By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The stage side of Howard’s Club H was packed all the way back to the pool tables, where a spread of food was laid out.
The fans of Mark Mikel, a fixture on the Toledo music scene for 50 years, had gathered on July 10 to celebrate his 300th Wednesday night at the venerable downtown BG club. The members of the tribe gathered from Maumee, Toledo, even Sandusky to hear Mark Mikel and the Dive Bombing Space Pigeons.
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The regular Wednesday night shows hosted by Mark Mikel date back to September 2017.
Mikel remembers approaching Steve Feehan, who’d purchased the club the year before, about playing a Wednesday night show. “I needed a gig,” he recalled while on break outside the club on Wednesday.
Feehan was more than amenable. He recalls reaching out to Mikel, someone he admired as a fellow musician. Feehan even laid down some keyboard for a Pillbugs’ project. Pillbugs was Mikel’s long-standing band. Also, in 2017 Mikel played bass in a trio led by Corky Laing, of the band Mountain, which played two shows at Howard’s and toured.
The Howard’s Wednesday gig was a solo effort with Feehan joining in on keyboards.
“From there he just built it,” Feehan said.
Mikel said the turning point came when Ev Harris joined in on drums. “I had a beat to build on.”
Various musicians came and went. At first the audience was sparse. Sometimes there were more people on the bandstand than in the house, the veteran musician recalls.
But Mikel promoted the gig on social media. He invited listeners and any musicians who wanted to sit in. People came, and the music began to jell.
Lori Lubinski, a regular from Toledo, said the selection of tunes he plays are a big part of the appeal.
On this Wednesday, he drew music from the Electric Light Orchestra, Elton John, Foreigner, the Who, the Kinks, the Beatles and post-Beatles Paul McCartney with “Live and Let Die.”
Mikel even included his own songs, “Feeding Seagulls.”
His songs, Feehan said, are often as good or better than the songs the band covers.
The band has also devoted shows to covering complete albums including “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Who’s “Tommy.”
“He brings the approach and arrangement of a seasoned professional with the creativity of the original songwriters,” Feehan said. “So the intended experience is something unique and edifying to the listener.”
The 63-year-old Mikel has been working at music since he was 13 and got a standing ovation for a drum solo. Now he sings, plays various guitars and keyboards as well as composing his own tunes.
In 2019, Mikel got national recognition when a song he co-wrote and sang appeared on rock legend Alan Parsons’ “The Secret,” Parsons’ first album in 15 years.
[RELATED: Mikel to perform his collaboration with Parsons’ project at Howard’s]
But that was right before the pandemic put live music on hold. He’d have blown past 300 shows long ago, if not for that “unfortunate” disruption, he said.
When COVID-19 restrictions eased, he and the fans picked back up.
“It’s my favorite night of the week,” he said
“He makes us the luckiest freakin’ people on earth every week,” Lubinski said.
She’s been a fan since the run at Howard’s began. She recalls hearing him at the Village Idiot in Maumee.
Chris Swary, of Maumee, said when she and her husband, Phil, opened Cheers Sports Eatery in Holland in 2009 they hosted Mikel.
She’s even been on stage a few times. She recalls one night before the pandemic when there was a snowstorm and about five people in the house. She joined him to sing “Benny and the Jets.” Another time she celebrated her birthday on stage.
“The Pigeon fans! They are the true stars,” Feehan wrote in a message to BG Independent.
Their loyalty has allowed the music to thrive. Without them, Mikel said, it would just be him on stage.
From those early shows that were more jamming, the Dive Bombing Space Pigeons have become an established band. But they appear exclusively at Howard’s.
On stage with Mikel on Wednesday were Feehan on piano, Johnny Rodriguez on lead guitar, Frank May on bass, Brad Babcock on percussion and vocals, and Harris on drums. They were also joined by a woman Mikel said is referred to simply as “the unknown violinist.” After she played several numbers, she faded into the crowd.
The Space Pigeons aren’t likely to fade away. This coming Wednesday with the milestone in the rearview mirror, they’ll perform show 301.
Back in 2021, Mikel told BG Independent that he would like to do 1,000 shows at Howard’s. The comment was intended as humorous. Still for anyone planning that would mean Mikel, at 77, would be scheduled to play on Christmas Day, 2037.
