Megadeth’s David Ellefson has teamed up with various artists to put on an 8 hour all-star fundraiser on Saturday, April 11th between 4 PM, EDT/1 PM, PDT and 1 AM, EDT/10 PM, PDT. The Grammy Music Education Coalition is partnering with its affiliate, the David Ellefson Youth Music Foundation, to host Oh Say Can You Stream, a streaming online fundraiser to raise funds for the foundation’s School’s Out initiative.
Ellefson will be hosting Saturday’s event with his partner and solo band vocalist, Thom Hazaert. Co-hosts include Don Jamieson, Jim Florentine, Craig Gass, Drew Fortier, and Riki Rachtman.
The event will stream on the Coalition’s Twitch channel and Facebook page as an 8-hour marathon, featuring appearances and performances from artists and celebrities including:
– Alice Cooper
– Charlie Benante (Anthrax)
– Chris Kael (Five Finger Death Punch)
– Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth)
– Kiko Loureiro (Megadeth)
– Darryl “DMC” McDaniels (Run DMC)
– Frank Hannon (Tesla)
– Elias Soriano (Nonpoint)
– Drake Bell
– PJ Farley (Trixter, RA)
– John Driskell Hopkins (Zac Brown Band)
– Danny Cooksey (Terminator 2, Bad4Good)
– Rob Caggiano (Volbeat)
– Alex Skolnick (Testament)
– Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge, Rod Stewart, King Kobra)
– Brian O’Halloran and Marilyn Ghigliotti (Clerks)
– Ari Lehman (Friday the 13th, First Jason)
– Jason Bieler (Saigon Kick)
– Nita Strauss (Alice Cooper)
– Larry Thomas (The Soup Nazi – Seinfeld, Austin Powers)
– Carla Harvey (Butcher Babies), and more!
Hazaert talked about the start of the School’s Out initiative:
“When we launched the School’s Out initiative, we realized the immediate impact it had, as we got almost 1000 applications in the first week. We very quickly realized this was something we needed to take to the next level, and really began serious fundraising efforts to increase the scope of what we were able to do.”
Ellefson expressed his excitement for the event:
“When one person suffers, we all suffer, and this is an unprecedented moment in history when all of us around the world are united for a common cause, especially in the music community. As I saw so many of my friends who are ‘hired gun musicians,’ session players, etc, all losing so much work, we all saw months of work vanish before our eyes, we thought we could create an opportunity to really do some good on several fronts. So many of our friends have been so generous with their time, and it’s a wonderful initiative to be able to not only give kids something great to hold onto, but also keep some of our friends working in this uncertain time.”
For more information you can visit http://ellefsonyouthmusicfoundation.org/
