Freedom Beat - Songs of Nation, Songs of Dissent

featuring Misner & Smith, MAD NOISE, Randy Craig
Written & Directed by Peter Glazer

Thursday, 0, , 12:00 am
(doors open at 7:00 pm)

"words and music of patriotism and protest"

$18 advance / $20 door

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Tonight’s show is a performance piece developed by Peter Glazer, Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, exploring the relationship between patriotism, protest, and music. “I didn’t sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ during Vietnam – it was too militaristic, too representative of the government I mistrusted,” Peter says. “It was not my national anthem. ‘America The Beautiful’ was more palatable, ‘This Land Is Your Land’ even more . . . Music is potent, and our relationship to it matters, especially when it carries with it a set of beliefs that the singing suggests we have bought into.” The show features a wide range of songs including Paul Simon’s “America” and Dylan’s “With God on Our Side.” Musicians include Misner & Smith, Mad Noise, and Randy Craig.

Freight favorites Misner & Smith – that’s Sam Misner and Megan Smith – are an entertaining pair. Sam plays guitar, Megan plays mandolin and upright bass, and when the two of them sing together, their blended voices ring with commitment and vitality. Maverick Magazine has praised their “superb harmonies” and the website Hicks with Sticks has called them “a Bay Area treasure to be shared.” Sam and Megan met at a Shakespeare festival in 2002 and appeared together in a production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song in Nevada City in 2004. Since then, they’ve balanced their acting careers with a musical collaboration that has produced four albums, Halfway Home, Poor Player, Live at the Freight & Salvage, and their latest, Seven Hour Storm, a shimmering showcase for their sterling musicianship, poetic songwriting, and gorgeous harmony vocals.

Mad Noise is one of the top bands in the Bay Area. “These buskers have brains. Lots and lots of brains,” says the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which has named them Best Band the past three years in a row. The SF Weekly has named them Most Hyperliterate Busking Outfit, and the Daily Californian has named them Best Local Band, calling them “an identity crisis with some rhythm.”

Randy Craig has played piano at the Freight with the Coverlettes and Maurice Tani & 77 El Deora. He was a founding member of The Pickle Family Circus.

Peter Glazer’s works and collaborations include Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate; Heart of Spain – A Musical of the Spanish Civil War; O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music; and Foe, adapted from the novel by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee; as well as Woody Guthrie’s American Song, which has been seen at over 100 theaters around the United States and won dozens of awards, including two Bay Area Drama Critics Awards, three Joseph Jefferson Awards in Chicago, and Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations in New York City.

 

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