Alive Inside Returns to San Quentin

The last few weeks have been tremendous for our organization for several reasons.

Starting with a 72-hour prison program tour to Ohio, with events in London Correctional Institution & the Ohio Reformatory for Women, a retreat with the Ohio Innocence Project for exonerees of the prison system, & an event in Columbus with several local organizations deeply invested in caring for community impacted by the prison system…

…to our SOLD-OUT return to our “home” at The Lost Church San Francisco’s *NEW* venue!

…to a SOLD-OUT return to our curated concert context at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage!

…and, in addition to all that, incredibly, we returned our in-person ALIVE INSIDE prison program events to our community at San Quentin for their Mental Wellness Week.

With EVERYTHING we’ve been honored to accomplish with our communities these past few weeks, somehow these events with our San Quentin community feel especially precious & important to me.

The last event we did before the pandemic, when we had a years’ worth of dates scheduled to be together with our community inside, was February 1st, 2020. What an event to arrive at, that movingly meaningful night, with a year of deepening ahead, with what's possible in consistently, regularly showing up with any community & then… CANCELLED.

But FINALLY, last week, almost three years later, with the incredible friends & musicians pictured here, we returned with a concert/open mic on Monday night for over 100 San Quentin community members & a concert in the yard Friday for what had to have been 1,000 attendees, our stage right alongside the Golden State Warriors playing a game with the prison’s basketball team, tennis professionals playing with community on the tennis court, a literal 1000 Mile Club Marathon running circles around everything, &, in the midst of all that, a still somehow deeply attentive, immovable, sincerely grateful audience.

And while it is an experience one of the men described as a taste of freedom, it’s also, always, a jarring & moving learning experience for what it means to be alive inside. And not just “alive inside” San Quentin, but alive in their hearts – more alive than most anyone I meet outside.

Thank you to SQ Mental Health for having us back, to all our musician community for holding the space with heartfelt humanity, better than anyone I know in my life, & especially so much gratitude to our incarcerated community members for their gracious, wholehearted, generous welcoming. We are so grateful & glad to be back with this community, to offer what medicine & healing we can, with our music & our deep listening.

Because they are our community & it’s a sincere honor to be with them again.