‘Give Back To KIDSFEST Charity Concert’ in Dallas Will Support Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children

We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled sports programming here at MSF to alert you to a good kid doing good work for a good cause.

The good kid is Jake Christoph, my girlfriend’s brother; the good work is a charity concert that he is quarterbacking here in the Dallas area where I call home; and the good cause is the Texas Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital for Children. The rest of the post below was written by Jake, detailing the cause, the goals, and the story behind how he got the lead singer of Bowling for Soup to perform at the concert.

Here is the website if you want to learn more after reading. I realize that most of our readers probably are not in Dallas, and therefore cannot attend the concert, but you can always donate!

Give Back To KidsFest Charity Concert

It’s not often bloggers are interested in topics outside their realm of coverage, but when JROD heard about this, he insisted I let his readers know about it. So, here it is.

The GIVE BACK TO KIDSFEST charity concert was at first a nonchalant idea to have a more public venue for my friend’s band, one of three participating in the inaugural event. As the other possibilities dwindled away, the charity concert seemed more and more likely. It finally came down to attracting two of the more popular bands from the area, bringing not only their musical talents but also their ideas and corporate connections to bring us to where we stand today.

The idea of directing the profits to a charity actually came from our parents, who thought it would bring a lot more coverage in addition to the satisfaction of giving back to the community, which has provided so much to everyone involved in this project. Collectively, the plan was to just have the three bands play and everyone was satisfied, but beneath the façade was the suspicion that there was not enough star power to bring the media coverage and street popularity we desired.

After attempting to contact numerous A-list bands including, Free Reign (the Dallas Cowboys Metal Band), the Jonas Brothers, and Third Eye Blind, learning all of them were going to be on tour or unable to attend the planned date of the event, it seemed the search for that household name began to run cold. Regardless, we kept searching for anyone who knew any celebrity artists to assist in our efforts to reach the $5,000 goal we set at the beginning.

Finally, a friend of a friend got us in contact with our special guest star for the evening: Jaret Reddick of Bowling For Soup, who was actually on a conference call when he allowed us to explain our plan and ideas…and he loved it!

So having the musical talent squared away, the four key decision makers in this set out to find a venue. This actually turned out to be pretty easy considering the first and second choices were right next to each other and were having concerts of their own already. After learning the Shops of Highland Village, choice #1, denied our request to use their concert venue, we approached the Rockfish manager in the same area with the same plea. Again we struck gold, this time with Daniel Cook, general manager of Rockfish in Highland Village.

Everything up to this point had seemed like hard work but well worth the time and effort put in. Yet, in the recessed economy we currently reside in, the search for corporate sponsors to assist with the associated costs was really no search at all. Some chose the cash donation route (thank you Salerno’s in Flower Mound and Ms. Hollaway of Herbalife) while others could only give gift cards (thank you IHOP of Highland Village). The great thing is that because all the necessary costs from the event were dissolved by donations of equipment, all the cash donations and revenue from the day of the event will be collected to make one (hopefully large) donation to our beneficiary, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children.

So the three local bands, Adeperle, the Allie Farris Trio, and Still Fly, with the special appearance by Mr. Jaret Reddick of BFS, are set to perform at the Rockfish in Highland Village, Texas on Tuesday August 11th, 2009 from 5-10PM (the ending time is only tentative). If any of you reading this are in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex on the 11th, come on out and support us as we Give Back To Kids.

For more information:

• On the concert: http://mysite.verizon.net/resw1ahj
• Website for the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children

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