Downtown Whitehall - Preserving the Playhouse

Preserving the Playhouse

April 12, 2007
Bill Iddings
Chronicle Staff Writer

Celtic rock band pleased to perform benefit for historic Whitehall theater

Rich Houtteman sounds convinced that the Celtic rock music of Fonn Mor couldn’t have been a better fit than the Howmet Playhouse.

“Howmet is a treasure,” said Houtteman, the local promoter who has again booked the band into the historic Whitehall playhouse. “It’s the right kind of facility to have a show like that. “The sound is tremendous in there. And I just love the theater.”

Fonn Mor’s concert Saturday at Howmet is a benefit to help pay the 400 seat playhouse’s operational expenses.

After 90 years, Howmet closed last August. Its then owner, Blue Lake Fine Art Camp, pulled the plug after years of the playhouse losing money during its annual summer theater seasons.

The city of Whitehall acquired the playhouse and hired a professional manager, Muskegon resident Tom Harryman, to run it.

Volunteer supporters then set about raising money to sustain the venture. The first fundraiser was March 11: a concert by Dennis Strouthmatt & L’Esprit Creole at the Scales Fish House & Steak on the shore of White Lake.

Fonn Mor will be the first performance at the playhouse itself, marking its reopening as a viable venue. A full 2007 summer theater season is being planned for Howmet, with six productions running from July 5 through Aug 25. That’s not only good for the Howmet Playhouse, Houtteman said; it’s good for the White lake area.

“I’m really excited that the city took that over,” said Houtteman, a 1991 graduate of Whitehall High School. “I just think it’s really important to keep the marquee lit up, and keep shows in there. It’s good for tourism and it’s good for economic development.”

Fonn Mor has played Howmet several times before, Curt Tramel, the band’s founder, liked what he saw, and especially what people heard.

“It’s a great play to play,” Tramel said. “It has that old’ time charm that I would take over a newly constructed theater any day. I really like playing in those old, turn-of-the-century theaters. They were acoustically designed for music or talk to be played from the stage and be heard.

“I think it’s very important to keep a venues like (Howmet) open and going, so people have a place to go to enjoy live music. There aren’t a lot of places, especially up around there.”

During the past few years, Houtteman also has booked the playhouse with such acts as Junior Balentine & The All-Stars, and the Corn Sisters, a duo that featured Neko Case just before her star ascended.

Houtteman also has brought such artists as Shemekia Copeland and Shelby Lynne into nearby Coopersville.

“I like getting people of the way up instead of on the way down,” he said.

Fonn Mor is well known to West Michigan audiences, primarily through the quintet’s appearances in Muskegon at the annual Michigan Irish Music Festival.

Band Members are Carolyn Koebel on percussion, drum-set, vibraphone, hammered dulcimer, bodhran and hand drums; Tramel on quitar, banjo, cittern and vocals; Rick Stubbs on base; Rick Willey on fiddle, mandolin and vocals; and Katie Mcilwee on flute, button box accordion and vocals.

Houtteman intends to book other acts into Howmet, among them Junior Valentine, and the rising Greensky Blue-Grass, a West Michigan-based band making a name for itself around the nation. That bodes well for the Howmet Playhouse, said Houtteman.

“The interest is there,” he said. “The community has shown that they want to keep it alive. It’s just doable.”

That and, “I just like to hear the music…There are a lot of great state and regional acts around, and even national; we might be able to build into that.”

What: Fonn Mor in concert
When: 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 14
Where: The Howmet Playhouse, 304 S. Mears, Whitehall
Tickets: $10 at Whitehall City Hall, White Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague, and at the door,