Cover Story: Lana Hoffman

By Dave Person david.r.person@gmail.com

Soon after Lana Hoffman arrived in Kalamazoo 22 years ago hoping to establish herself as a schoolteacher, it became obvious there were other paths in store for her. Call it what you will — luck, fate, or just being in the right place at the right time — it’s been a good ride for Hoffman, owner of Lana’s Boutique stores in downtown Kalamazoo and St. Joseph and a songstress who specializes in old-time jazz and classic country. That’s not to say talent didn’t have a lot to do with it. As the proprietor of high-end boutiques — starting with a store near the Western Michigan University campus in 2003 and blossoming into similar shops in Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, Saugatuck and even a pop-up trailer before she downsized to the two businesses she has now — Hoffman says she has been able to meet the needs of people shopping for upscale contemporary apparel. And as a singer, she has soothed the soul of many a listener, whether in concert or at area eating and drinking establishments. Her degrees in education and marketing from Quincy University in Illinois help explain the teaching career, however abbreviated, and the entrepreneurship, but how did the singing — what she describes as her real passion — come to be? Growing up in southern Illinois, “I always sang,” says Hoffman, 49, but “I never had any formal training.” When she moved to Kalamazoo in 2000, Hoffman hoped to get a fulltime job in public education, but after teaching in private schools and subbing for a couple of years, she changed directions and opened her fi rst boutique. She also fi lled in the gaps in her time by performing with the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre. In 2003, she was cast as country-music icon Patsy Cline in the Civic’s A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline.

“That opened me up to a lot of musicians and to perform on stage,” she says. “That was my springboard here in Kalamazoo.”

LANA HOFFMAN IS LIVING HER PASSION

Except for reprising her role as Patsy Cline for the Farmers Alley Theatre’s version of “A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline” in 2010, Hoffman eventually moved from country to jazz “and I have done that ever since,” she says. She sings with a variety of local bands, ensembles, orchestras and individual musicians, as well as her own Lana Hoffman Jazz Trio. She also teams with violinist Barry Ross and pianist Terry Lower to play concert halls under the name BLT Jazz Trio. “There are so many great musicians around here,” she says, mentioning Lower, Ross, Matthew Fries, Dave Proulx, Larry Ochiltree and Denis Shebukhov as just a few of those with whom she has collaborated.

Among her favorite jazz singers are the late Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Nancy Wilson, she says. Lately, she has returned to her country roots with a different style of musicians, a band called “Chick & the Boomers” which performs country classics from the likes of Cline, Johnny Cash, Meryl Haggard, Loretta Lynn and Buck Owens. Hoffman says she performs three or four times a week in the summer, which includes festivals, before the schedule slows to a more leisurely pace in the fall. Not so long ago, the outlook dimmed for Hoffman and others who cater to the public. “Covid was really horrible,” she says of the pandemic that in early 2020 closed down not only her stores, but the venues where she sang, such as The Union, a popular downtown nightspot. While The Union closed permanently, “there are a lot of places now that are opening back up,” she says. Among the places where she frequently sings are The Dock at Bayview on Gull Lake, Paw Paw’s Amore’ and Lucky Girl, Clara’s on the River in Battle Creek and the Liquid Note jazz club in Otsego. Oh, and for those who know Hoffman as “the cat lady,” there’s that, too.

She and her husband, Fred, have 12 cats — make that 13, she says, including the elderly cat with several health issues that was abandoned in her neighborhood recently — and she has helped more than 400 others from the Kalamazoo County Animal Services & Enforcement shelter fi nd new homes.

Back when she still had the campus store, she says, “I would go down to the pound (Animal Services shelter) to volunteer. I’d go there and get attached to them. I was walking out of there (some days) with a handful of kittens.”

Although she no longer takes shelter cats to her own home, fi nding adoptive homes for them, primarily through her Facebook page, and taking donations for the shelter is still one of her passions — along with selling clothing that her customers value, and using her voice for the pleasure of her appreciative audiences.

Like the cats she helps rescue, Lana Hoffman has found a home in Kalamazoo, and Kalamazoo is all the better for it.