Dead & Company, Raphael Saadiq Added To Wildfire Relief Concert
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- The line-up for next month's "Band Together Bay Area" benefit concert for North Bay wildfire relief featuring headliner Metallica got even bigger Thursday morning with the announcement that Dead & Company, Oakland soul singer Raphael Saadiq and East Bay punks Rancid will join the bill.
Band Together Bay Area is coalition of business and community leaders working to support North Bay fire storm recovery and rebuilding. Word of the benefit concert being held at AT&T Park on November 9 first surfaced when Metallica made an announcement Tuesday night via social media that the band would be headlining the fundraising event.
Featuring original Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir, Dead & Company also features guitarist and popular solo artist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge (Allman Brothers Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band) and keyboard player Jeff Chimenti. The group first came together in 2015 after the surviving Dead members including bassist Phil Lesh and Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio played a series of 50th anniversary concerts.
Raphael Saadiq was one of the founding members of multi-platinum Oakland R&B group Tony! Toni! Tone! as well as the member of the soul supergroup Lucy Pearl before embarking on a successful solo tour. Rancid is the long-running Berkeley-based punk band founded in 1991 by principles Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman.
In addition to Bay Area based metal legends Metallica, songwriter Dave Matthews and Oakland rapper G-Eazy were announced Wednesday as acts scheduled to perform at the benefit to raise funds for victims of the Wine County wildfires, which have killed more than 40 people and caused at least $1 billion in damage.
Since the announcement of the concert, founding sponsors Kaiser Permanente, Marc and Lynne Benioff, Salesforce, Google, Jeff and Erica Lawson, Twilio, the San Francisco Giants, Levi Strauss Foundation, Benchmark, Ron Conway, Live Nation and Another Planet Entertainment have been joined by additional event sponsors including Facebook, Gap Inc., Gilead Sciences, Inc., Intuit, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Qatalyst Partners, StubHub, TMG Partners and Twitter. The total money collected for the cause has already risen to nearly $9 million.
The coalition says all of the money raised by ticket sales will go to a fund for "low-income, vulnerable populations displaced by the destruction" from the fires.
Tickets for the "Band Together Bay Area" benefit concert will go on sale to the public this Friday, October 27 at 10am through BandTogetherBayArea.org and Ticketmaster.com. Tickets range from $49.50 to $199.50 plus applicable charges. Ticketmaster will donate all processing fees to the relief effort.
Premium seats for the concert will be donated to first responders, volunteers and families impacted by the firestorm.
100 percent of ticket sales going to an emergency relief fund established by Tipping Point Community and will be directed to the North Bay community foundations.
