What happens when a poet and a philosopher fall in love? What does it sound like when a violin and a trumpet harmonize? Erin Zindle and Ross Huff invited the whole town to find out. On December 12, 2024, their wedding invitation welcomed all to join in their unique ceremony. The post on their public Facebook pages invited “Everyone we know and love to come and celebrate with us, so we’re sharing this event with friends, students, neighbors, etc. No personal invitation or RSVP is required.”
When two of the most talented and prolific musicians in Ann Arbor come together, the synergy of sound and sentiment is too beautiful to miss. “We’ve been writing words and melodies to express our love story in all of its depth and magic, with the goal of sharing it with you, our dearest ones, as we celebrate our union together.”
Erin Zindle plays the fiddle and keyboard and is the songwriter and leader of the nationally touring folk-rock band Erin Zindle & The Ragbirds. Zindle’s voice is honey warm and real with the power to deliver intricate and vulnerable lyrics over globally infused rhythms. The band has performed in 47 states averaging 150 shows a year on stages and festivals such as Electric Forest/Rothbury, Wheatland, Blissfest, Green Room Festival (Yokohama Japan), South by South West and more.
Ross Huff is Ann Arbor’s premiere trumpet and flugel horn player working on stage and in studio, as a bandleader and sideman in at least six active acts: Rhyta, Rolly Tussing Trio, Jive Collosus, The Pherotones, The Tone Farmers, and The Macpodz, and he sits in with the Ragbirds. The Macpodz and The Ragbirds are considered brother/sister bands, having toured and performed on the same festival circuit for years. When did they meet? They can’t answer that question. “I don’t remember meeting you—it’s like we’ve always known each other,” Zindle sings from a yet unreleased love song.
The two have been stalwarts in the Ann Arbor music scene for nearly two decades. “Ross used to sit in with us,” Zindle remembered. The two have jammed with each other’s bands many times over the years. There are photos of Huff sitting in with the Ragbirds at Rothbury, Hoxyville, and Summer Camp festivals. “Ross was such a great improviser and could always find his fit.”
Zindle remembered late night after a gig in Traverse City with the two crews. “Ross came through with a plate of toast hot with melty butter.” Zindle took note. The two shared mutual appreciation for years.
“Sharing food was the start of our story,” Huff recounted. “The Macpodz would bring one cliff bar for the weekend. It was mine. Split five ways. And then, there was Erin, making hot breakfast burritos on her camp stove to share. She may have saved our lives.”
Zindle was equally wowed when Huff would arrive at any bonfire with a bag of potatoes and a roll of foil under his arm. “What is he doing?” She wondered. By the end of the night, he passed out hot and buttery baked potatoes straight from the coals. “He got some notoriety for his weird magical potato tradition. We all loved it.”
The potato became more than mere sustenance: it is a central allegory of their operating system. “Off to the mines,” Huff chimed. “I call myself a potato miner when I play a gig. We extend this energy, as we offer our gift of music exchanged as our currency. For that we get the pay that we take to the shop to purchase the potatoes that replenish our energy.” He is philosophical about the process. “You can’t take your songs to the grocery store. This is our alchemy.” Gigging and teaching is how both Huff and Zindle make a living and a life.
They already shared such a familiar lifestyle, now sharing their home and a rehearsal studio, “It has been such a natural fit,” Zindle expressed.
Huff affirmed, “This is my version of success. This is a bounty. Not accumulating wealth, but flourishing.”
“Before our relationship started in our current form we would talk a lot,” Zindle noted. “I always had a lot of respect for Ross. When we were in conversation with other people, I would get rolled over. I am very quiet. Ross would bring it back, ‘Erin what was that you were saying?’ He was a listener. I noticed. That meant a lot to me.” Zindle continued, “He is good at managing the whole social dynamic. He is good at parties, but it is so much deeper. He is good at making people feel seen. I would see his posts about his process, and it inspired me.”
Huff writes short prose to post on his pages. “Nothing profound,” he deferred. But some would disagree. His pieces are insightful, philosophical, and so true they are heartbreaking, making meaning from the mundane.
Zindle was impressed. “I was trying to get you to turn your beautiful writing skills into song lyrics, but then I realized you weren’t really interested in that form.”
Huff affirmed, “That is the difference between us. You are structured, I am free form.” Zindle credits their astrological charts. (Huff has more immutable signs, where Zindle has more fixed signs.)
The two rave about and respect each other’s ways. Huff commented, “I get to see the wood working of her crafting process from a rough-hewn thing becoming refined. The outline of an idea becomes a song that we are then all immersed in.”
Erin Zindle has been turning her poetry into lyrics for as long as she can remember. Zindle sits at the piano as a composer, recording all her sessions to pick-up those perfect keepers. “It doesn’t make it less true by being deliberate, written down so that you can share it with a community. Take a feeling and make it into a song to record and repeat and share.”
Zindle has written hundreds of songs in this way. She has released five studio albums with the Ragbirds, a solo album, plus 13 singles to be found on Spotify and all the other music apps. Ember and Ash, her newest project is a duo between Erin and her writing partner Alex Holycross of the band The Native Howl. “We are about to take the world by storm,” Zindle bragged. Their debut EP release is slated for 2026. “We have been writing songs together for six years, and we are finally launching this year.”
Huff writes carefully but off the cuff. “I write like an improviser. In all rehearsals, someone will say, we should record this, just after the best jam. That was the one.” Huff gestures upward. “That’s where I think they all should go. Trying to record for mere mortals is unnecessary.” Huff received his BFA at UofM in 2004 specializing in Jazz and Contemplative studies. He knows Jazz standards, but for him, that’s not the point. Huff finds meaning in the making.
“I had my gigs. I was pretending to work on a book. I had my little place. The laundry was all folded. My band sounded good. I had a life. I thought, ‘this is it.” But he realized, “The music isn’t the point. I took up being a baseball fan. Turns out that wasn’t it either.” He was contemplating the next step in his quest.
“That’s when he called,” Zindle said. It was January 2020. They had just wrapped the EBird and Friends Holiday Show at the Ark. Huff traditionally checked in to debrief about their annual show. “We had a really nice conversation. He happened to call on the perfect night.” Zindle had been divorced for a full year. “I just had a prayer of release.”
Huff remembered “You were a little sad. I was just pacing around the apartment, feeling like I don’t know what I am doing tonight. I will call Erin. We ended up talking about life and everything and laughing and laughing and both got in better moods.” She invited him over. “I had a bottle of Chartruesse and a song I needed help with.” Their first date wasn’t intentionally a date. “I just wanted to hear how the trumpet would sound.”
For the 18th year in a row, Zindle has produced the EBird and Friends Holiday Show. Huff has always been one of the friends, a collaborator, and an arranger for the show. With four performances each holiday season, this complex revue is an important and unique showcase of up to twenty local talents sharing the stage to collaborate on traditional holiday tunes, and a few originals, too. It represents a huge amount of work each year.
Huff said, “My cue to start preparing for Christmas is MLB’s all-star break in mid-July.” Along with Zindle and musical director Brad Philips, Huff started writing charts and arranging for the horns and string sections in spring. “Erin was my boss. I didn’t want to damage a really functional working friendship,” Huff noted. “We have been friends for so long.”
Zindle recounted, “It took us both by surprise. But of course, there is love here.”
In 2024, we were in the midst of a major home renovation, our kitchen fully dismantled as we were still cranking full time, gigging, and teaching, and keeping my kid in school while we were hard core producing the show,” Zindle recounted. “We had been engaged for over a year. But we couldn’t figure out the puzzle. Our guest list was insane. We wanted to have a weekend-long music festival as we were writing music with the ceremony in mind.”
“We could keep writing forever, and dreaming about it forever, and never call it done,” Huff added. “We had bundled our home and auto insurance. We had merged all of our proper paperwork. Everything short of that piece of paper was complete. We just needed to get married.”
“It was around harvest that I was getting this really clear astrological message,” Zindle shared. “The thing in the pipeline, it’s time to complete.” Zindle came up with a crazy idea. “Let’s not wait until Spring.” Just a month out from the Holiday show she proposed, “Let’s just get the Ark for one more day.” Huff agreed, and so, into the mayhem they added planning the food, wedding attire, the officiant, the vows, and all the details to host not only one of Ann Arbor’s biggest musical shows of the year, but also their wedding ceremony and reception.
“I work well under pressure,” Zindle noted.
“I saw Erin happy,” Huff said.
Their publicly posted wedding invitation extolled, “Our love story in all of its depth and magic…Our wedding ceremony is the first iteration of what we call “The Liturgical Thesis of Love”—a work of art, poetry, and music in honor of our unique story and the lessons it has taught us. Our thesis is simply this: we are only here to learn how to love. Everything we experience, everything we create, every encounter, thought, work of art, force of nature, from the trivial to the sublime, is meant to teach us about love and lead us closer to our union with one another.”
After a successful weekend of four complex Holiday performances, their crew returned to the Ark on Sunday, December 15th, 2024 to perform this very unique story of love told in song, amplified in four-part harmony. Backed by their full band of trusted and talented friends, they invited their guests to sing along: “We are here, to bear witness, to a new love, to an ancient love. We are here to bear witness. We are here to learn how to love.”
And again, on their anniversary they returned to the Ark as they do each year, to share holiday cheer and their love on full display.
“This is what we have been training for,” Huff shared. “We know that this is a privilege. We feel wealthy to get to spend our days working in music. Getting to build and collaborate and play with our friends. This is what I call success.”
Even their portmanteau reflects their love when combined, Erin and Ross becomes Eros, the God of Love.
You can follow along and fall in love with their love and music on their social media links at theragbirds.com, facebook.com/emberandashband, linktr.ee/emberandashmusic, rosshuff.com, and on YouTube atwatch?v=gaAMJXekIiA.
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When two of the most talented and prolific musicians in Ann Arbor come together, the synergy of sound and sentiment is too beautiful to miss. “We’ve been writing words and melodies to express our love story in all of its depth and magic, with the goal of sharing it with you, our dearest ones, as we celebrate our union together.”