The Healing Blues Project

In The Healing Blues Project faculty and students from Greensboro College are teaming with area musicians to work with local storytellers who are clients of the Interactive Resource Center struggling with issues including homelessness and post-traumatic stress disorder to turn their stories into blues songs.

Storytellers express their challenges to participating songwriters. Songwriters then collaborate with the storyteller to write and perform a song that will be included on The Healing Blues CD, crediting both the collaborators with the creation of the song.

Project proceeds will benefit Greensboro's Interactive Resource Center as well as the storytellers who are clients of the IRC. The IRC is an innovative day resource center for people experiencing homelessness that provides many crucial services to the homeless community.

The "Healing Blues" CD release celebration concert will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, at Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center, Odell Building, Greensboro College. The concert will feature Lawyers, Guns, and Money; the Greensboro College Gospel Choir under the direction of GC alumnus Jamar Tyree; The Fairlanes; plus members of The Healing Blues team, including Kristy Jackson, Neil Clegg, Jon Epstein, Sam Frazier, and more. 

Listen to WFDD public radio interview with project initiators David Fox and Ted Efremoff at 37.36 mark of the David Ford broadcast. 

How you can help

We ask you to help The Healing Blues project raise money for the IRC and the people they serve. Your contribution will help support the IRC as they provide job skills classes, shelter placement, showers, laundry facilities, medical assistance, arts programming, transportation assistance, case management, mail services and other services that reconnect those experiencing homelessness with the community.

We are looking to raise $30,000 in total. $20,000 of that money will go directly to the IRC. A portion of that money will go to the IRC clients who are storytellers on The Healing Blues Project.

$10,000 of the money will go to The Healing Blues project for the recording of The Healing Blues CD at Earthtones Recording Studio, paying studio musicians and creating 1,000 CD’s for distribution. A portion of that money will be used for the production of the three concerts and one public lecture for The Healing Blues project. The final portion of the money will be used to create the CD cover and package art as well as produce rewards for the contributors.

To get the recording process rolling, we have raised $2,000 through Power to Give, now we would like to raise the remainder of the cost of the CD and concerts.

Your generous contribution will not only support a great Greensboro community organization in the IRC but also a unique work of art that commemorates our fellow community member’s stories of struggle. The healing process of talking about and memorializing one’s struggle in living music permeates this project as it has permeated The Blues since the beginning of the genre. Please join the dozens of generous musicians, artists, students, teachers and community members in supporting The Healing Blues project!!

We ask that anyone who does donate, to please share this page with your friends on Facebook to raise awareness. Thank you.
Link is: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-healing-blues

Perks

Original artwork for the CD by Greensboro College art student Gabrielle Harvin

Healing Blues Concerts and Events

A benefit concert, co-sponsored by ArtsGreensboro, featuring Dave Mcracken and Friends, including Sam Frazier and members of Donna the Buffalo, and The Healing Blues Band (Dave Fox, Roger Kohrs, Chuck Cotton, Benjy Johnson, and other Healing Blues songwriters and performers to be announced), 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, at the Blind Tiger, 1819 Spring Garden St. in Greensboro. Admission has yet to be determined and will be announced by ArtsGreensboro.

A Healing Blues Communion Service, 11:30 a.m.-noon Thursday, Oct. 2, in Hannah Brown Finch Memorial Chapel on the Greensboro College campus. Music by Healing Blues songwriters and musicians, along with college faculty members Dave Fox and Neill Clegg. Free and open to the public.

A Greensboro College Citizen-Scholar Series lecture and panel discussion, "The Art of Healing:  Social Practice Art and Communities of Need," featuring panelists Patrick Frank, author and singer-songwriter; Jessica Moore, founder and lead organizer at Open Art Society; George Scheer, executive director of Elsewhere Living Museum; Liz Seymour, Director Emeritus of the Interactive Resource Center; and GC associate professor Dave Fox, music director for Healing Blues, with discussion moderated by GC assistant professor Ted Efremoff, 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, 109 Proctor Hall West on the Greensboro College campus. Free and open to the public.

The "Healing Blues" CD release celebration concert, 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center, Odell Building, Greensboro College, featuring Lawyers, Guns, and Money; the Greensboro College Gospel Choir under the direction of GC alumnus Jamar Tyree; The Fairlanes; plus members of The Healing Blues team, including Kristy Jackson, Neil Clegg, Jon Epstein, Sam Frazier, and more. Admission: $15 at the door and includes a one-hour, meet-and-greet cocktail reception in Lea Center before the concert from 3 to 4 p.m.

Challenges

This is a project with many challenges as we are working to create a CD, put on three concerts and a lecture and raise funds simultaneously.  Despite that we are very confident that we will achieve our goals because we have assembled a great team of contributors. Our team includes experts in music and stage production, the best of local musicians, Arts Greensboro and the Piedmont Blues Preservation society, as well as many more collaborators. We have had overwhelmingly positive support from community members and music lovers alike and feel empowered by that. Thank you for your support!!