On the night The Back Room opened in April 2016, Laurie Lewis and Friends played to a crowd inside a small Berkeley room with brick walls, vaulted wood ceilings, thrift-store couches, and barely enough seats for 100 people. There was no bar, no kitchen, and no alcohol service. People brought their own food and wine, settled into mismatched furniture, and listened.
Ten years later, as the venue celebrates its first milestone anniversary with a 10-day concert series (running Thu/16-April 26), not much has changed—and that is exactly the point.
Sam Rudin opened The Back Room because he believed Berkeley had lost something when the original Freight & Salvage outgrew its 87-seat coffeehouse roots, expanding in 1988 and again in 2009 to become a much larger institution.
“There are some who miss the living room intimacy that allowed lesser-known musicians to make their mark, and better-known players to get up close and personal with their fans,” he tells 48 Hills.
Rudin had spent years as a solo pianist and bandleader, first with his own high-energy piano shows and later with Hurricane Sam & the Hotshots. As smaller listening rooms disappeared, he found himself wanting to build one.
He spent years searching for the right location before finding a space near Berkeley’s Arts District that could recreate the feeling he remembered from the old Freight: comfortable, informal, and attentive.
That history will be celebrated this month with performances from many of the artists who have shaped the venue over the years. The lineup includes Scott Amendola’s Anniversary Quartet, Bululú, HowellDevine, Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band, Mamadou Sidibe, Golden Bough, Roberta Donnay & The Prohibition Mob, and a closing-night performance by The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol, who’ll be joined onstage by musical director and pianist Joe Warner, bassist Ron Belcher, and drummer Dante Roberson.
The anniversary series is as eclectic, intimate, and impossible to reduce to a single genre as the venue itself. On any given night, The Back Room might host a jazz quartet, a Celtic trio, a bluegrass band, or an artist coaxing Malin tines from handmade instruments. What matters is not the category but the listening.
“It is nostalgia only in the sense that I have attempted to occupy the cultural space that the original Freight & Salvage once held,” Rudin says. “But even in that sense, it is also different. The Freight, for instance, never had jazz, whereas we have quite a bit. But in every other sense, I would argue that ‘nostalgia’ is not the right word.”
The multi-genre approach has become increasingly rare in the Bay Area. The Back Room sells neither food nor drinks, so there is little incentive to turn music into background noise. (The venue’s BYOB/F policy means there are no audience age restrictions.)
“There are not many places like this,” Rudin says. “But there used to be more. In fact, back in the day, every college seemed to have a ‘coffeehouse’ that was actually an entertainment venue similar to this. BAR culture often de-emphasizes the music. We also prioritize the atmosphere, but it is an atmosphere that promotes attention, not ‘atmosphere over attention.’”
When Rudin put together the anniversary lineup, he wanted it to tell the venue’s story through both the artists and the genres that have sustained it. “It’s about diversity,” he says. “But it also recognizes the relationships that we have had with some performers over time.”
The series opens with Scott Amendola’s Anniversary Quartet, featuring guitarist Ryan Schaeffer, bassist Mat Muntz, violinist Jenny Scheinman, and Rudin himself sitting in on piano. Amendola, who also performs with Floating Parade and Spaghetti, has played the venue many times over the years, and he tells 48 Hills it has become one of his favorite rooms in the Bay Area.
“Sam is just such a beautiful guy and really loves music,” Amendola says. “He’s provided this unique venue for the Bay.”
He says Rudin has created the kind of venue he loves most: one where everyone feels comfortable, the lineup stretches across genres, and music remains the focus. “My favorite kind of music venue is one that has everything from what I do to singer-songwriters, rock music, blues, and international music,” says Amendola. “And Sam has created a really great listening environment for people to come and appreciate it all.
“He’s given a lot to the community, and those are the places I love playing, where the person who’s running it is doing it for the right reasons,” Amendola adds.
HowellDevine, which Rudin once called “the most exciting blues trio anywhere,” is also part of the celebration, and has played The Back Room regularly since the venue opened. Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band first played there in 2017, when mandolinist Teo Quale was only 11 years old. Mamadou Sidibe’s hypnotic blend of Malian music and his self-designed 14-string kameke n’goni has become a favorite among Bay Area audiences.
Perhaps no performer embodies the deep relationship the Back Room maintains with artists more than Faye Carol. Between 2017 and 2020, the legendary Bay Area vocalist, honored each March 13 with official days in both Oakland and Berkeley, played The Back Room more than two dozen times, including a residency. She has performed in giant venues, including the Oakland Coliseum, but says she still prefers rooms where she can see faces.
“I perform there because I really like an intimate space,” Carol says. “I’d like the intimacy to be up close and personal, where I can really relate to the audience, and they can really relate to me. Afterward, you can talk to people, and it just feels good.”
For Carol, The Back Room matters because it has survived during a period when so many smaller venues have disappeared. “I think it’s an important space, because the owner really believes in music,” she says. “He’s a musician himself, and he really makes it available, so musicians of all stripes can come and do their art there.”
She points to the venue’s acoustic piano, sightlines, comfortable atmosphere, and resilience. “After COVID, so many places have closed up shop,” Carol says. “But Sam remained and fought through all of that. And it’s just a place that we need. We need more live music places like this where live music flourishes.”
Carol, whose latest album, Forever Dynamic, drops on April 17, believes live music has become even more important in a world increasingly defined by screens, streaming, and isolation.
“If you really immerse yourself in live music, you will be happier for it and realize how much you need it as part of the rhythm of our lives,” she says. “I don’t view live music as a luxury. I view live music as a necessity—as the beat of our heart.”
That communal feeling—of people gathering in the same room, hearing the same songs, and sharing the same silence between notes—is what The Back Room has spent the last decade protecting. Rudin knows there are limits to how much the venue can grow. It cannot get bigger without moving. He cannot legally sell alcohol or most food, not that he wants to. And, as he puts it, he is “old, and getting older.”
“The big question for the next decade,” he says, “will be whether I can gradually shift some (and eventually all) of this responsibility onto others’ shoulders.”
For now, though, The Back Room remains what it has always been: a place where music comes first, where audiences can still sit close enough to see each other’s faces, and where a room built for listening has managed to survive in a region that keeps losing spaces exactly like it.
THE BACK ROOM: 10TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERTS runs Thu/16-April/26 at The Back Room, Berkeley. Tickets and more info here.
