Latest / Kvetch & Release / Michigan Central Station REBORN

Transcript

Michigan Central Station REBORN · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  You're listening to Live and Local with guest host John Leckey on AM eight hundred.
• 0:12
  If I played a couple of songs or that that we're written a few
• 0:14
  blocks away from right here. It's an oasis in the middle of a city,
• 0:27
  man, and it is a metaphor for us all man. It's hard
• 0:29
  time right now. You know. Six years ago we gathered here and we
• 0:33
  dreamt of what was possible. We dared to dream that this station, which
• 0:39
  had become a symbol of a broken city, could once again shine as the
• 0:44
  symbol of the motor city. John Didkey here on AM eight hundred CKLW.
• 1:22
  Those are some of the sounds of an event that was one hundred and eleven
• 1:26
  years in the making, following a six year renovation nearly one billion dollars US
• 1:37
  to renovate the Michigan Central Station that was the kickoff event. It was huge,
• 1:46
  produced by eminem who performed Diana Ross, Jack White. Too many people
• 1:53
  to list, quite frankly, we want to know all about what it was
• 1:57
  like on the ground at the event and such a historic moment in the continual
• 2:04
  book of the rebirth of Detroit. Joining me right now is someone who was
• 2:08
  at that event well known here on AM eight hundred ckl W. A local
• 2:15
  podcast host of the Go Tell Someone podcast, Ryan Richardson joins me, right
• 2:22
  now, Ryan, how you doing. I'm doing great. I still can't
• 2:24
  believe I was there. It was crazy, what a crazy night, absolutely
• 2:30
  unbelievable. How does one score tickets to that? Well, you know,
• 2:34
  we were planning to watch it on TV like everybody else. There was a
• 2:38
  broadcast that was happening. It was streaming on Peacock, but locally you could
• 2:44
  see it on Channel four. So we were just going to watch it at
• 2:46
  home. And we got a call like Wednesday afternoon from our good friend,
• 2:51
  doctor Rena Passick, and she said, hey, do you want tickets to
• 2:54
  the show? I didn't even have to ask what show was. I was
• 2:57
  like, yeah, yes. I couldn't say yes best enough. It's like
• 3:00
  Ghostbusters and they say are you when they ask are you a god? You
• 3:04
  say yes? The same thing. It was like, the answer was that
• 3:07
  you jump out that opportunity. Yeah, there was only one concert that was
• 3:12
  on my radar was at this at the rebirth of the Michigan Central Station,
• 3:19
  and so yes, we were so grateful that she thought of us. Doctor
• 3:22
  ren I thought of us and asked us if we wanted a pair of tickets
• 3:24
  to My wife and I were able to go to the show, and we
• 3:28
  kind of made a day of it and it got over early, so because
• 3:30
  we knew there was going to be thousands of people and had just went to
• 3:37
  some really classic Detroit spots, went to third Man Records to made it a
• 3:43
  day, went to Delly Pumpkin for lunch, went to Slows right across the
• 3:46
  streets from the station. I had some barbecue and then went to the show
• 3:51
  and it was it was everything you just said. It was unbelievable, just
• 3:54
  you know. Diana Ross came out and opened the show. My Goodness,
• 3:59
  Jack White from the White Stripes, the Clark Sisters, every every genre that
• 4:04
  Detroit has influenced was represented on this night, from gospel to techno to hip
• 4:12
  hop to rock. Like it was just just the craziest thing. Maussa Afridge
• 4:15
  was there. Did it was part of the tribute with Fantasia and Jelly Roll
• 4:20
  Uh to Bob Seger, you know Detroit Detroit legend, Bob Seeger, Barry
• 4:27
  Sanders from the Lions, Sam Richardson from Detroit's and the show zep Jalen Rose,
• 4:33
  Taylor Lautner from Twilight, Like it was just it was just unbelievable,
• 4:38
  star star studded event. Absolutely. We we were chatting a little bit about
• 4:43
  it when we were setting up this interview. You had said to me that
• 4:46
  there's no more tangible symbol of Detroit's recovery than that building. What do you
• 4:50
  mean, and why, Well, it's it's for years, Like I mean,
• 4:55
  it's it's always been a symbol as long as I remember, since the
• 4:59
  early nineties of Detroit decay. Like it's really it's just been this huge,
• 5:04
  just monolith that is. I remember going to a poetry slam on Michigan Avenue
• 5:11
  right across from where everything was happening, and this was in the early two
• 5:14
  thousand and it was that whole area was just desolate, like it was.
• 5:16
  It was a scary, scary area and there was nothing there. And I
• 5:20
  remember that building always frightened me because it was just like, you know,
• 5:25
  I'd never gotten that close and it was this was crazy. But I was
• 5:28
  like ten o'clock at night, I was like, I'm gonna go walk by
• 5:30
  there. I'm gonna see if I can. I want to scare myself.
• 5:32
  I really want like it was like there was probably nobody around. I just
• 5:36
  decided to go for a walk around this really scary looking building and to be
• 5:42
  on the basic on the same spot where I was that many years ago,
• 5:45
  and have twenty thousand people around me, you know, listening to some of
• 5:48
  the best music that Detroit has produced. You know, I enjoying some great
• 5:53
  food and and just being with with people. It was, it was,
• 5:57
  it was unbelievable that the transformation is insane. And you know, the governor
• 6:01
  was there, Governor Whittamer was there. The mayor of Detroit, Bill Ford,
• 6:05
  who really I mean I got to give some credit to or got to
• 6:09
  give a lot of credit to Ford for that. I guess the story was
• 6:13
  he would look at the building and he would think, this isn't this isn't
• 6:15
  the way it's supposed to be, Like this isn't you know this this this
• 6:18
  has to change because again it's such a big building and it was for so
• 6:24
  long just such a scary, frightening place, and rather than tearing it down,
• 6:30
  which a lot of cities would have done, they decided to build it
• 6:32
  back up. Well, you know, I remember myself probably about eight to
• 6:38
  ten years ago heading towards that area for the first time and doing some reporting
• 6:42
  at to James Distillery, which is right there. Oh yeah, a bit
• 6:45
  more bit more than just reporting, I suppose while I was there, but
• 6:48
  also again heading the slows and being in that area. But I remember very
• 6:51
  clearly the bartenders and the employees being like, you're going to want to stick
• 6:57
  to like where we are right now, like right if you're going to across
• 7:00
  the street, like try to do it pretty quickly as well, like you
• 7:01
  don't want to be lingering around too much outside and certainly don't go wandering away
• 7:05
  too far. Eight years later, just unbelievable. Yeah, it's it's when
• 7:12
  slow everyone Slow's opened up there. It was like there's nothing else here,
• 7:15
  you know, like there was like now there's there's there's a lot more restaurants.
• 7:19
  It's like, I don't know what they knew, but that the timing
• 7:23
  was really good because you know, they got in there years ago, and
• 7:26
  now the whole area is, you know, including the station that's going to
• 7:30
  be a hub for technology and for all kinds of things is right across the
• 7:33
  street from them. Speaking about right across the street, you said that you
• 7:38
  heard people were watching the light show from windsor Yeah. Yeah, I got
• 7:41
  a messages from people saying, what's going on over there, like it was
• 7:44
  watching alive because they lit up the whole building on both sides, so the
• 7:48
  light show, they had their fireworks, there was a light show, like
• 7:51
  it was like this, you know, this this area that had been just
• 7:55
  dead was brought back to life. And it was really emotional because it's like
• 7:59
  you really feeling that that was you know, of all the of all the
• 8:03
  different symbols there are in Detroit, like that really was one that you know,
• 8:09
  it had a different representation, uh, you know, like it's it
• 8:13
  was it felt like it was a once in a lifetime event, which is
• 8:16
  why we automatically said yes. But I kind of anticipate they're going to do
• 8:18
  more stuff like this. Well at a billion dollars, I would hope.
• 8:22
  So yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean they started doing the
• 8:26
  tours of the building yesterday and a friend went through and said it was on
• 8:31
  just beautiful inside and they've they've taken they said they have about three thousand workers,
• 8:37
  uh, over the last six years that really painstakingly rebuilt the building to
• 8:43
  where it was to try to restore it to where it was, and I
• 8:46
  know that that actual building has been in like the Transformers movie. Like it's
• 8:50
  like there's so many there's so many films that were made in the last several
• 8:54
  years that was like we need a really you know, desolate looking dystopian place,
• 8:58
  and they would like Pontiac or they would go to downtown Detroit because you
• 9:01
  didn't have to really do anything. The damage had been done. And so
• 9:07
  yeah, the big scene where there's a chase at the end of the first
• 9:13
  Transformers movie with Shila Bough that it was all shot kind of in that in
• 9:18
  that space and to see to see where it is now is pretty crazy,
• 9:22
  and yeah, it was. I Mean the other thing I really noticed too,
• 9:26
  is that most of the performers that were from Detroit the other night really
• 9:30
  were people like Jack White, Eminem Diana Ross. They all grew up within
• 9:35
  you know, you know, we're small distance from the station, but they
• 9:39
  all came from nothing. They all came from They're not they're not you know,
• 9:41
  didn't come from rich families or anything like that. They they really started
• 9:45
  from from zero. And you look at Jack White, who has built up
• 9:48
  this whole empire with a Vinyl Pressing Plant Detroit and Diana Ross just being just
• 9:54
  being Diana Ross. It's also has to be it's really Diana Ross. That's
• 9:56
  enough for sure, and judaism. We say Dianu and it's that. It's
• 10:03
  this. It is enough, is what it means. You also put out
• 10:07
  a post yesterday on social media that I just want to read in full.
• 10:09
  Dear two thousand and one, Ryan, one day you'll witness the executive chair
• 10:15
  of Ford Motor Company introducing Marshall Mathers as one of Detroit's greatest ambassadors. No,
• 10:22
  really, Ryan, it's true. I mean, I mean you go
• 10:28
  back in time, right, you go back twenty years. Marshall Mathers for
• 10:31
  years was like the symbol of like, you know, scared parents, you
• 10:37
  know, like like this this is why you know what, this is what
• 10:41
  his labels on music h and he took full advantage of It's funny you go
• 10:45
  back and watch his videos now and you think of all the all the things
• 10:48
  that he covered. It's a lot of that stuff. It's just it's just
• 10:52
  bizarre to kind of watch the people he called out on stuff. But but
• 10:56
  yeah, in the early two thousands, he was like the devil like you
• 11:00
  know what I'm saying, Like people just people would not have said, you
• 11:03
  know, Marshall Baders is a great influencer, a great you know, representative
• 11:07
  of Detroit because he you know, it's just his approach. But it's just
• 11:11
  when you look at his whole career, he's always been about supporting Detroit.
• 11:16
  He's always been about, you know, telling people where he's from. And
• 11:20
  uh, and he wasn't. He was. He was the most unsurprising surprise
• 11:24
  about the night because we knew he produced the event, so you you kind
• 11:28
  of assumed he was going to be there, but I tell you, when
• 11:30
  they announced him at the end, you still were surprised. He was like,
• 11:33
  oh my gosh, there he is. Yeah. He also just dropped
• 11:37
  new music, so it made perfect sense as well. Yeah, the timing
• 11:41
  of it couldn't probably could have been better to for him for sure. I
• 11:43
  mean, actually Slim Shady came back out of out of retirement, uh with
• 11:48
  this, with this new single. So yeah, yeah, I have a
• 11:50
  good friend that's that's his engineer and he's he was one of those guys who
• 11:56
  worked at Guitar Center and then he just kind of went up through the ranks
• 12:00
  and continues to work with em A m in the studio. So how very
• 12:03
  cool stuff, you know, Ryan, proving that if you get the phone
• 12:07
  call and someone offers tickets, you say yes, no matter what. I'm
• 12:11
  glad that you didn't end up having to go to PoCA PoCA PoCA, and
• 12:13
  that it was actually this show. But hey, you know, the poke
• 12:16
  one probably would have been going to. Yeah, that's probably I'm sure it
• 12:20
  would have been fine. There were a lot of watch parties too, so
• 12:22
  h and the people said they sat at home, you know, really enjoyed
• 12:26
  it. So it was all eyes of the world were on Detroit, like
• 12:28
  every major news outlet was there hovering this event. And that doesn't happen very
• 12:33
  often. You know. Usually when it when that happens, it's you know,
• 12:37
  not for great things. Something bad happened that. Yeah, thankfully,
• 12:41
  this is a great news story. And I think that you, me and
• 12:45
  Dan McDonald have to go across and do a tour of the place. Absolutely.
• 12:48
  Thank you for that. Well let's do that, Ryan. Thank you
• 12:50
  for waking up early and joining me here on Live and Local to talk about
• 12:54
  the restoration, the renovation, and the rebirth of Michigan Central. I appreciate
• 12:58
  your perspective and letting us know what you saw. Thanks for thanks for let
• 13:03
  me talk about it. Absolutely all right. Thank you. Ryan Richardson is
• 13:07
  the host of the Go Tell Someone podcast. That rebirth of Michigan Central has
• 13:13
  happened. Tours are open. You can check rebroadcasts of that concert as well.