REAL
Sunday, March 9
Black Swan Ale House
TOM PHILLIPS AND THE MEN OF CONSTANT SORROW
Saturday, March 15
Victoria Park Community Centre
Musicians commonly behave like living billboards for altruism. In 1971, George Harrison coaxed players like Eric Clapton and the reclusive Bob Dylan to appear at his Concert for the People of Bangladesh. In 1984, Bob Geldof organized the celebrated Live Aid event. And Jackson Browne, Sting and U2 regularly raise funds and awareness for Amnesty International.
Calgary artists share this tradition, as evidenced by folks like Kris Demeanor, who spent a recent Friday night strumming chords in the corner of Alex Ferguson Elementary School’s gymnasium, donating a live soundtrack to an auction that raised $14,000 for a safer playground.
Local bands REAL and Tom Phillips and the Men of Constant Sorrow are two of the many acts making music while making sure they leave the world a little better off than they found it.
REAL GENEROSITY
In a gesture of generosity, Kirby Sewell, the lead singer and driving force behind Real, hooked the three-year-old band up with the Children’s Cottage. The former Mount Royal College student studied both music and accounting, giving him insight into two important sides of his career before he decided to focus strictly on Real’s music. His group offers up a polished blend of smooth, carefully crafted pop in homage to his love of ’70s bands – a sound leading to Real’s high-riding position in the listener-chosen Top 20 at garageband.com.
Between playing opening sets for Wide Mouth Mason and Streetheart and recording the band’s self-titled debut, Sewell settled on the Children’s Cottage as his chosen cause.
"Well, everyone loves children and wants them to be safe," says Sewell. "That’s why we decided to donate (to) the Children’s Cottage five dollars from every CD we sell at stores."
Citing a loving family that raised him to believe in unconditional love and goodwill towards others as a factor in his benevolence, Sewell is pleased to help others while pursuing his dream of a successful musical career. Real’s disc was released at the end of January and is available at Megatunes and Sam’s in Chinook Centre.
MEN OF SORROW BEFRIEND GUATEMALANS
School Friends is an informal group that has built 12 schools in Guatemala and one in Nicaragua. Organizer Mike Miller snagged the help of Tom Phillips and company to perform a benefit gig March 15 at the Victoria Park Community Centre, helping to make School Friends’ vision of an orphanage in Chimaltenango, Guatemala a reality.
School Friends is not a charity per se, but an informal direct aid organization, which means that 100 per cent of funds raised go to projects, not administrative fees. The Web site, www.safetyboss.net, offers photos of groups of people from around the world coming together to build schools during two-week sojourns. Miller has been working with the group for about 10 years now.
"I’ve seen real changes in people’s lives during that time," he says. "The idea is to bring people from the First World together with people from the Third World to share achievements."
He approached the Men of Constant Sorrow for help because "almost everyone in this city is a fan."
Just back from playing the Frostbite Festival in Whitehorse, Phillips says that his band gets many requests for charity gigs.
"We like to do a certain amount of benefit work every year and this is a worthy cause," he says. "We had to, at some point, start really picking and choosing because there are a lot of good causes out there."
The band got even busier after its recent CD release, with gigs booked just about every weekend and Phillips himself on a songwriting jag that hardly lets him sleep. Still, this worthy cause got the nod for the band’s time, says Phillips, "because the people we are working with are great, they like our music and they are good promoters." Tickets for the benefit are available by calling 261-5075. |
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