50 years of Bread & Roses’ free Bay Area concerts
Like an underground river bringing life-nourishing water to secluded riparian ecosystems across the Bay Area, Bread & Roses Presents mostly functions out of public sight. The nonprofit brings hundreds of performances every year to locations where live music is a rare and powerful balm, like detention centers, senior programs, assisted living facilities and special needs schools.
But every once in a while the organization, founded in 1974 by the late Marin County singer-songwriter and activist Mimi Fariña, pops into public view, surfacing to mark a milestone. This year, it’s for the Golden Jam, a fundraising concert at Sweetwater in Mill Valley set for Thursday, May 23, that kicks off a series of 50th anniversary celebrations for Bread & Roses.
Hosted by Joan Baez, Fariña’s older sister, and music journalist Ben Fong-Torres, the event includes artists such as Ron Artis II, Dirty Cello, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Emma Rose Botti and Tony Saunders — “all of whom have played for us at various facilities, or at fundraisers,” said Dave Perron, Bread & Roses executive director.
Recruited by Fariña when he was director of community affairs for the Oakland A’s, Perron served on the Bread & Roses board for several years in the mid-1980s. He returned to lead the organization in 2014, determined to improve its finances. A close friend of Baez’s late husband, peace activist David Harris, Perron brought the folk singer back into the fold.
At its height in 2019, Bread & Roses presented 620 concerts reaching about 100,000 people across the nine Bay Area counties, Perron said. Still working on recovering from the pandemic shutdown, the organization produced more than 500 shows in 2023, a service made possible with a roster of about 1,000 volunteers.
Fantastic Negrito, the Grammy Award-winning East Bay blues
is slated to headline another 50th anniversary fundraiser at Novato’s HopMonk Tavern Sept. 7. Oscar-nominated songwriter Alexis Harte’s band the Lemonhammer plays the opening set.
Harte volunteered at Bread & Roses for two decades before joining the staff in January after leaving his role as composer and cofounder at Bay Area production house Pollen Music, which created the soundtrack for the first VR film ever nominated for an Academy Award, 2016’s animated short “Pearl.”
He oversees Bread & Roses’ East Bay shows, managing a roster of regulars like country singersongwriter Maurice Tani and blues harp player Mark Hummel. The performances provide musicians with regular gigs during nonprime time hours, “and we’re always recruiting new musicians,” Harte said. “Where we need an infusion of new talent is youth performers.”
San Francisco singering songwriter Matt Jaffe, a protégé of Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, recently joined the Bread & Roses board. The 29-year-old has made a point of playing youth detention centers, “which can be tough gigs, but he nails ’em in going in with just an acoustic guitar,” Harte said.
It was a 1973 performance with Baez and blues legend B.B. King at Sing Sing Prison that sparked Fariña’s determination to bring music to people confined to institutions. Nearly a quarter century after her death from cancer, Fariña’s creative legacy continues to help define the organization, despite there only bestar, one staff member left who was hired by Fariña. Her presence in the 2023 documentary “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise” served as a reminder of her vivacious force.
“When I started here I said there are three things we have to do: raise money, get younger, and build our brand,” Perron said.
With more concerts soon to be announced marking five decades of bringing music to people who need it most, Perron’s plan for Bread & Roses seems to be on track.