Nancy Wenstrom & The Restless Girls

Name: Nancy Wenstrom & The Restless Girls
Start: 2025-09-28T15:00:00-0700
End: 2025-09-28T17:00:00-0700
Location: The Back Room

Sun, Sep 28, 3pm - 5pm PDT

The Back Room

Berkeley CA, United States

The Back Room

3985 followers · Contact host

Event description

Nancy Wenstrom is a Bay Area-based singer, lead guitarist, songwriter, and recording artist in the genres of rock, blues, jazz and country.

Born in Houston, Texas and growing up as an Air Force brat, she has lived all over the USA. She has played in numerous SF Bay Area bands and recorded 9 albums on her indie label, WCM Records. She was also the lead guitarist for the Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra, a premiere San Francisco R&B band.

Her newest album, The Tommie Tapes, is a 40th Anniversary first issue release consisting of 19 of her original songs recorded with her band, Tommie, in 1984 & 1985. She digitally remastered the music at Skywalker Sound, and has formed a new all-female band to celebrate the release of this project: Jan Martinelli on bass, an original member of Tommie, has played on most of Nancy’s albums. Jennifer Jolly on keyboards is also a well-known Bay Area musician, instructor, and performer. Drummer Robin Roth, a talented musician and instructor, rounds out the quartet.

Nancy says, “I hope you can join us for this very special record release party event. Come for the music of Nancy Wenstrom & The Restless Girls and have a piece of cake on us!”

Tickets are $20 general admission. Children under 12 are free. Advance tickets are available here, or if the show is not sold out, you may purchase your tickets at the door before the show.

Doors open 30 minutes before show time. We accept cash or Venmo only at the door.

The Back Room is an all-ages, BYOB (for those 21+) space, dedicated to (mostly) acoustic music of all kinds. You are welcome to bring your own food and beverages. The venue is ADA accessible. If you need more information or have any questions, please call us: #510-381-1997.

To join our mailing list, please click here.

Thank you for your support!

Please refrain from using your phone during performances, and if you use your camera or video, please disable the flash.

Although masks are no longer required, we strongly encourage their use to keep everyone safe in our intimate space.

Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity

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The Back Room

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When, as a young man in 1981, Sam Rudin moved from his native Philadelphia to the East Bay, he quickly fell in love with the Freight & Salvage, Berkeley’s quirky little 87-seat concert hall.

Filled with comfortable thrift store furniture and an informal ambience of appreciative attentiveness, the Freight was a perfect fit for performers of modest renown and acoustically-based music.

As a solo (albeit high-energy) pianist, Sam’s music fit the bill, and the Freight became Sam’s home base. In the absence of other Freight-like rooms, Sam turned his solo performer attention to the outdoor fair and festival circuit, and later started the jazz/blues band Hurricane Sam & the Hotshots.

Now, maybe it’s all the energy he put into becoming a master piano teacher, or maybe the fair and festival circuit just doesn’t have the right ingredients to nurture a high-profile career. Whatever the reason, despite critical acclaim, four CD’s, and a whole bunch of happy audiences, years later Sam was still a performer of modest renown, and he missed that great little room.

As the Freight grew and expanded, ultimately arriving at the gorgeous 420 seat theater that it occupies today, Sam started to feel that maybe it was up to him to recreate that wonderful small space. No longer a young man, it would be his late-life adventure.

Eventually, he found the perfect spot: a beautiful space with brick walls and vaulted wood ceilings right by the Arts District in downtown Berkeley. As of April 2016, it is open for business, complete with the requisite thrift store furniture.

The space is actually the back room of a larger building, so of course it is called The Back Room, and the tag line on its logo says it all – “an intimate place for music.”

The site, at 1984 Bonita Ave., also functions as Sam’s teaching studio, so if you’re looking for “The Piano Lessons You’ve Always Wanted,” now you know where to find them.

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Sun, Sep 28, 3pm - 5pm PDT

The Back Room

Berkeley CA, United States

Hosted by The Back Room