968-The Stooges move to The Fun House (2666 Packard rd, Ann Arbor). MC5 hang out here frequently. Nico lives here for a bit.
December 12-14, 1968-MC5 plays on bill with Velvet Underground for 3 days in Boston
December 23rd, 1968-MC5 opens for The Crazy World of Arthur Brown @ Olympia
January 4th, 1969-MC5’s Rob Tyner is on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine
February 1969-Detroit’s famous Hudson’s department store refuses to stock MC5’s albums. In response to this, MC5 runs a full-page ad entitled ‘Fuck Hudson’s’ in local magazines The Fifth Estate, Ann Arbor Argus, The Sun. As a result, Hudson’s department stores pulls all Elektra Records albums from their shelves.
March 1969-Creem Magazine debuts
March 1969-Elektra Records drops the MC5
May 1969-John Cale brings The Stooges to NYC to produce their first album
June 1969-MC5 sign to Atlantic Records and get a hefty $65,000 advance
October 18th, 1969-Led Zeppelin, MC5, Grand Funk play Olympia in Detroit
January 15th, 1970-MC5 release their 2nd album ‘Back in the USA’
May 1970-MC5 move from Hill Street House (Ann Arbor) out to Hamburg, Michigan
August 3rd, 1970-MC5 @ Mt. Clemens Pop Festival in Sportsman Park
August 7-9th, 1970-MC5 and The Stooges play Goose Lake Music Festival (200,000 people)
April 1971-White Panther Party dissolves
July 6th, 1971-MC5 release ‘High Time’ album
1972-Rob Tyner and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith get into a fistfight
December 31, 1972-MC5’s last show ever. Grande Ballroom. Wayne Kramer is so disgusted, he leaves mid-show.
MC5’s proposed 4th album, ‘Live on Saturn’ never comes to fruition.
1975-Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith starts Sonic’s Rendezvous Band
1975-77-Wayne Kramer does time at Lexington Federal Prison. Fellow inmates include Mike Davis and Hiawatha Bailey
2nd Annual Detroit Festival of Books (aka: Detroit Bookfest) photo by Debography
Huge THANK YOU to everyone for making Detroit Festival of Books (aka: Detroit Bookfest) fun and successful!
And to Eastern Market’s Market Manager Lonni Thomas. Without her love & support, this festival would not exist.
Official estimates say that we had approximately 10,000+ attendees throughout the day for the 2nd Annual Detroit Festival of Books at Eastern Market.
These photos are courtesy of Detroit photographer Debbie Maciolek and her company DEBOGRAPHY .
Debbie says:
“I had an absolute blast at Detroit Bookfest! Really enjoyed it, especially meeting the book dealers and authors and listening to all the great conversations. Thank you to all the people who interacted with me and helped me get great shots. It was a very diverse crowd of vendors and attendees and I loved seeing all the books, smiles, great food, records, hearing the funk music and I look forward to going next year!”
We are raffling off 3 autographed copies of City Tour Detroit founder & author, KARIN RISKO’s new book ‘A History Lover’s Guide to Detroit‘!
*3 winners will be selected at random. Enter now for your chance to win!*
https://detroitbookfest.com/enter-to-win/?prizeid=10
The raffle will run from Monday, November 12 to Sunday, November 18.
Detroit is one of the most fascinating cities in America and Karin Risko is a well-known and well-loved tour operator & author here in the city where she helps people explore cool things, unknown history and hidden gems. She is a former teacher who taught high school, middle school history and German language.
In 2009, Karin founded the immensely popular City Tour Detroit.
Based in Downtown Detroit, City Tour Detroit takes people on immersive walking, car and bus tours of Detroit. They offer several different tours. One of their most popular is the spooky Notorious 313 true crime & ghost tour.
In 2015, Karin and David Ingall co-wrote ‘Michigan Civil War Landmarks‘, a phenomenal tour guide for anyone interested in Civil War history.
Karin’s new book, ‘A History Lover’s Guide to Detroit‘ is another indispensable tour guide for one of America’s great cities and is packed with over 90 beautiful photos taken by Rodney Arroyo.
Both books were published via Arcadia Publishing subsidiary The History Press.
Karin Risko is a Detroit native. She graduated from Central Michigan University. She has been delighting thousands of people over the years with her must-experience tours, tales and books. Check it out!
You can also purchase an autographed copy of her book for $25.00 (includes s/h) from City Tour Detroit.
Homepage
https://citytourdetroit.com/
Buy A History Lover’s Guide to Detroit
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467135672
Buy Michigan Civil War Landmarks guide book
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9781626199408/Michigan-Civil-War-Landmarks
City Tour Detroit facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/citytourdetroit/?ref=br_rs
The History Press facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/HistoryPress/
We are raffling off 3 autographed copies of City Tour Detroit founder & author, KARIN RISKO’s new book ‘A History Lover’s Guide to Detroit‘!
*3 winners will be selected at random. Enter now for your chance to win!*
https://detroitbookfest.com/enter-to-win/?prizeid=10
The raffle will run from Monday, November 12 to Sunday, November 18. 
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