Gary Rosenberg

Gary Rosenberg is best described as a Troubadour or Minstrel. His story is one of a character in a ballad: tradesman, animal rescuer, homeless advocate, street singer, organic farmer and horse shoer. He was a crew member on Pete Seeger’s Clearwater, the flagship of the movement to reclaim America’s waterways. He followed Hurricane Katrina and traveled to New Orleans to rescue abandoned pets. He has performed his music in bars in Italy and hospitals in Russia, on the streets of Israel and resorts in the Caribbean, at festivals in Brazil and ashrams in India. Gary has always used his music to convey a message of social reform and the hope of a better world. It is through his travels that he came to realize the common spirit that is shared by all peoples and a deep commitment to use music to bring people together.

Gary began playing music and singing as an infant. He studied several instruments throughout his childhood and picked up the guitar at age 12. By 15 he was playing weekly in a bar on New York’s upper west side. Through his early years Gary played for tips on the streets of New York and late at night on benches of Central Park in the area that has come to be known as Strawberry Field where his audience consisted mostly of rats, junkies and drunks. He heard the shots that killed John Lennon from his parent’s dining room across the street and was indelibly touched during the four days that followed when the street outside his apartment building was packed with mourners repeatedly singing, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

Gary’s deep connection with animals is expressed in his songs, many of which are in some way related to one or another of the 75 dogs he has fostered and re-homed over the last twenty years. His songs, Olivia, Gus, and Women That Bite (and dogs who don’t) are all based on canine relationships. Little Bird is a dedication to a rescued, featherless Coyer that lived on Gary’s shoulder and under his covers for three years. The sound of horses at the beginning of Gary’s song Blue Delta Fire took four days to record and is an homage to his love of horses acquired over the ten years he worked as a horse shoer. Every morning he can be found near the racetrack overlooking the Bay where he feeds about 1,000 seagulls food scraps gathered the previous night.

Gary is a long time student of organic farming with a passion for reducing and redirecting the waste that our society produces. Gary has made it his personal mission to perform the song “Garbage” – “what will we do when there is nothing left to breathe, nothing left to walk upon, nothing left to talk about, nothing left to be but garbage, Garbage, GARBAGE!!!” (Copyright (c) 1969 Whitfeld Music, Bill Steele).

On most days Gary can be found somewhere on the streets of Berkeley practicing his guitar while his four dogs roam nearby. His favorite album is Joni Mitchell’s Hejira. He hopes to emulate one of his favorite artists Ted Hawkins who preformed on the boardwalk of Venice Beach until he was “discovered” when well into his sixties. Gary’s favorite gig is the farmer’s market where payment comes in the form of free-range eggs, fresh bread and organic peaches. His personal goals include introducing as many children as possible to the song Puff the Magic Dragon and to play for Pete Seeger before he passes.