Cadillac Cowboys have deep U-M roots

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Michael Smith and His Cadillac Cowboys have been playing together in and around Ann Arbor since the early '70s. Their eponymous first CD, Michael Smith and His Cadillac Cowboys, is available at http://www.cadillaccowboys.com/index.html or at major music stores.

The group has a strong U-M pedigree. Smith’s career began when he dropped out of U-M at 18 and “hitched out of Ann Arbor to be a folk hero,” the group’s bio reads. He returned to town after his guitar was stolen in Oklahoma.

Vocalist-pianist Pete Falkenstein graduated from Michigan in 1974 with a political science degree and from the U-M Law School in 1988. He is a partner in the law firm Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, specializing in intellectual property law and commercial litigation.

Drummer Hugh Huntley ’83 was a 1978 James B. Angell Scholar. He received an MS in mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering in 1987, his PhD in applied mechanics in ’91 and is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at U-M Dearborn.

Bassist and vocalist Gary Munce received his BA in psychology in 1969. He is the manager of computing support of the University Library.

Pedal steel guitarist and vocalist Alan Pagliere received his MA in linguistics from U-M in 1980. He taught phonetics and Spanish in U-M until 1985 and is now an information retrieval specialist for the U-M Digital Library.

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