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.
Self-taught guitar and banjo master Charlie Parr hales from Austin, Minnesota, the Spam capital of the world, but his down home music is anything but processed. Growing up without a TV, he listened to his father’s collection of classic recordings by America’s musical founding fathers, including Charley Patton and Lightnin’ Hopkins, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and the first time he heard Dock Boggs play banjo, he went out and bought an 1890 model. He also plays two National guitars, a twelve-string and a Resonator, which he tunes to suit his musical moods. With those three instruments, he’s recorded 12 albums presenting his own unique take on American roots, blues, folk, and country. The website Saving Country Music calls his latest album, Hollandale, “an in-depth exploration into what it means to be alive, to be human, to feel pain and to yearn and reflect.” If you listen to Charlie’s music, you quickly come to understand that he’s an artist who pushes himself and his music to the limit, honoring the past and exploring the possibilities of the present moment. The usual topics he gravitates toward, he said in a recent interview, are “death, god, grief, and cars.” Catch an American roots original tonight at the Freight!
Betse Ellis is, in the words of Ink Magazine, “a badass fiddle player.” She sings too, and writes fierce originals rooted in the down home tradition of the Ozarks. With influences ranging from John Hartford to Joe Strummer, she brings an edgy fire to her performances, whether she’s covering Memphis Minnie or The Clash, and even her ballads burn with a smoldering intensity. A classically trained violinist, Betse co-founded The Wilders, whose album Someone’s Got to Pay won the Independent Music Award for Best Alt. Country Album in 2009, the same year Betse released her first solo album. Her latest release, High Moon Order, shows off a vast range of musical passions, held together by Betse’s utterly committed fiddling and singing.
