Community Corner

De Lone Lines Up All-Star Roster for Benefit

Mill Valley musician's fifth annual fundraiser, set for Sept. 29 at Great American Music Hall, features Bill Kirchen, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Steve Earle and Ryan Bingham.

In his more than four decades in music, Mill Valley musician Austin de Lone has developed a vaunted reputation as the consummate collaborator, coordinating countless jam sessions over the years at places like the old Sweetwater and bringing out the best in a diverse array of stalwart musicians.

That flair for facilitation, along with the fact that there may not be a more well-liked musician in the Bay Area, has also helped de Lone compile one heck of a Rolodex.

“I’ve been around a long time,” de Lone says nonchalantly.

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Over the past five years, de Lone has drawn on that Rolodex in organizing all-star jam session-style benefit concerts for the Richard de Lone Special Housing Project, the residential facility he hopes to create for people with Prader-Willi Syndrome. De Lone’s 13-year-old son Richard is afflicted with the rare chromosomal disorder that affects 1 in 15,000 births and causes those suffer from it to be insatiably hungry and require ongoing care.

De Lone unveiled this week the lineup for this year’s benefit show, dubbed Peace, Love & Twang and set for Sept. 29 at Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. In past years, he’s drawn on his longtime friendship with Elvis Costello, who in 2007 reunited with Clover, the Marin band who backed Costello on his 1997 debut album, My Aim Is True.

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For the 2011 edition, de Lone has once again packed the bill with troubadours and guitarists who are already set to be in town for the massive Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park from Sept. 30-Oct. 2.

He started with his longtime pal and former Bay Area collaborator Bill Kirchen. The “Titan of the Telecaster” and “King of Dieselbilly” and his band, The Hammer of the Honky Tonk Gods, serve as hosts and the house band. De Lone and Kirchen built a lineup laden with people who have collaborated with one another.

Grammy-winning country singer Jim Lauderdale is on the bill, as is guitarist Buddy Miller, a member of Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, which plays Hardly Strictly on Sept. 30. Texas country singer and actor Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Berkeley-based songwriter Kevin Blackie Farrell are also in the mix, as is acclaimed singer-songwriter Steve Earle.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, last in the Bay Area , lends a New Orleans spice to the evening, while the bill is rounded out by Ryan Bingham, a singer-songwriter who took home a whopping number of awards in 2010 – Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe – for co-penning and performing "The Weary Kind” from the film Crazy Heart.

“It’s going to be great,” de Lone says.

De Lone said that while the event serves as the organization’s primary fundraiser each year each year, it also provides a great opportunity to spread the word about Prader-Willi Syndrome.

“Awareness is a big part of the thing and that’s why it’s been great to have these folks come out every year and lend a hand," he says. “We’ve been very fortunate to be able to do these concerts and raise a nice chunk of change and keep our organization going.”

De Lone hopes raise approximately $5 million and have the residential facility ready to open by 2018. Over the next year, the organization is set to go through feasibility studies and get into strategic planning mode, eventually identifying either a vacant property or existing building to renovate. He credits Sweetwater Spectrum, a Greenbrae-based organization that is building housing for adults with autism in Sonoma, as a great example.

“They’re doing a lot of what we hope to be able to do,” he says. “So far, we’re on target.”

The 411: The Peace, Love & Twang concert is Thursday, Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. at the Great American Music Hall (859 O’Farrell Street in San Francisco) and benefits the Richard de Lone Special Housing Project. Tickets are $50 General Admission, $70 Guaranteed Seating and $74.95 with a dinner ticket. Click here to buy tickets or call (888) 233-0449. For more info on the project, visit its website. For more info on Prader-Willi Syndrome, visit its website.


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