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Featured Coffeehouse of the Month

Tremedal is the name of one of the Boston area's favorite coffeehouses; it is also a village in El Salvador.  Tremedal Concerts has been bringing the best folk music to Watertown since it was founded in 1990, when the city official endorsed Tremedal, El Salvador, as its Sister City.  Alex Liazos and several of the coffeehouse's other founders were heavily involved in establishing that sister-city relationship, and the coffeehouse grew from that effort.

Tremedal Concerts hosts six concerts a year, and attendance ranges from 40 to 170.  All the profits go to the El Salvadoran village, to help with schooling, rebuilding wells, providing new housing, and other projects.  In addition to the music, the coffeehouse sells a rich array of handmade El Salvadoran crafts.  There is also a bookseller who sets up shop at the concerts, offering books about politics and music.

Concerts are held in a comfy, carpeted room with padded chairs and fine acoustics.  Parking is free in a large church lot, and an adjacent city lot.  As at all BACHA coffeehouses, dress is casual, and all shows are family-friendly.

Asked about the range of music Tremedal presents, Liazos says, "We do a lot of singer-songwriters, with some social and political content as often as I can get away with it.  We also try to have some traditional Celtic, Latin American, and other roots styles."

And the food? "It's sweet things, cakes, cookies, coffee, hot and cold cider.  And it's all stuff we bake ourselves.  Everyone has a specialty; you know, I make the chocolate chip cookies, somebody does lemon squares, somebody else does brownies, somebody does a special kind of bread.  There are about eight of us who each bring something every time."

In the mid-90s, the village of Tremedal split into two groups, with one resettling in Nuevo Esperanza.  It is that group with which the Tremedal coffeehouse still has a relationship.  Coffeehouse committee members visit at least once a year, inquiring into the needs of the villagers, tracking their progress, and ensuring their two communities remain connected.

"A number of communities all over the United States had sister cities in El Salvador in 1990, when the civil war there was still going on," Liazos says.  "Most sister city groups have disbanded now, but we keep going on.  People ask us all the time why that is, and everybody agrees it's because we have the coffeehouse.  It gives our group a coherence and identity, a purpose, and a regular function that keeps us together.  The coffeehouse is our own little community."