JPF Home Page Forums Gulf Coast Healing: Indie Community Comes Together

Independent Music Community Comes Together Raise Funds: Please join us!
Most of us have been directly or indirectly affected by the recent series of disasters associated with the Hurricane season in 2005. Not only Katrina and Rita but also the storms that hit Central America and caused thousands and thousands of deaths. Add to that the harrowing earthquake this week in Pakistan where 30,000 people have lost their lives and 2.5 million are now homeless. What is clear is that even when we think the worst has come, there's always going to be new disasters and tragedies and there will always be folks in desperate need of help in our own countries (we have members in over 100 different countries around the world reading this) and in the countries of our neighbors. If you're like me, you've been deluged with hundreds of requests for donations, or to attend benefit concerts or to buy CD's and other items where a portion of the money is going to charity. I wrestled with how to best address all these requests and events and get that information out to all of you. I decided that what we really needed was one unified effort where we could all focus whatever additional financial resources we had to a single effort where 100% of the funds would go directly to the Red Cross. As I was thinking this over, I was contacted by our good friends and Disc Makers about just such a project.

Our 3 closest allies and community partners Disc Makers, CD Baby and TAXI and us have joined together to focus on a CD project called Gulf Coast Healing. It features 19 award winning artists (including some 2004 JPF Music Award nominees) which were quickly cleared and packaged for the project by the folks from Disc Makers. They have donated all the design and production costs and CD Baby is donating their service fees so that 100% (i.e. every single penny) goes directly to the Red Cross. To me, that's the type of project we need to rally around. You can include the purchase price in your annual charitable giving for tax purposes and you get some cool music without a single penny being taken for administrative or product costs.

The information on the music and order page can be found at this link:
Gulf Coast Healing:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/gulfcoast

We in the US may have noticed that the TV news cycles have already started to switch to other stories, but we know that the rebuilding and misery here in the US is really just sinking in. With the additional strain (and far more horrendous death tolls) in other countries going on, the resources of the Red Cross will be strained to the max. And remember, the Red Cross will also be responding to new disasters which will inevitably come. So if you haven't given all you plan to give, or if you can spare another $15.00 to donate to the Red Cross, you can get a cool CD of fellow artists for the trouble and come together with the rest of the Grassroots Independent Artist community as well as our brethen at CD Baby, TAXI and Disc Makers (roughly 500,000 of us all combined!) to raise $100.000 dollars amongst the Indie Artist Community.

I also want to acknowledge that our friends at Disc Makers, CD Baby and TAXI each donated an additional $10,000 dollars in cash to the Red Cross above and beyond their efforts with this project (and many others they are each involved with). It really makes me proud to be associated with these folks and I hope if you have need of any of their services, you'll check them out as thanks for their support not only of our community as community partner sponsors, but their generous support of people in need as well. Those 3 companies are most responsible for making our 2005-2006 JPF Music Awards possible and since over 25,000 of our 38,000 members have entered something this year, I hope you'll all consider giving a little back as well to this worthy cause. We will update you all on how many CD's have been sold and how much money has been raised.

Visit each of our amazing community partners at:

www.discmakers.com
www.taxi.com
www.cdbaby.com