2004 TAILGATE FOR A CAUSE

A few years ago Rick (davehead1969) ran a marathon and fundraised for the Lukemia Lymphoma Society. We won't talk about how ridiculously long it took Rick to finish the marathon, but the fundraising was rather unique.

For the five Dave Matthews Band shows he knew he could tailgate at, he planned ahead (with plenty of posts on the old wh boards, RIP) and got some help from friends at the shows to set up a mass tailgating effort. He called the venues ahead of time and each said that food could not be bought or sold in the parking lots. He asked if it would be OK if he gave it away, and accepted donations at the same time. While no one officially said 'yes', no one officially said 'no' either - but they let him (and his motley crue, herein know as the motley crue) know that if some meathead security guard wanted to shut them down, they could.

We took the gamble and it raised a lot of money (about $500 per show) as well as a lot of really, really awesome karma. I should note that in preparation for it, we also burned a bunch of CDs of live covers from the Dave & Friends tour. Anyone who donated more than $12 would be able to take home a copy. Anyone who couldn't afford or didn't want to donate the $12 we gave a copy to anyway, unless we were low on supply in which case we gave our email address to set up a B&P (no one actually emailed). We did email some as mp3's to folks as well. The point being, cash was never an obligation, so there was no selling of the music. We should also note that the food included water, soda, hot dogs and chips (burgers take too much space and time to do in quantity) and there was absolutely no alcohol for anyone who didn't come with us (in real life I work as risk management consultant).

In 2004, we did the Tailgate at the Alpine Valley shows and at the Gorge. For Alpine Valley, we raised around $300 per show, $600 total, which was then matched by a corporate donation. At the Gorge, we netted around $400 per night X 3, and matched again for $2,400. Total raised in 2004 was $3,600. Along the way Rick met Andi (WHID *Andi), who generously donated to the cause and helped with a lot of preparations.