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As the musician left the stage, Ann Gobrielle said she was having a great time, but also admitted that coming to Berkeley from her home in Richmond isn’t part of her regular Saturday routine.
“Normally, I wouldn’t leave the house on a Saturday morning to watch kids music unless I knew who it was,” Gobrielle said, as her sons Abdu, 5, and Youssou, 3, played around her feet.. “But we’re Asheba fans, so we knew ahead of time he was going to be here.”
Asheba, a singer and storyteller from Trinidad wasn’t just playing any Saturday morning gig in Berkeley. He was the first performer of the Freight & Salvage Music Festival that took over Addison Street to mark the iconic Berkeley music venue’s 50th anniversary.
The Freight, as it is commonly called, lined up six acts to play on two different stages along opposite ends of the section of street running along the venue’s facade, and another seven singer-songwriter performers to play inside from the stage of the Freight’s 450-seat Littlefield room, as part of the free, daylong celebration of roots, Americana and world music that have been hallmarks of the event for half a century. Food trucks from several area vendors plied their dishes to festival attendees, too.
“There have been lots of ups and downs in 50 years,” said Sharon Dolan, executive director of the Freight. “It hasn’t always been 100 percent smooth, but there’s this incredible feeling of ownership that people have. toward the Freight. There’s a loyalty to it.”
Founded in 1968 by Nancy Owens, the original Freight took its name from the furniture shop where it had been at 1827 San Pablo Ave., in Berkeley. The then-87-seat venue made its reputation as a coffee shop that promoted traditional American music such as roots and bluegrass. The Freight moved to its second location, a 220-seat spot on Addison Street, in 1988, and then took up its current site in 2009.
Thousands of performers have sang and played from the Freight’s stages in 50 years, and the festival shows no signs of slowing down with its performance schedule. In 2017, the Freight hosted 340 shows, and this September alone saw the likes of Arlo Guthrie, Dave Mason and Steve Cropper, Herb Alpert, Lovin’ Spoonful founder John Sebastian and legendary singer Mavis Staples grace the venue’s stage.
“Music is one of the things that brings people together. In some was it does that more than anything else,” said Peter Williams, program director of the Freight. “The Bay Area is really lucky to have this space and I think people are really aware of what we have here.”
Williams, who came to the Freight in October 2016 after several years at Oakland jazz club Yoshi’s, said one of the things he is most-proud of is the Freight expanding its musical palate to include more Latin, African and music from outside the U.S. Examples of that could be seen in Saturday’s festival lineup, which in addition to Asheba, included performances by BKO Quintet, from Mali, and Bang Data, an Latinx group from Oakland that plays an mix of hip-hop, rock and cumbia, a rhythm and dance music with roots from the Caribbean area of Colombia.
“We don’t want to alienate those that have helped get us to our 50th year, and at the same time, we’re opening things up and I think it’s working well,” Williams said. “I think we’ve struck a great balance for the freight regulars while introducing new acts into the fold here.”
But, when asked if there was one person they would want to see perform above all others at the Freight, both Dolan and Williams were in agreement.
“I would love to get Bonnie Raitt here,” Williams said.
Among those who were into the Freight’s anniversary music philosophy were David and Tessamarie Capitolo, of San Rafael, who called themselves fans of festival opener Asheba.
“I think it’s glorious,” Tessamarie said. “We drove all the way from Marin to be here, so it’s a big deal.”