Out on the road with John Mayer

We've been out on the road with John Mayer for the past few weeks, building support for a really great initiative building support for veterans.

John has partnered with NCIRE, a northern California based research organization that is focused revamping veterans health care services. By looking at the 'whole picture', NCIRE hopes to help veterans young and old be healthy, happy, and productive.

NCIRE and Mayer have together launched a joint pilot project called the Veterans Health Integration Program. VHIP has four key areas of research they are conducting that related to veterans; the program is funded entirely by John Mayer and Mayer fans.

We are partnering with our friends at REVERB to take this program out onto the road for John. Working with volunteers at each stop, we are talking to fans about the importance of veterans issues, raising consciousness and funds along the way. 

More updates to come. In the meantime, check out vhip.org for more info, and some of our photos below. You can also search the hashtag #paradisevalley on Instagram and Twitter to see fan photos taken in our booth!

    Our volunteers at the Gorge!

    Fans showing support!

    Houston volunteers!

    Cincinnatti volunteers!

    Photobooth action

    Use the 'John Mayer Tour App' filters!

Updates from the Brad Paisley tour!

The Brad Paisley H2O II tour has been going strong, and Water = Hope has had a lot of success along the way!

We’ve made stops in 14 different cities now, have talked to over 4,000 people about clean water issues and worked with close to 100 volunteers in the process. And we are well on our way with our fundraising goals, using our time on the road this summer to once again involve the country fan community in bringing clean water to communities in need.



This past weekend we made two stops: Chicago and Columbus. Chicago saw our biggest volunteer crew yet, with 17 people joining us, some of whom drove from as far away as Milwaukee to be a part of the action. The team did great - it was our biggest night ever on the Paisley tour.



Columbus had smaller team, but they were very committed and ready to work! The torrential downpour of rain right when the doors opened didn’t even slow them down - they kept right on talking to people that had taken cover in some of the covered areas of the arena!

Our volunteers reflect the diversity of support that surrounds the clean water movement: last weekend alone with had students, retirees, non-profit executives, huge Brad Paisley fans, huge water.org fans, and a long time supporter of Senator Frist (co-founder of Water = Hope) among many others. It’s always exciting to see how issues such as this unite people in one common goal.



We are also pleased to see a lot of ‘return support’ on the tour itself; many fans have told us they supported the campaign last year, and are eager to do so again, buying a new shirt, signing up friends and family for more information, taking our info cards for classrooms, and so on.

We have five more stops ahead, Florida, Philly, DC and Raleigh. You can still sign up to volunteer, and if at one of the shows, be sure to stop by the Water = Hope tent to learn about how your support can enter you into a raffle to win an autographed Gibson guitar from Brad!

Arcade Fire volunteers needed!

Arcade Fire is about to hit the road again, and volunteers are needed in:
Denver, SLC, Phoenix, Vegas, Santa Fe, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Indy, Austin, Houston and Dallas. Volunteers might also be needed for Coachella - more info on that soon!



Visit the Arcade Fire Volunteer page for more info. You can sign up there, or using the form below!

We hope to see you at a show soon!

Dublin and the UK

The second half of the tour has been spent in the UK and Ireland. We hit up London first, two big shows at the O2 arena. Our volunteers both nights came out and braved some pretty nasty weather and even nastier transportation problems to join us! The shows were a blast, really supportive, friendly fans, and our volunteers worked like crazy (and went up and down lots and lots of stairs) to talk to as many people as they could.







We moved onto Dublin from there, and I quickly learned why the band loves playing shows there so much! The crowds there were rowdy, but fun and supportive - some of our best nights on the whole tour were during our two nights in Dublin, in fact! Because of the layout, we set up three mini tables spread throughout the O2; our volunteer team really went above and beyond, with some of them staffing the tables, and the rest really working the floor; one volunteer signed up over 200 people on her own, which was really incredible! Our team in Dublin was a lot of fun: students, the brother of a volunteer from Madrid who does music therapy and his co-worker (they joined us straight from playing at a retirement home, ties still on!), former volunteers... as always, the amazing list can go on and on! We also had Shane join us, who works at Google Dublin.



Shane and I had been coresponding via email for a few weeks, as he was working to raise money for PIH at work ahead of the show, and he asked if I’d like to come speak to the Google team at his office. I asked Marika and Regine if they’d like to join, and the three of us went to Google Dublin on Monday and found a receptive audience of a few hundred staffers (and we later found out they recorded it to share company wide!) waiting to hear us talk about PIH, Haiti, and individual actions people can take to engage and make their own unique impact. It was a lot of fun, the team at Google was great, and we even got treated to lunch in their cafeteria!





After Dublin, the tour moved into Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow for our final week. Our English crews in these cities were FANTASTIC - we got so much support for what we are doing from UK fans, it’s really unbelievable! A big shout out has to go to team Birmingham; though our smallest team in size, six amazing people, they nonetheless had the highest average of sign ups & conversations per volunteer than ANY of our other teams (and we had some really hard working impressive teams!), with each volunteer engaging with an average of 84 fans! That also means they won our ‘friendly competition’ among European cities to see which team could do that, so they’ll have a little Arcade Fire thank you gift coming in the mail soon!





All in all, it’s been an incredible run; 14 cities, 143 volunteers, tens of thousands of fans talked to, and hopefully even more inspired by our volunteers, the band, and PIH.

France

The Arcade Fire tour moved into France this past week, with dates in Marseille and Lyon.

We started out the week with only a handful of volunteers in Marseille; not sure entirely why, but I started to really work our social networks, and also asked the volunteers that had already signed up to help me in recruiting more people to join us. By show date, we had a full crew - I’m always so grateful for all of the work our volunteers do, esp when they rally together at the last minute for us, such as in this case!



We were joined as always by a diverse crew, including a teacher, several students, two mobile app developers and a public health worker. The team did great, giving us our best night on the tour thus far! All night they talked to fans, really focusing on getting them excited and inspired by what Kanpe and PIH are doing. As with most of our trainings, Marika came out and joined us to talk about the band’s involvement and support for these campaigns - her help was especially appreciated at these two shows given her fluency (and my lack of) in French! Our volunteers have all for the most part been bi-lingual, so no big issues there, but it’s always great to have someone else on hand who can help with translations. Team Marseille did really great - they signed up almost 20% of the audience in attendance than night (a pretty impressive feat for ten people to accomplish!), which in turn means that they talked to and inspired hundreds of people!

After a day off (and a band/crew ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ in France) we moved onto Lyon. The venue was really cool - I was told it was an old meatpacking warehouse. Team Lyon came in ready to work; I found them all gathered together ready to go at the meeting time, and I assumed most of them already knew each other since they were chatting away. As it would turn out, they just found each other, and were excited, and started to talking to one another outside in the cold - I always love to see teams form a bond like that at the get go, they were such a cute group!



They worked like crazy too - it seems each show we do, the more people we end up talking to! They all stayed for a long time after the show ended as well, talking to fans for nearly an hour - it was a pretty crazy end of the night in Lyon!

The tour moves into Germany next, hoping it’s not too cold!

PIH and Kanpe in Spain with Arcade Fire!

The European leg of the Arcade Fire tour started up with two dates in Spain this past weekend, building support for Haiti, Kanpe, Partners in Health along with way!

Day one in Madrid: Palacio De Los Deportes sits in the middle of Madrid, flanked by a lovely plaza that quickly filled with fans lining up early to get a good spot on the floor. This was going to be a big show, nearly 15,000, and we were excited to get going!



As always, we were joined with an amazing crew of volunteers. Several were students at an American University in Madrid - and a big thanks to Maya O’Cadiz for helping us to recruit for this first show! We were also joined by teachers, musicians, community members and business professionals - all committed to the idea of helping Haiti forge a prosperous future. After a brief talk from Marika on behalf of the band, the crew got to work practicing how they were going to explain the work of PIH and Kanpe to fans. Once the doors opened, they hit the ground running, having nearly 600 conversations about Haiti in just under two hours - very impressive! A big thanks to our Madrid team - Neil, Andreas, Joseph, Maya, Susan, Stephanie, Didier, Diarmuid, Leticia, Bruno, Stephen, Curry, Ray, and Madelyn - for getting our tour off to a great start!



We arrive in Barcelona late - at least in tour terms! - the next morning. Palau Sant Jordi has an incredible view of the city and the sea from the top floor, where we were lucky to set up our Kanpe table! We were joined by a smaller but mighty crew of volunteers that night: Ines, Andrea, Patricia, Marina and Maribel who did a fantastic job and managed to talk to and inspire lots and lots of fans! It’s so exciting to see people really check out our set up, read about Kanpe and PIH and tell us about their own connection to Haiti or other parts of the world, or their desire to become engaged and involved.





As an added bonus, Regine and the band are still writing out and autographing set lists every night to give away to PIH/Kanpe supporters as well!



Our nights in Spain provided a great preview of the weeks to come as the tour moves into France, Germany, Ireland and the UK. We can’t wait to talk to and inspire fans across Europe about what they can do to support Haiti!

Volunteers needed for Arcade Fire shows in Europe!

Update Nov 8th: All of the UK and Ireland shows are pretty much full at this point, but feel free to sign up to be added to a wait list. We DO still need more volunteers for our Spain, France and esp German shows - please forward this link on to anyone that you think would be interested. Thanks for the great response so far - we'll be in touch with all of you soon!

We are about to head back out with Arcade Fire, this time to the UK and Europe, continuing to build support for Haiti and the important work that Kanpe and Partners In Health are doing.

We need volunteers to join us to make it a success! Volunteering is an amazing opportunity - in a matter of hours, you can talk to hundreds of people about the incredible work these organizations are doing, inspire them, and get them involved. And yes, you might even get to see an awesome concert in exchange for your hard work!

We need volunteers in Nov and Dec in Spain, France, Germany, UK, and Ireland.

Sign up below, or visit our Arcade Fire volunteer page to learn more, and please pass this on to anyone you may know that would be interested in joining in and helping out!

Water = Hope goes to Texas!

Another guest post by our blogger/campaigner Kelsey Neff!
-Brande



After a 16 hour bus ride, we started our Texan adventure in Hidalgo. At first we were a little concerned about how the night would pan out, especially when we heard that the Brad Paisley H2O tour was the first show of this magnitude to perform at this newer venue. We were pleasantly surprised when our AWESOME volunteer crew arrived, consisting of eleven Water = Hope supporters.

We learned that Konsuelo heard about Water = Hope through an ad on Facebook, and she told her brother Jesse who then told all of our other volunteers about it. By the end of the night we decided that we wanted to hire Jesse and his friend Isaac to recruit all of our volunteers, they were that awesome! We had our best night in Texas in Hidalgo, even though we had a crowd a third of the size as our other shows, which is a direct result of our great team. Thank you so much for coming out guys, we really appreciate all the work you did!

Our next stop (after a 3am bus visit from the Mexican border patrol…no joke!), was Houston where we were expecting a pretty large crew for the night. We started and ended the night with nine individuals who sweated it out with us in the hot Houston heat!! We had five high school friends, a mother with her two daughters and also Kallie, who was our big earner for the night. About half of our volunteers had never volunteered before and we were grateful that they decided to come and help us get those wells built! We were happy that at the end of the night they told us that they didn’t know that volunteering could be so much fun. Glad you guys could make it out!

The last city we visited was Dallas, which turned out to be a really great night! We had a smaller volunteer crew of three high school aged girls, Chelsea, Melody, and Lauren. They heard about Water = Hope through their aunt, who had volunteered for us in Cincinnati, and really wowed us with their hard work! We really enjoyed talking to them and were glad that they could make it out.

We also had Nicolas come out, who started out as a fan that we talked to in Chicago. He really liked Water = Hope and what we are trying to do on the tour, so he came back and volunteered for us. He was also so inspired that he wants to start a Water = Hope campus program on his college campus!! In Dallas we also had a visit from Jane Lynch Crain, who works with Hope Through Healing Hands.

She came by to check out the tent and see what we were up to and we were glad that she did!! We had a great night in Dallas and loved the response that we got from country fans there. Everyone that we talked to was so gracious and responsive to the goals we have for the H20 tour. Thank you so much Dallas, you were all amazing!!

This week we’re in Florida, starting in Daytona Beach then moving on to Tampa and West Palm Beach, come out and volunteer for us!!

Check out more photos here!

Our biggest nights yet!

Five weeks into the tour, our campaign with Water = Hope is making a big impact with Brad Paisley fans! We just finished shows in Darien Lake, NY and Philadelphia, bringing the first ‘leg’ of the tour to a finish with some impressive results!

Our show at Darien Lake - located between Buffalo and Rochester - had us a little concerned about being able to recruit volunteers, since it is a bit of a drive from either city. We were excited to have a great crew of volunteers come out and join us: a mother, daughter & aunt team of Susan, Carol and Melissa, as well as Corey, Chelsea, Cary and Lyndsey, who are a combination of friends, sisters and fiances that all drove into from Rochester! Our team did great, helping us sign up lots of new supporters and raising lots of money for our well building projects, working all night to talk to Brad fans about the importance of clean water.



We got a lot of support from the crowd from the minute the doors opened until the very last fans left the venue; Nick and Francis, pictured below, kept talking to us long after security ushered everyone out and loaded up on Water = Hope materials to help spread the word among their friends in Buffalo.



An overnight bus trip brought us into Philly in the morning. On a personal note, I’ll admit to some bias: I love doing shows in Philadelphia, I’ve always gotten a lot of support for the campaigns I’ve worked from the fans there, and everyone seems to be in a perpetually good mood! Our show Saturday night lived up to my expectations, giving us the biggest night we have had yet on the tour.

Our night in Philly was a direct result of an AMAZING volunteer crew that we can’t thank enough: Bill and Brianna are high school students and friends who worked so hard all night that it felt like we barely saw them, LeeAnn is a huge Brad Paisley fan and supporter of water initiatives like this, and was a huge help at our busy booth, Neil and Yang are cousins; Neil is an exchange student from China and Yang took a train up from Washington DC just to join us and help out!



Then we had ‘the girls’: Angelina and Danielle are old friends who frequently volunteer together, and Sara, Angelique, Samantha and Rebecca are all friends and in high school. Both groups of ladies took to the parking lots to talk to the tailgating crowd before the doors opened, and they took on our ‘friendly challenge’ of which volunteer could sign up the most volunteers with a passion. Early on, it looked like Angelina and Danielle would take home the Water = Hope hoodie prize (together, the two of them signed up well over 300 new supporters!) but the sister team of Sara and Angelique edged them out; they signed up 200 new supporters EACH, a record for the tour! The crowd in Philly was full of love for Water = Hope; fans are really excited about our well building project, loving the idea of country fans working together to bring water to a community that needs it. We had our biggest night yet both in new Water = Hope supporters and in the money we were able to raise for the wells, and we also signed up lots of new Philly volunteers to join our incredible team of campaigners!



The tour is taking a break for a few weeks - we’ll be back at work in Chicago in the middle of July. In the meantime, there are all sorts of ways to support Water = Hope: text H2O to 25383 to give $10, and you can sign up and a part of one our amazing volunteer teams by visiting our volunteer page. You can also check out more photos from the tour (and tag yourself if you are in them!) on our Facebook page.

In Detroit and Pittburgh with Water = Hope

Water = Hope paid a visit to Detroit and Pittsburgh this past weekend as part of our ongoing work on the Brad Paisley summer H2O tour!

We were greeted by enthusiastic fans and volunteers in Detroit, which made for a great night! We talked to lots of people, including several who were interested in volunteering and becoming involved with the campaign on a local level and on their campuses, something we always like to hear.



Our volunteers consisted of two ‘teams’ of people: Stephanie and Nicole, sisters on their summer break (from college and high school) and our team of enthusiastic high school girls: Erica, Emmy, Betsy and Marissa.



Our crew did a great job, talking to lots of people and getting them excited about bringing clean water to people around the world. We were a bit limited in what we could do in Detroit due to the way the venue was set up, but our volunteer crew were true troopers, making the most of it and getting a record number of fans to take part in our text message fundraising campaign.



We loaded up our stuff and got on the tour bus bound for Pittsburgh the next day. Saturday morning we were greeted by the tour crew worried about thunderstorms that never actually materialized (we seemed to be blessed by the weather fairies this tour, knock on wood!) so we set up somewhat concerned, but forged ahead. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any volunteers joining us that night (Pittsburgh - we need some people, sign up and join!) but we made the most of it, signing up lots of new supporters and raising money to bring a needing community a well. Fans are really excited about this idea, really responding to the notion of the Paisley & country music fan base being able to create clean water for those that need it through the combined small actions of many over the course of the tour. While walking the lawn before the show, I talked to lots and lots of people who were really excited about what Water = Hope is doing, so we are eager to get community efforts moving in Pittsburgh as well!



After loading out once Brad was finished Saturday night, we were surprised to find Josh Thompson and some of his band setting up for an impromptu midnight bluegrass session next to our bus! Josh is a big supporter of Water = Hope, not only taking part in our PSA but always ‘re-tweeting’ our Twitter posts and helping to spread the word on Facebook, and he’s a great musician and all around nice guy. It was a great way to end a wonderful weekend!

We’ll be back out again this weekend before we take a break while the tour goes to Europe. We will be in Darien Center (Buffalo and Rochester regions of NY) and Philly on Friday and Saturday - as always, we’d love to have you sign up and volunteer!