Volume 32 · Number 1 · Fall 2014
Freeborn Hall retrospective
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Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton, April 28, 1967
Blues legends Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton performed at Freeborn Hall in 1967, a year after they recorded a live album together. Two months later, Muddy Waters was featured on the collaborative album Super Blues with Bo Diddley, Little Walter and others.
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Country Joe and the Fish, Oct. 5, 1968
The Berkeley-based psychedelic rock group best known for its Vietnam War protest songs performed at Freeborn Hall during the height of the war. The opening act, The Sullies, featured Steve Perry nearly 10 years before he became the front man of Journey.
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Charlie Musselwhite, Nov. 16, 1968
Charlie Musselwhite, the pioneering blues harmonica player, made a stop at Freeborn Hall a year after the release of his seminal debut album, Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's Southside Band.
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Joan Baez, Dec. 12, 1970
This return appearance for Joan Baez was oversold, so student organizers added seating on the stage. “Ms. Baez was such a gracious and wonderful person,” says Barry Kerr ’71, who sat behind her for the show. “She made sure that we were included in the audience. She sang to us, asked us questions and let us be a part of her performance.”
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Grateful Dead and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Jan 21, 1971.
The Dead played two sets, and a California Aggie reviewer said “both sets had the audience on their feet.” The Aggie reviewer didn’t care much for the country rock New Riders. A bootleg recording of much of the Dead’s performance can be heard at archive.org.
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Fleetwood Mac and Joe Hicks, Sept. 20, 1973
This 1973 Fleetwood Mac concert at Freeborn Hall featured a notably different version of the band than the one most people are familiar with. Singer Stevie Nicks wouldn’t join the band until two years later, and the group was more of a blues format. Supporting blues singer Joe Hicks was a native San Franciscan.
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Journey, Feb. 10, 1978
Was vocalist Steve Perry the “very special guest” advertised on this Journey concert poster? UC Davis was one of the first venues on Journey’s 1978 Infinity tour, launched just after Perry joined the band. He had appeared at Freeborn before in 1968, when his band, The Sullies, was the opening act for Country Joe and the Fish.
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Tom Petty, May 13, 1978
Jeff Mason ’81 recalls seeing this 1978 concert with Norman Mundy ’81, who had introduced him their freshman year to Petty’s music. Thirty-five years later, the former roommates reconnected for a 2013 Petty concert in Los Angeles. Freeborn, Mason says, was a “great hall for concerts.”
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The Police, May 20, 1979
This show, according to a California Aggie review, “created a strangely vivid sense of déjà vu”—bringing the Police and the Readymades back to campus just a couple months after they played at the Coffee House. The Police’s setlist included “Can't Stand Losing You” and “Roxanne.”
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Santana, Feb. 8, 1981
Cover art from Santana’s 1979 Marathon album inspired this poster.
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Adam Ant, April 19, 1984
The British new waver Adam Ant’s final month of his Strip solo album tour included a show at Freeborn Hall. The BBC banned the title track and music video for Strip, but the album still went silver in the United Kingdom.
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Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Nov. 28, 1984
Legendary blues-rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, backed up by his band Double Trouble, roared into Freeborn Hall the month after a performance at Carnegie Hall. Vaughan reportedly opened his Freeborn Hall show with a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s "Voodoo Child."
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Dead Kennedys, Feb. 21, 1986
This show at Freeborn was the Dead Kennedys’ last gig. The San Francisco punk band broke up after this show.
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Siouxsie & the Banshees, June 2, 1986
Gothic rock band Siouxsie & the Banshees appeared at Freeborn as part of its Tinderbox album tour.
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Crowded House, April 20, 1987
Australian new wave rockers Crowded House performed at Freeborn Hall in early 1987, months after the release of "Don’t Dream It’s Over," the group’s biggest hit. Crowded House reunited in 2006 after a 10-year hiatus, and is still active.
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Garbage and Girls Against Boys, Sept. 24, 1998
The alternative rock band stopped at Freeborn Hall during a tour promoting its sophomore album, Version 2.0. Girls Against Boys opened the concert. Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson told MTV News: “We looked down at the list that we had for support acts and I said, ‘They’re the best looking. They’re… They’re… They’re coming on tour.’”
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The Roots, Oct. 30, 2002
The Roots played Freeborn Hall months after becoming the first hip-hop band to perform at the Lincoln Center. In 2003, Rolling Stone named The Roots one of the “20 greatest live acts in the world.” The Roots later became the house band for talk-show host Jimmy Fallon.
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Primus, Oct. 14, 2003
While campus organizations produced many shows at Freeborn Hall, this appearance by San Francisco-based rock band Primus was part of a Bill Graham Presents tour.
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Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, Jan. 14, 2007
Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood—two of the mainstays of the improv-comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?—brought their ongoing tour, An Evening With Colin and Brad, to Freeborn Hall. The pair has been touring since 2002.
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Lyrics Born, Oct. 17, 2007
This concert was a homecoming for hip-hop artist Lyrics Born (Tom Shimura), and his wife, hip-hop/soul performer Joyo Valarde, who met as UC Davis students in the 1990s.
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Thirty Seconds to Mars, Jan. 16, 2011
The Los Angeles rock band, with musician and Oscar-winning actor Jared Leto as frontman, played to a full house.
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Cake, Oct. 6–7, 2011
This show followed the release of Cake’s hit album, Showroom of Compassion. The Sacramento alternative rock band must have been tired of eating cake—after the band insisted on no cake deliveries, students gave Cake a pie.
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Phoenix, April 2, 2013
Phoenix vocalist Thomas Mars crowd surfed the capacity audience when the alternative French rock band played Freeborn during its Bankrupt! tour. A reviewer for The Owl Mag wrote that Freeborn is “super clean—maybe too clean for a normal rock show, but Phoenix isn’t a normal rock band.”
Freeborn Hall concert posters
(Slideshow)
Photo credit: Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis, KDVS alumni Facebook group and the Sacramento Rock and Radio Museum
Joan Baez sang to a full house of adoring fans seated on pillows. Journey introduced a “very special guest” — new lead singer Steve Perry. The Dead Kennedys played their last show on its stage. Cake received a pie, a gift from students. Steve Aoki crowd surfed on a rubber raft, and fell into the unfazed audience.
Freeborn Hall is dark now — its doors locked and the box-office windows shuttered while the campus decides whether to rebuild or to make seismic retrofits. But for more than a half-century the multipurpose auditorium was center stage of student life — and more. It also played a leading role in the region’s rock ‘n’ roll history, hosting a long-running series of big-name musical acts.
Freeborn concerts helped make UC Davis a “center of rock music promotion” in the region, according to the Sacramento Rock and Radio Museum’s website. Many of those shows were produced by students — sponsored by the Associated Students of UC Davis and other organizations.
Although Freeborn stands quiet and empty now, in the memories of many Aggies (and in online videos), the place still rocks!
“Some of the best concerts I’ve gone to were at Freeborn,” Marcelle Domingo ’08 wrote in a post on UC Davis’ Facebook page.
“What a great hall for concerts! It was small enough to see the artist up close, yet large enough to attract popular artists such as Tom Petty,” said Jeff Mason ’81, who saw Petty and the Heartbreakers perform there in 1978.
Katy True Bejarano ’65 was a freshman in 1961–62 when Freeborn Hall opened. Then, the addition to the Memorial Union complex was called simply the assembly hall (it was later renamed to honor UC Davis’ first chancellor, entomologist Stanley Freeborn).
Robert Kennedy
For many Aggies who attended UC Davis in the late 1960s, their most vivid Freeborn Hall memory was of a presidential campaign appearance by Robert F. Kennedy three weeks before his assassination.
Joan Baez gave the inaugural concert that September. “She never cracked a smile, but her music was amazing,” said Bejarano, who also saw the Smothers Brothers, Peter Nero and Louis Armstrong perform at Freeborn. “What a lineup!”
The lineups continued to amaze other Aggies over the years. Other alumni share memories of some of their favorite Freeborn Hall shows:
1960–70s
“I saw the great Duke Ellington for $1, and later Glenn Yarborough and his warm-up act, a young Bill Cosby who was skinny and had hair.”
Favorite concert: Glenn Yarborough (“Baby The Rain Must Fall”).
“The first time I saw chairs in Freeborn was at commencement; prior to that, the only seating I recall is pillows — as in pillow concerts. My most memorable Freeborn pillow concert involved Joan Baez in [December 1970]. I was not a Joan Baez fan, thinking her too smug and serious. But my boyfriend bought tickets, so I went. We were about 20 feet from the stage. Joan asked that no one take photos, explaining that later she would sing a song specifically for photo takers and would smile throughout the song. After several of her trademark serious ballads, she announced it was photo time. She launched into a song titled, ‘Thank God and Greyhound You’re Gone,’ singing and smiling until every flashbulb had been expended. I left Freeborn a Joan Baez fan.”
The campus grows up
Freeborn Hall, built to replace a 1922 building, helped grow a regional audience to support the construction of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
1980s
“I saw The Motels there in September 1982. Such a great venue and tix were affordable for freshman like me.”
“My best Freeborn memory is a concert by the iconic ’80s band Oingo Boingo. We were pressing toward the stage when front man Danny Elfman pulled off his T-shirt and threw it into the crowd. Unexpectedly, it flew right at me, but when I reached up to grab it, another hand had part of it. In the thick crowd there was a brief moment of tugging before we looked at each other and simultaneously realized it was our roommate! We high-fived and went back to rocking out to the great music. Since I lived with the same three guys for my last three years at Davis, that sweaty T-shirt hung in our house for awhile, and although I can’t say much for our decorating taste at the time, the memory makes me laugh.”
“If I have to choose one favorite concert it was in 1986 when Phranc and 7 Seconds opened up for the Dead Kennedys. My date and I stayed for the first bands, but then left before the DKs, since she wanted to see a movie in 194 Chem that night. I was new to dating, so I assumed that meant compromise: We can do both events in one night, even if it means that I miss part of the show. Bummer that it was the DK’s last concert ever before they broke up. But now I have a great story to tell — thanks to UC Davis and Freeborn Hall.”
1990s–2000s
“I saw a great Counting Crows concert there in the mid-90s. No one knew who they were. I also performed in a concert there where the maestro lost his suspenders and almost his pants! One of my favorite memories!”
“I got to see Fuel rock Freeborn Hall hard! Great times and memories! Jimmy Eat World, Death Cab for Cutie, and Tegan and Sara.”
“I saw Godsmack my first week there as a student. Fuel another year. And a few years after I graduated I saw Beck there (and got to meet him too).”
“For me it has to be [Nine Inch Nails] in 2005. Who would have thought one of the biggest alternative bands from the ’90s and now would have done a rehearsal show on the UC Davis campus? Thankfully I was smart enough to take my student ID to buy tickets the day tickets went on sale. Scored a pair of tickets from the last 100 they had reserved for students only. I could have easily sold my tickets for rent money, but couldn’t because it was NIN!”
“Dance partying with Girl Talk for free and then bringing him down to Lower Freeborn Hall to record a radio drop for KDVS!”
“The first time I ever went to a concert was the [January 2011] 30 Seconds to Mars concert. And it was here at Freeborn hall. It was amazing.”