Chasing History: Chuck Mitchell and Mitch Ryder

Caryn Rose

29 Sep 2025 — 12 min read

When I was in my late teens/early 20s, one of the worst pieces of advice I ever got from “older” folks -- not my parents or that generation, but people maybe 5-10 years older -- was to not bother going to see older artists. This was the late 70s/early 80s, and what they meant by “older” mostly meant 50s/60s era musicians. Talking with other people my age over the years, the common factor seemed to be people who got a chance to see Elvis Presley on his final tours and they found it to be upsetting and depressing -- but they still got to spend time in the same physical space as fucking ELVIS.

Looking back at it now, I think the problem was that people would go to see these shows thinking that they’d get to see the artist in their prime and when they didn’t meet that expectation because it was not that era, they were bummed and so the solution was simple: don’t go. You can’t be disappointed if you don’t see them. You can just maintain whatever fantasy you have in your mind about what it would have been like to see Sam & Dave in the 60s at the Satellite Lounge.

This was dumb. Oh my god, it was so fucking stupid and short-sighted. Yes, I was young and not rich, which meant that I didn’t have endless cash to go see concerts, and you had to make hard choices even among the contemporary artists you loved. But I could have seen an awful lot of people that I deeply cared about only 10-15 years past their heyday and I didn’t because I thought it was the right thing to do. I’m not going to list everyone I didn’t get to see but could have because it will make me severely depressed.

A few years ago, I made it a point that I would literally go see any oldies artist that I cared about, so I got on the Megabus to go to Philly and finally saw Diana Ross; went to that janky shed on the boardwalk in Coney Island to see Mary Wells; and gratefully, you can still easily see Darlene Love (and if you haven’t, GO SOON). And this is why I got in my car Saturday night and drove an hour west in order to see Chuck Mitchell at a coffee house held in a barn, sponsored by a local Methodist church. (I wrote about this initially on Instagram.)

Chuck Mitchell is Joni Mitchell’s first husband. Chuck lived in Detroit and got his start here, playing a local coffee house circuit which no longer exists. I’d heard that he still came back once a year and played, and that the front rows were still full of admiring female followers. (I'd seen this particular phenomenon the one and only time I saw Chuck Berry play and while I found that fascinating – this particular group of women definitely worked the oldies circuit, if you get my drift, and I was surprised at how much I was appalled by their enthusiasm in this particular case.) So I tried to keep an eye out for Chuck Mitchell, hadn't seen it happen, and this particular event only came on my radar because I went on Eventbrite to buy a ticket for Mitch Ryder (more on this below). Sometimes the algorithm works in your favor.

The venue hosting Chuck was halfway between Chelsea and Jackson, not far off of I-94. There was a bright yellow sign out front reading LIVE MUSIC: 7:30 and I parked the car in a field guarded by two barn cats. The “barn” is a space still under construction, smelling of fresh lumber. But it was clean and spacious and the chairs were comfortable. There were about 15 people there in a room that was set up for 50 and could have held more, should demand require it. There were baskets of fresh popcorn and cookies as well as soft drinks available.

They sell tickets via Eventbrite in order to accommodate people who want to pay by credit card; otherwise, you can just pay cash at the door, suggested admission $15. The website for the shows kindly notes, “Times are tough — money is tight. Music brings comfort and joy. If your budget prevents you from paying admission, please don’t stay away!”

The church connection made me worry there would be too much Jesus – the website noted that most of the artists who perform at the coffee house also play a couple of songs during church services – and I was already taking a bit of a risk heading to this part of the state from a political perspective, but I didn’t need to worry about either. The attendees were locals, some of whom I’d later gather sung in the church choir (because they talked about it at the interval, and also from the various harmonies offered later). There was another gentleman who’d driven from Detroit with his son, who was probably the closest to my age besides the sound guy.

The show began at 7:33 – the woman minding the door noted that they liked to give people a few minutes in case they were running late. Chuck walked onstage carrying a massive 12-string guitar he’d later note was from 1968. I couldn’t reliably find any source that confirms his age, but given that Joni is 81, it’s probably safe to assume he’s in that general vicinity. Mentally, he’s still all there, even if he forgot lyrics here and there; he could make his life easier by putting some lyric sheets together but I got the sense he’d never do that. He can absolutely still play, and there were definite vestiges of proficiency and command of the instrument.

The dude is a charmer. He’s charismatic and personable; he made eye contact with every single person in that room, repeatedly, and was thrilled that the sound guy had a wireless mic for his guitar so he could walk into and around the audience, which he took advantage of multiple times, small crowd or not. He was handsome as a young man and he’s still handsome now. If you don’t know the history, here’s the outline: Chuck ran into Joni on the folk circuit in Canada, and knowing a good thing when he saw it, suggested that he could help her get work on the folk circuit in the States. She had just had her daughter, and was trying to hustle enough work to survive. They married quickly -- it was 1966 -- and it wasn’t long after they tied the knot -- and the two settled into an apartment in a building that still sits on Cass Corridor here in Detroit -- that he made it clear to her that he was not interested in raising another man’s child. She left the marriage as soon as it was viable for her to do so.

Quoting from Ann Powers’ great book: “Chuck stuck to his repertoire of Brechtian show tunes and easy-listening folk.” Guess what? He is still sticking to that. He had a career as a character actor, doing one-man shows and regional theater, and there’s a lot of Sandburg quoted throughout the night. He talked a lot about irony, about Lincoln, and had a fair amount of left-leaning political thoughts that got introduced throughout the evening.

There were two sets, one with the 12-string and one with a six-string. The material was middle-of-the-road old folky stuff, the kind where you can pick up the chorus the first time it comes around and sing it the next time through: Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Guy Clark’s “Home Grown Tomatoes,” Ewan MacColl, among others.

That’s the part I enjoyed the most; I’ll take the unabashed earnestness of sing-a-long folk music over stomp-clap faux authenticity any day of the week. And any week of any year I’ll be glad to sit in a room and sing “This Land is Your Land,” Chuck inviting audience members to offer their own favorite verses. He doesn’t talk about her at all, but he does end the set with a decent version of Joni’s “The Circle Game,” something the church choir members in the back row happily offered harmonies on.

I went because I wanted to try to see what she saw in him, and to try to imagine what the two of them might have been like together. I think he greatly underestimated her talent and abilities; he wanted a straight woman to make his show better, and there was no way Joni Anderson was going to ever settle for being half of something. I didn’t stay after the show to chat (or more accurately, to eavesdrop on the audience members chatting with him) because it wasn’t a big enough crowd for that to have been productive without tipping my own hand as to why I was there. But it was absolutely worth the time and the drive to glimpse a bit of history, and I walked out to a gorgeous bright crescent moon hanging over the fields.

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Sunday afternoon, I had the privilege of being able to walk down the road to see none other than Mitch Ryder play a show at a nearby bar. It was bright, sunny and clear, and he was playing the outdoor stage. The opening act was a band of teenagers playing the likes of Nirvana and Weezer covers; their name is Spill and they acquitted themselves very well. There was a decent sized crowd for a 3pm show at the beginning of football season.

The band accompanying Mitch was called Righteous DeLuxx, with an added keyboard player. It won’t be a massive revelation to anyone reading this, but the what absolutely makes or breaks these kinds of shows with older legacy artists is the strength of the band behind them. I realize there is no money to be had these days playing local bar shows on a Sunday afternoon especially, but was pleased that these guys not only didn’t suck, but were in fact quite good. Their drummer was outstanding. They had a bonus keyboard player join them as well as a third guitarist that had worked with Mitch previously.

The other mistake they didn’t make was playing like the audience was there to see them, or cared about seeing them. They were up there to play with Mitch Ryder and they were happy about it. No one was showboating, no one was turning up their amp to overpower the vocals or anyone else on that stage. (This is not always a guarantee.) They were enthusiastic and respectful and are probably a ton of fun on a Saturday night. Cover bands are important!

It was particularly fitting that I was seeing Mitch Ryder the same week that I wrote about Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band debuting the Detroit Medley 50 years ago in Ann Arbor. Like, absolutely Mitch Ryder was a blue-eyed soul king back in the day, no question about it. But the fact that that he was responsible for one of the defining numbers of the E Street Band in the late 70s/early 80s is not trivial in my personal timeline. And he is a Detroit musical hero!

Mitch still has star power, despite needing help to get on and off the stage and having to play the set sitting on a bar stool. He’s 80! When he walked into the show area while the backing band were playing some warm-up tunes, he was immediately mobbed by a crowd wanting a photograph or a handshake or signatures on carefully-packaged record albums.

People got there early enough to claim the picnic benches in front of the stage, and I delighted in watching older women greeting each other with warmth and affection, scooting over to make room for one more. I sat there making up stories in my head about what these women must have been like at shows in the 60s and 70s. For every pair of sensible shoes, there were a pair of platform sandals; for every comfortable outfit there were plenty of cold-shoulder tops, flowing black dresses or other obvious going-out items of clothing. I hope I am going to be like that in 20 years. I wished I had gotten there early enough to sit close enough to eavesdrop. I am sure they have stories.

He explained that while he would be playing some of the songs that made him famous, they would not be doing a Detroit Wheels, hard-driving kind of show. But he still did the songs, just in their original formats. So we got a bluesy version of “CC Ryder” and the original rendition of “Devil With the Blue Dress.” And there was still power and presence and a connection to the material; he was still interpreting them as Mitch Ryder, even if he wasn’t screaming it into a microphone. As an audience member, what you think in these moments is a variation on, “Holy crap, I’m hearing Mitch fucking Ryder sing ‘Devil With The Blue Dress.’” And you are. It always feels like you’re plugging into or finally completing some kind of closed circuit. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to enter that continuum, to connect to that energy, to be in the same space and time.

Mitch also sang a couple of originals, including one called “Ain’t Nobody White Can Sing the Blues,” as well as covers of “From a Buick 6,” “When You Were Mine,” and a version of “Try A Little Tenderness” backed by keyboards only. That is an ambitious grouping of musical performances for anybody! For the former, there had clearly been a previously-rehearsed adaptation of the tune that the musicians were having trouble coming together on – one of the guitarists laughed it off by explaining, “This is jazz.” Mitch explained that he’d been lucky enough to be invited to the recording session for Highway 61 Revisited and that he considered Bob to be a “a singer’s singer. He was a delight.” His Prince cover charted, and you know what? Not many people can (or should) even try to sing Otis Redding, much less at 80 years old.

He’s going back to Europe this winter to tour and claims he’ll be back out Stateside this spring. You should go. You should always go.

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Rounding up other pieces I've written since the last time I did this: