Maureen’s Haven has gotten help from a lot of different sources, but one very successful fundraiser has a musical backstory called One Guitar (see story here.)
One Guitar was such a success that the group of musicians who conceived it has decided to play an encore. Appropriately enough it’s named One Guitar More and it’s scheduled for September 8 at 7 p.m. in the Vail-Leavitt Music Hall. Tickets are $30 and are available through brownpapertickets.com.
One Guitar began as a lark one evening in 2013. Instead of the group of 30 songwriters that usually gathered at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Aquebogue each week, only a few showed up one night. There was one acoustic guitar, a 1961 Gibson J45, among the instruments there, and someone had the idea to pass it around and take turns playing on it. The acoustics in the church inspired the group to think about recording themselves singing their original music.
A year later, Don Bracken, the organizer of One Guitar, heard about a grant offered by the church’s insurance company. Remembering “how great we all sounded playing on my guitar” he decided to bring the year-old dream of recording themselves to fruition. The resulting double CD ended up with 29 original songs.
The proceeds from the sales of the CD were donated to Maureen’s Haven Homeless Outreach.
This year the musicians, including Doug and Marty Attridge, Kerry Kearny, Mick Hargreaves and others who come from all over the East End, hope to meet and exceed the $5,000 that last year’s album generated.
