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Caffé Lena has a storied history in Saratoga Springs starting in 1960, launching the careers of many folk greats including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Don McLean. Now, the venue is providing that same feel-good listening experience and great talent, set in their iconic intimate setting. In honor of Women’s History Month, it is important to highlight the women helping make the industry happen. Executive Director at Caffé Lena, Sarah Craig, is one of these women leading in the industry.

Lena and Bill Spencer opened Caffé Lena with a deeply entrenched European influence. Upon the passing of Lena in 1989, the venue was converted to a nonprofit institution, supported by concert revenue, grants, private and corporate donors, and a team of volunteers. Lena started the venue as a way to present deserving talent regardless of fame, emphasizing community over business. Over the years, this theme still sticks with Caffé Lena’s diverse range of programming. Whether in-person or on a live stream, those can enjoy the intimate setting and vibe while garnering the sense of community so prevalent in everything they do.

Sarah Craig has been the Executive Director of Caffé Lena since 1995, a role she earned by applying to an anonymous job posting in the classified section of the newspaper. All it said was, “Nonprofit arts organization seeks full or part-time executive director.” She was the only applicant, and the rest is history.

Craig earned her BA in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of Vermont, where she developed organizing skills as an activist. “[I was] inspired by two things: my sister’s participation in the Peace Corps in rural Paraguay, which was a huge eye-opener for me, and my own exposure to Liberation Theology in the Catholic Church, which was an important part of my life at the time,” she said. She became interested in gay rights, ecology, and economic justice, working in the sphere of some very effective senior activists, including Bernie Sanders and Roddy Cleary.

After college, she moved to Boston and began canvassing for Massachusetts Peace Action, serving as the Executive Director before eventually going to Caffé Lena. When she first started at Lena, her duties included grant writing, house management, and developing the volunteer and membership base. Now that there are a dozen people on staff, the budget has grown more than 2,000%. She says she spends “about 1/2 of my time booking shows, 1/4 fundraising, and 1/4 developing new ideas and managing the team.”

Caffé Lena takes up most of her time – waking and sleeping. “It’s an outlet for my creative energy, my social energy, and my dreams of saving the world. But, ever since the start of the pandemic, I’ve made a concerted effort to not be all Caffe all the time,” she explained. She is working on a sequel to a novel she finished and started playing the French horn again. She likes to spin yarn and felt, run or X-C ski, and when it’s the season – grow vegetables. She also likes to play online Scrabble with her daughter in NC a few times a week, and explains that was one of Lena’s great passions, “she was a 400 player.”

In 2016, the venue underwent $2 million in renovations creating a home for Lena’s celebrated program for decades to come. New additions also included a 100% handicap-accessible space on their second-floor performance space.

Caffé Lena has a wide variety of programming available besides their eclectic mix of performers. In 2020, they launched the School of Music to carry on the folk tradition of music as a social pastime. Children and adults learn in small, friendly groups, mastering a repertoire of folk classics, and write some too. Some more experienced kids have now formed their own band, The Rolling Pebbles.

Folk gets passed along by venues, festivals, camps, places of worship, community groups and families. The School is our investment in this process. We offer activities for toddlers to seniors that are social and musical. It’s the most wonderful thing to sit at my desk and hear 30 senior citizens in the next room jamming away on three-chord songs and just having the best time. Or seeing our youth students developing into righteous little fiddlers and guitarists…There are powerful forces in the world pulling us deeper and deeper into a world of technology, where people are rarely face to face with their community. People are not experiencing social life in the way we’ve evolved to experience it. The School of Music feels like a win for basic, old-school humanity. 

Sarah Craig.

Other programs that have been seen at Caffé Lena are The Bright Series – monthly shows featuring artists playing the venue for the first time; Caffé Lena on the Road, where headline artists travel into the community to deliver live music at places such as elderly care centers, recovery groups, soup kitchens, and more; Pride Night; Little Folk Shows – kid-friendly matinees; and so much more.

Since Craig’s time at the venue, she has seen a variety of musicians, with some of her favorites including those that have not risen to widespread fame besides small clubs like Lena. “In that category, I’d cite Jeremy Wallace, Gina Forsyth, and Chandler Travis. Some were real jaw-droppers and indeed they did go far: Anais Mitchell, Billy Strings, 14-year-old Sawyer Fredericks, and Allison Russell, who just won two GRAMMYs.” She went on to say “Our staff gets asked a lot, ‘Who’s your favorite?’ and we all agree: it’s the one we saw last night.”

Caffé Lena has a long history in the folk scene but as Sarah Craig pointed out in our conversation, the emergence of Americana music in 2007 replaced some of the singer-songwriters from the ’80s and ’90s. The popularity of folk-rock string bands has stayed strong for nearly 20 years. Since taking the reigns in 1995, she noticed that the Internet has drastically changed many things.

“It completely changed the culture of everything everywhere, but that definitely includes live music,” she explained. “On the positive side, it has greatly facilitated our success in building an audience with eclectic tastes that is willing to explore new music. On the downside, it has radically amped up the way of life at Caffe Lena. Lena used to book her musicians for a full weekend. These days, it’s a different show every night, and bands rush in 2 hours before showtime and hit the road immediately afterward to get to the next gig.”

With events happening almost every day, the venue is busy and booming. Sarah Craig loves the atmosphere of the venue. She loves when the volunteers arrive and start baking cookies and making coffee, and when the “legendary Joe Deuel, Lena’s sound tech for the past one thousand years, starts setting up the mics.” The little moments that she experiences every day are her favorite; turning off the lights at the end of the show and saying goodnight to the iconic venue.

The music industry is largely dominated by men, but some very decent people love music and enjoy spending their lives with musicians and are not in it for the money. Asking Craig about her experience as a woman in the industry, she said that her experience has overall been good. Despite the fact she isn’t a man, who can get more bookings, she has made it work. Something notable she highlighted was that the nonprofit world, like Caffé Lena, is largely dominated by women, however, the majority of executive directors are men.

Why does she think this is? Sarah explained “Because boards of directors have more confidence in men. The world continues to misread women because women tend not to be swaggering and self-advocating. They just do a rock-solid job, and expect that to be enough. This is something people in supervisory positions need to be conscious of: valuable male workers and valuable female workers don’t necessarily look the same.”

Despite this, working in the music industry is a rewarding experience for her, and many women across the board.

Caffé Lena has an eclectic lineup month after month, full of vibrant musicians and welcoming people. For more information about the venue, visit here.