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Hootie and The Blowfish launch Homegrown Concert Series
Article published on Friday, Sept. 8, 2006 |
TAMPA - Hootie and the Blowfish with Better Than Ezra bring the Homegrown Concert Series to Tampa Bay on Friday, Sept. 15, 7:30 p.m. at the Ford Amphitheatre.
Two time Grammy Award winners Hootie and The Blowfish are expanding their Homegrown Concert event into a series of concerts all aimed at helping kids get the most out of their education. The goal of the concert series is to try and improve the educational needs of schools within the community.
Concert-goers are asked to bring any school supply item to the concert, as a donation, and following the concert the supplies will be distributed to the Hillsborough County Public Schools.
Hootie and the Blowfish is one of the most successful music groups in the world and since their first album debuted in 1994, the band has played to millions of fans and sold more than 25 million albums worldwide.
As one of the most recognizable bands in the world, Hootie ad the Blowfish believe they have a responsibility to use their celebrity status to help improve the lives of those in need, especially children. They often take the lead in creating projects where they can join forces with other organizations to help make a positive difference in lives of today's youth.
The Hootie and the Blowfish Foundation is a private non-profit organization, originally created in 2000 to benefit children of South Carolina through education and supporting school music programs, that has spread to a nationwide campaign.
In 2003, the band members established an annual concert in their hometown, Charleston, S.C., as a way to help raise awareness to the needs of local school children in the community. Every year many schools are forced to receive budget cuts that ultimately in one way or another affects the quality of education each child receives.
The night of the concert, ticket holders were asked to bring school supplies of any kind to the concert at Family Circle Magazine Stadium. The response was overwhelming, and the Charleston County School District children were the beneficiaries of a generous community effort. A 55-seat school bus was filled from top to bottom with school supplies and following the concert those supplies were distributed to the schools and teachers who were in most need.
Knowing the positive effect this project had on kids and the community, the band wanted to expand the concert into other markets of South and North Carolina. In 2004, In addition to Charleston, the Homegrown Concert Series added Columbia, S.C., Anderson, S.C. and Raleigh, N.C. to its list of markets, and successfully filled a school bus in each community with schools supplies. To date, the band and their loyal fans have helped fill seven busloads of much needed supplies for the Carolinas.
This year Hootie and the Blowfish, with the help of Live Nation and the Hard Rock Café, will expand the concert series once more, picking up a total of eleven stops, kicking off in Nashville Tenn., and taking the band through Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina Pennsylvania and Florida. The Hard Rock Café will match the total amount of school supplies donated by concertgoers in each of its markets where a Homegrown Concert is taking place.
Tickets to the Tampa show are $35.00 & $27.50 for reserved seats and available at the Ford Amphitheatre box office, livenation.com, ticketmaster.com and all ticketmaster outlets, or charge-by-phone: 813-287-8844 in Tampa; 727-898-2100 in Pinellas County; and 407-839-3900 in Central Florida.
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Article published on Friday, Sept. 8, 2006
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