Singer-songwriter Rachel Garlin has spent the last couple of months doing regular performances outside her garage on Church Street in Noe Valley. She sits on a stool, or behind her keyboard, and sings for about an hour a few times a week — trying to add "fly-by music," she says, to the lives of people living and walking nearby.
She posted the video below about these sidewalk sessions in early April, and this week the Chronicle's Heather Knight did a feel-good piece about Garlin's work. "The charismatic 46-year-old has a chilled out, beach vibe on the outside, but inside her mind is clearly whirring," Knight writes.
Garlin, 46, lives in the home on Church near 26th with her wife and their three kids. She grew up in Berkeley, and tells the Chronicle that it was a childhood filled with a lot of music, and jam sessions. So that's why she turned her garage into an ersatz music room a few years ago, for jam sessions with her kids — and she made a habit of opening the door and sitting on the sidewalk playing music every Saturday morning.
During the lockdown she's shifted to evening hours, figuring people need the break after long and stressful days.
Front porch and sidewalk shows have abounded across the country these past couple of months, and New Orleans, with its bevy of musical talent, has been blessed with plenty of these.
Let's have more in San Francisco!— our days and evenings could use a bit more color and sound these days.
One more: here's a cheery morning song Garlin recorded a couple weeks ago.