Alan Senauke is weaving everything together – all of the musical and spiritual threads – to create a remarkable tapestry of song composed of inspiring originals and lovingly chosen contemporary and classic numbers by artists like George Harrison and Muddy Waters, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Huddy Ledbetter. He’s playing songs that illuminate the Buddhist path he’s traveled – Bob Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken,” Blind Willie Johnson’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” Tom Waits’s “Always Keep a Diamond in Your Mind.” And he’s playing with the support of many talented friends, Jon Sholle on guitar and dobro, Chad Manning on fiddle, Suzy Thompson on fiddle and vocals, Eric Thompson on mandolin, Kate Brislin on vocals, and other special guests. “As has been the case for fifty years,” Alan says, “I am blessed with musical friends of astonishing skill and depth. We have shared so many songs, tunes, talks, meals, and miles that when it comes to making music, it really is play, not work.”

Alan was born in Brooklyn, moved to the Bay Area in the heady days of 1968, and found his way to the Berkeley Zen Center. He edited the folk music magazine Sing Out! in the 1970s and toured and recorded two albums with Howie Tarnower as the Fiction Brothers. Since then, he’s played with several Bay Area bands, including the Blue Flame Stringband, High Country, the California Cajun Orchestra, the Aux Cajunals, and the Bluegrass Intentions. He is also a leader of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists in Thailand, founding director of the Clear View Project, and vice-abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center, where he lives with his family. He has a new album, Everything is Broken: Songs About Things As They Are, recorded with many of the musicians who will appear with him tonight at the Freight. “This collection of songs has taken shape in my mind over the last eight or ten years,” he says. “They contain vivid, sometimes stark lyrics about the way our lives unfold, marked by impermanence, love and loss, fragility and toughness, joy and depression, friendship, attention, and – of course – the blues.” Come wander the path of joy and sorrow, surrender and determination with Alan and his musical friends.

Visit Alan Senauke's website