‘Ann Arbor Happy Hour’ proves seniors aren’t too old to boogie

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Every Friday night from September to May, at an off-campus nightclub in this thriving college town, a group of die-hard music fans gathers to dance to some of the most devoted live bands in southeast Michigan. There are women in skintight red dresses, long-haired men sucking down bottles of beer and couples flirting in the alcove outside the bathrooms.

In fact, just one thing distinguishes the crowd from nearly any other rock ’n’ roll show in a small city in America: Almost everyone is older than 65.

OK, two things: The show always starts at 6:30 p.m. and ends at 9 p.m., in time to get to bed at a reasonable hour.

The party’s official name is “Ann Arbor Happy Hour at Live,” but many people call it “Geezer Happy Hour,” “Geezer Dance Party” or just “Geezers.” It’s organized by Randy Tessier, a 72-year-old University of Michigan lecturer and writing instructor who has played in rock and jazz bands since he moved to the city in 1972, when it was a patchouli-scented center of American counterculture.

From his windowless office in Angell Hall, festooned with posters of Karl Marx, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, Tessier books bands and runs the group’s 2,700-strong Facebook community page.

“I call us the silver tsunami,” Tessier said. “There’s a lot of us, and we still want to rock.”

“Geezer Happy Hour” is the latest iteration of a weekly, musical happy hour that has been happening off and on — mostly on — since it started in the early 1970s at a one-room bar called Mr. Flood’s Party. Over the years, the crowd has aged right along with the acts; some people have been coming to the shows for 50 years.

The turnout on a recent Friday night was typical: a convivial mix of finely preserved hippies, activists, professors, townies, amateur musicians and an assortment of more than 100 other folks older than 60 who simply cannot stop dancing.

They were dressed with unselfconscious flair: There were fringed jackets and fedoras, Western shirts and bow ties, rainbow bandannas and braided beards.

Also, there were earplugs, and a walker or two.

“All of the people got older, and they’re still here,” said Tom Kenny, a happy-hour long-timer wearing a purple tie-dye shirt and round, John Lennon-style glasses.

Over the years, the happy hour has wandered downtown from venue to venue — the Blind Pig, the Cavern Club, the Heidelberg — before settling at the generically named Live in 2013. The musical acts range from the almost-famous (two members of Sky King, which put out a record on Columbia in 1975, played the recent show) to the famous-for-the-night. They play rock, blues, soul, jazz and country: anything that gets the crowd moving, which isn’t very hard.

“It’s beautiful,” said Dan Mulholland, a longtime Ann Arbor musician. “These people will dance to anything.”

Mulholland, who was dressed in classic rockabilly style in head-to-toe denim, plays gritty rock music that recalls hardedge Michigan legends such as the Stooges and the MC5.

When Mulholland first performed at the Geezer Happy Hour, he said, he was taken aback by all the bluehairs. “But then I looked in the mirror,” he added, and realized he was 73 himself.

Among the dancers on the recent Friday were Judith Cawhorn, 76, and George Fahmie, 84, both retired. They first met on Match.com in 2010. Cawhorn had been going to the happy hour for years, and she didn’t want to tell Fahmie about the party until she knew he could really dance. (“He was so much older than me,” she said.)

So on their first date, she put him through the paces at another bar. Fahmie passed. Now, Cawhorn calls him “my sweetie,” and the couple were among the first on the dance floor and the last to leave.

“Most people are dead at my age,” Fahmie said. “But tap twice on the table and I’ll get up and start dancing.”