Music for Tom: Two Benefits to Help Tom Carter, This Weekend

A month or two back, avid readers might recall that we mentioned that expat Houstonian and psych-rock hero Tom Carter had been hospitalized in Berlin for pneumonia and had to be put into a medical coma to recover.

Per the Help Tom Carter Website, he arrived back in the States early this month, which is great news, but at the same time, he needs a lot of rehabilitation and whatnot, and that all costs money. Being a musician, I doubt he’s got health insurance, which means he and his family still desperately need all the help they can get. Tom is a very cool guy, well-loved/-respected worldwide, and thankfully, folks all over are pulling together to help get him through this mess.

Locally speaking, there’re not one but two Tom Carter benefit shows going on this very weekend, and that’s an awesome, awesome thing.

First off, tonight, Friday, August 24th, there’ll be a benefit concert up at Rudyard’s, and not only is it for a good cause, but it’s a badass lineup, to boot. Old-time heavy-rock dudes {Project Grimm} are headlining, preceded by utterly awesome psych-rock guys the {Linus Pauling Quartet}, {Dead Mineral}, which used to be called Novox and is pretty cool itself, and trippy/hazy indie-psych-folk-pop songstress {Hearts of Animals}. All good, all strange, all worth seeing/hearing, seriously.

The cover’s a pay-what-you-can deal, with a $10 suggested donation, and all the money from the door and from sales of LP4’s new album, Bag of Hammers, goes to The Robert Thomas Carter Irrevocable Trust, set up to help Tom & his family. The fun starts at 9PM, with HoA onstage at 10PM…

Then, tomorrow night, Saturday, August 25th, there’s a second benefit for Tom over at The Railyard (2020 Commerce), which I’ve never been to. Organized by Jonathan Jindra (I think?), this one’s on the more “experimental” end of things, appropriately enough — if you’re a fan of Tom’s band Charalambides, this sort of thing’s likely up your alley.

At The Railyard, they’ll have Sandy Ewen & Damon Smith playing as a duo (I’ve seen Ewen live before, and she’s great; she does some truly strange things with her guitar), long-time noise scene fixture Richard Ramirez & Brian Traylor, also as a (much-noisier, no doubt) duo, cool-sounding electronic project {FLCON FCKER}, A Week of Kindness, and somebody called GiddyOx on guitar.

The cover for this one is $5, with donations beyond that gratefully accepted in donation jars at the venue, and it’ll run from 8-11PM. It’s all-ages, btw, unlike the Rudz show, which is sadly 21+. Sorry, young’uns…

So, there you go: one weekend, two wildly different shows, two awesome ways to help out a truly talented, genuinely nice guy in need. Go, listen, and give whatever you can.

Big, big “thanks” go out to Ramon Medina, by the by, for not only organizing the Rudyard’s benefit show but also keeping us media-type people in the loop on both benefits…