SOhO Hosts Fundraiser Concert for Freedom Warming Centers

This Wednesday, December 21, warm yourself at the hearth of homegrown music so that others can sleep through the night. Join friends Kirstin Candy-McFarland and Billy Mandarino of Le Reve Nouveau, Jesse Rhodes, Cory Sipper, George Friedenthal, and Shaun Oster as they sing at SOhO Restaurant & Music Club (1221 State St.) to stoke the warm atmospheres of the Freedom Warming Centers of Santa Barbara, where those who cannot find a place to sleep at night can find shelter during these colder winter nights.

Funds from the evening’s event will help provide beds and supplies at the warming centers, provided as a last-resort refuge for the unsheltered homeless, open to all regardless of condition. Christened after a homeless man named Freedom who passed away in downtown S.B. in 2009, the warming centers help provide thousands of beds across South and North County. Warming centers can be found at First United Methodist Church in S.B., University United Methodist Church in I.V., the Veterans’ Memorial Building in Carpinteria, Peace Lutheran Church in Lompoc, and the Salvation Army in Santa Maria.

The night’s musical offerings will be a mix of Christmas carols and stripped-down acoustic arrangements. Kids can attend the show for free, and if you reserve a dinner table for eight or more, your reservation can help raise bonus funds for the cause thanks to Village Properties, who will add $100 per table reserved to the total donation. “It’s a very easy, communal, and fun way to give. I think there is always more excitement around a benefit concert because the audience and the performers are bonded together in giving to something outside themselves,” Sipper said. “We’re all one being — just different versions of it,” Rhodes said, and banding together as a community allows us to be “part of something bigger than yourself.”