Music City Auction of Artworks Created from Flood-Damaged Instruments

The non-profit organization, ReTune Nashville, will sponsor a night of music and art on Saturday, October 23, 2010 to raise funds for uninsured musicians who lost their instruments in the May flood. The star-studded Benefit Concert and Art Auction will take place at Soundcheck, a huge rehearsal and storage complex that was deluged when the Cumberland River overflowed.

Turning Trash to Treasure

The volunteers of ReTune Nashville collected donations of salvaged instruments and enlisted more than 50 artists, both local and nationally-known, to transform them into works of art. The completed pieces will be auctioned online in October and put on display at the October 23 benefit before being awarded to the highest bidder.

Helping Musicians Recover

All proceeds will go to help those working musicians whose guitars, violins, drum kits, amps and other gear were trashed when the rivers and creeks overflowed into homes, studios and storage places across the city. Two organizations, MusiCares Nashville Flood Relief and The Nashville Musicians Association Flood Relief Fund, are directly assisting those needing help to recover.

Losing the Irreplaceable

The estimate of salvaged instruments includes about 1,000 guitars, twice that many amps, and drum sets numbering in the hundreds. On the gone-forever and irreplaceable list were valuable memorabilia from the temporarily displaced Musicians Hall of Fame: Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster, a guitar that belonged to Johnny Cash, a Les Paul that Peter Townsend played and dozens from the collection of Elton John's guitarist, John Jorgenson as well as that of Vince Gill and Keith Urban. Although the tour gear of country star Brad Paisley was also caught in the flood, he still has the guitar he first performed with: a 1968 Paisley Telecaster.

Turning Negative to Positive

ReTune Nashville founder Sheri O'Neal says of the planned Concert and Art Auction, "We see the event as a celebration of the city's kindness, creativity, history and resilience. Nashville is known world-wide for music and all of us are part of Music City."

Get advance ticket information for the October 23 Benefit Concert and Art Auction and instructions on how to bid on the Retune Nashville Web site. You'll also find names of donating musicians and contributing visual artists. along with samples of the artwork created from flood-damaged instruments.