The sign alerts drivers that the pavement is ending. Washtenaw County’s dirt road leading to Mr. B’s house outside Ann Arbor was unexpectedly bumpy, a reflection of the musician’s life during the past year.
Mr. B is Mark Braun, a well-known and beloved Michigan musician whose decisions to take the road less traveled have earned him celebrity status in Southeast Michigan.
“I don’t read or write music, and I never studied the piano formally at all,” he said. Yet he performs and composes blues and boogie-woogie music at the region’s top venues and around the world. “Things come to me with some regularity. I just slowly begin to flush them out, based on what appeals to me and what seems interesting and what just feels natural to me. Usually it takes me several months, not always.”
He and his wife, Wendy, live in a farmhouse. She is his biggest fan. She said, “I love to hear him play,” and regularly attends his performances. Concert goers tap their toes and dance to Mr. B’s distinctive style that has roots 100 years ago with a resurgence in the 1940s. Mr. B performs at Detroit’s Steinway Piano Gallery, the annual Ann Arbor Art Fair and on city street corners. He has made appearances in Europe, Mexico and South America. He once was an opening act for Willie Nelson.
Steinway Piano Gallery’s Cliff Monear has known Mr. B for 35 years. A gifted pianist in his own right, Monear has played concerts with Mr. B. “Mark is a natural, gifted cat. He’s natural, intuitive musician who plays from the heart. A lot of piano players play a prepared set. It’s pristine. Mark…doesn’t script or plan every note in advance and that gives it a natural quality.”
Braun’s beginnings in music
Young Braun got his start traveling from his hometown of Flint to hear Boogie Woogie Red play at Ann Arbor’s Blind Pig Café in the 1970s.
“I stopped going to high school and in my junior year, I took the whole year off and hitchhiked around the whole United States when I was only 17 years old, all on my own. I’ve always been inquisitive, curious, kind of a searcher.”
He was determined to learn to play the music he loved. He would show up, sometimes without invitation, to the homes of pioneers of the genre including Brother Montgomery, Sunnyland Slim and Blind John Davis. “I’ve been fortunate in my life to be around and get to play with just some of the most talented people who ever lived. So, I know my place.”
Music on the move
Mr. B’s music is on the move. Literally. “It’s a tricycle, 11 feet long and it’s human powered. It has two half bikes on the back.” On a platform attached to the rear of the machine is a 640-pound piano. He peddles the piano bike around Ann Arbor during warmer months for street corner concerts. People are surprised and amused at the site of a man peddling along with a piano on the back. “For 46 years in a row, I’ve been playing on the street for tips, one of the few acoustic piano players playing street music. I love doing that. This town has really embraced me my whole life and been very, very good to me in a number of different ways.”
The piano bike traveled 3,400 miles including the length of the Mississippi River. The goal was to raise and donate money for students to participate in art and athletics. More recently, the piano was on board a ship that weighed 18 tons and sailed from the Straights of Mackinac-to-Mackinac Island. It resulted in the successful raising and distribution of $100,000 to a Flint youth group.
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Braun has had two knee surgeries, hip replacements and three hand surgeries. “I asked a lot of my body over my lifetime and I’m kind of paying the water bill now for it.” But he’s not finished yet. “We’re discussing a possibility of a big event that could occur in Ann Arbor for charity.”
Before making more boogie-woogie magic, he must heal. Mark just doesn’t play piano. He builds furniture with Wendy. “In February, I had a woodworking accident in my shop…and it was pretty serious.” Surgery followed on both hands for carpal tunnel syndrome, and he continues recuperating. “Sometimes I have some dark moments. And then other times, really hopeful ones…expecting to feel great again at some point in my life with my hands. I’ve just got to go through this fire to heal, take my time and think positive.”
“I like life here in the Midwest. I like being near Detroit.”
Even when the road seems a little bumpy at times.
