Music / Interviews
Interview: Musicians Against Homelessness
There was a time when, in no small part due to Crisis, Big Issue and many others, that it felt like homelessness was close to being eradicated. But take a look around the City centre, check a few facts online and it’s clear there’s a long way to go and a lot of work to do. Thankfully people are concerned enough to get involved and you can do your bit to help and get a fabulous night of live music for your fiver. The gig is part of a national initiative fronted by Alan McGee and features a wealth of local talent, it’s at the Mother’s Ruin on Saturday 30th September. We caught up with Chris Harper out of the Husky Tones, who has put the show together to get the story.
How did the gig come about?
I heard about the Musicians Against Homelessness festival last year and thought to myself “If they do that again I’ll see if I can get involved somehow”. I thought I’d put Husky Tones forward to perform at an event organised by someone else but later it occurred to me that I may as well put the event on myself, at least that way I get to decide the line up! And I wasn’t going to wait for someone else to get something going.
is needed now More than ever
Who’s playing?
Husky Tones of course, also I’ve got Black Wendy and Rita Lynch on the bill and I’ve asked Joss Musmann to do an acoustic slot to kick us off. I may yet add to it but we’ll see. It’s going to be big, loud and full on! The set times might be a little fluid so get there early and stay for the whole evening.
What do you hope to achieve?
The tickets are only £5 for a full evening of great music so I’m hoping we’ll get a big crowd and raise lots of cash for Crisis. 100% of ticket sales goes directly to them and a percentage of the bands’ merch sales will be donated too. It’s also about awareness, homelessness is a rapidly escalating problem in the UK and waiting for this government to do something positive about it is like waiting for a fire to put itself out, we want people to be talking about this.
If people can’t make the gig can they still contribute in some way?
Sure, the first they can do is tell all their friends about the gig and encourage them to come along, once they’ve done that they can then visit Crisis online and make a donation.
https://youtu.be/EHC_nMgNN9U
Will this become a regular thing?
Last year was the first one of these and apparently it went really well so we’ll see how it goes this September. Sadly there’s a greater need for it every year at the moment so I imagine that it’ll continue unless we can change some big things at governmental level. If it goes ahead again next year I’m sure we’ll be involved again.
How about recordings as fund raisers?
They can work very well, as far as I know there aren’t any plans to do that for MAH but maybe in the future they’ll consider it. I’m sure all the bands on the Bristol line up would want to be involved if something like that happened. The MAH festival being the brain child of Alan McGee and having lots of big name support means they could possibly get something like that off the ground.
Get your ticket here.
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