Fresh Start Surgical Gifts

Our goal is to raise $1000.00 this summer for Fresh Start Surgical Gifts.

Current total: $436.00!

Next goal - we want to get that red line

going up the guitar neck!

They're a really deserving local charity that someone told us about a few months ago. We're also going to work on finding some matching funds for the money we raise that would be given to Fresh Start in the form of checks paid directly to them.

Check out our Guitar Graph on our home page, it shows how much progress we've made. Thanks to all the people who have donated so far!

Fresh Start Surgical Gifts is a local charity based in Carlsbad, California. They organize reconstructive surgery for children who are underpriveliged or underinsured, treating both children from the U.S. and internationally. There's a long line of kids waiting for Fresh Start surgery.

Insurance companies will often not cover facial surgery, even when it's desperately needed after burns or accidents, or for kids with extreme physical deformities if the child is healthy in every other way.

Fresh Start asks top surgeons to donate their time and facilities entirely for free to do this good work. 100% of all donations to Fresh Start Surgical Gifts goes to their medical program.

We like these people a LOT and when some money does come our way for our performances they get it all!

Amanda from Fresh Start writes us...


On behalf of the Fresh Start patients, staff and volunteers THANK YOU for your generosity! You are an outstanding group of musicians and we are so grateful that you have chosen us as your charity!


To date Fresh Start has changed the lives of over 5,000 children and with your help we will be able to reach countless more.


THANK YOU!!!

FreshStart.org

Children's Week Planning Session

The Center City Development Corporation hosted a planning session with the Children's Coalition at their downtown Horton Plaza offices. We were invited to headline the Kids Festival that ends the week, so we were asked to perform at their meeting, too!

This was really interesting, because of all the behind-the-scenes ideas going on, as well as our insider tour of the newest real estate developments in the downtown area -

Here's Maria showing Curly Max the town...

That's the Midway aircraft carrier in the front -

This is what it's like to be Godzilla:


So finally the meetings started...

"And now we have VARSITY STRINGS! Hit it, guys!"

"YAAAY! Hey, Curly Max - cool jacket!"

Thanks to Maria at the CCDC, the great volunteers with the Children's Coalition, and all the people who clapped for us!
Here's a link to their 2010 events page:
Children's Day Events

A.R.T.S. Guitar Lessons

Our first guitar lessons taught at A.R.T.S. in Liberty Station went great. Here's Andy, their regular teacher, he stayed after his regular classes to help coach a special group interested in guitar-only studies:

Here's me, Andy and one of the other teachers - they have a really complete, modern music room.

And here's Adrianna, who runs the program:

This is a pretty cool place. I can't show you the kids, but here is their giant go-anywhere van, it's like the Art-Batmobile:

This is the first thing you see when you enter the place - - -

But the most interesting thing is the amazing art shows they have of the kid's work. Now these are all paintings by kids who are having major life challenges, these paintings are a creative outlet of their feelings. Here's a sampling. My favorite is the very last one.

Practice and Practice MORE!

Curly Max came over today and Max and Max knocked out a version of HoundDog - still working on the mic-to-guitar-jack thing so Max or Max can sing into a VOX amp. Think we'll get it down by play date.

WANTED!

We're now so overbooked we need MORE PLAYERS! It's good to know you're liked, but it's a bit scary looking at all of our gig dates and making sure we still have time to eat sleep and I forgot - what's that third thing? Oh yeah, go to school!

So we put up WANTED posters all over town today at guitar, ukulele, and music shops. Hope somebody calls back, we'd love to get a really great uke player to jam with. We'd all like to make this way more multi-cultural and want to present the most diverse music styles we possibly can. We need a drummer, too!