PLEASE NOTE: You're viewing an archive of our OLD website through December 2017, please visit our new website at TheFreight.org
2020 Addison Street / Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 644-2020 / info@freightandsalvage.org
The Box Office window is open 12:30pm-7pm and during all performances.
Grant-Lee Phillips has been making memorable music since his days as the golden voice and poetic visionary fronting the folk-rock trio Grant Lee Buffalo in the 1990s. Since recording four fine albums with GLB, he’s gone on to release seven solo albums, including his latest, Walking in the Green Corn, which explores his Native American roots. “Connecting to my ancestry is like having this deep trunk that’s embedded in the earth, with deep roots. It was always something that was important to my grandmother, who was Creek, and to my mother. So, after becoming a father, I wanted to be able to answer all those questions I know I’ll be asked one day, when my daughter takes an interest in where we come from.” The website AllMusic calls the album “beautifully crafted, elegant, and poignant.” The songs are spare, evocative, and full of heart. “Grant-Lee Phillips harks back to the earnest ambitions and expansive melodies of Bob Dylan and John Lennon, singing with the conviction that rock can still be heroic,” says the New York Times. Grant-Lee brings the passion of rock to this quietly intense and intimate music that makes you sit up and listen close.
It’s hard to get a handle on Howe Gelb – and he likes it that way. He’s released about 30 albums with an ever-changing group known as Giant Sand, three or four albums with the Band of . . . Blacky Ranchette, an album with OP8, and about 20 solo albums, including his latest, The Coincidentalist, which AllMusic calls “as poetic, strange, and mysterious as the desert itself” and recommends for its “real tenderness, as well as confusion, humor, and wry observation.” PopMatters compliments the album’s “twister-like logic of the heart” and says that Howe’s “vocal intonations, strange and poetic phraseology, and sparse sonic landscapes evoke comparisons to Leonard Cohen, which is high praise.” Howe has long attracted devoted followers and accomplished fellow musicians, including, on the new album, M. Ward, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and KT Tunstall. Calexico used to be his backup band. He has described his music as “erosion rock” – music that changes with the elements on a daily basis – and he’s described himself as “endlessly restlessly wanderlusted encrusted,” though, if pinned down, he’ll admit that when not on the road or living in Denmark he resides in the Barrio Santa Rosa neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona. Now he’s coming to the Freight – catch him if you can!
