11/18: Texas Foster Youth/Music Nonprofit DFW Announces Blues Traveler to Perform Intimate Concert

Online, October 7, 2011 (Newswire.com) - WHO: Kids in a New Groove-private music lessons for statewide youth in foster care
WHAT: 2011 Music For The Soul Gala featuring Blues Traveler
WHERE: One World Theatre, 7701 Bee Caves Rd, Austin, TX - (512) 330-9500
WHEN: Friday, November 18 from 6:30 - 11 pm
WEB: www.kidsinanewgroove.org/MusicForTheSoul
Twitter @KidsGroove @Blues_Traveler
TIX: $250 individual, sponsorships start at $1,500
MEDIA: Photos, details, or interviews [email protected] and 512/450.4395

Texas Nonprofit that Provides Hope, Consistency for foster youth Via Music Lessons
Announces Blues Traveler to Perform Intimate Concert for Gala
Exclusive concert will feature catered dinner, cocktails and one incredible cause

AUSTIN, Texas-Kids in a New Groove-a nonprofit that enhances the lives of foster children in Texas by nurturing their hearts and minds through music-today announces details of their 2011 Music For The Soul Gala featuring Blues Traveler. The Grammy Award-winning, six-time gold/platinum-certified album creating, amphitheater-filling group will perform a very special concert at the 300 person capacity One World Theatre, giving fans and supporters of the cause a once-in-a-lifetime experience including a catered dinner, cocktails, and auction.

The noble cause for which Blues Traveler is traveling to Austin is hope and enrichment for Texas foster kids via the Austin-based nonprofit Kids in a New Groove. Reports indicate that less than two percent of foster youth will graduate from college and up to 50% will end up homeless within two years of emancipation. Texas is ranked 50th in funding foster youth.

Alternately, Kids in a New Groove offers a decidedly more promising path by providing private music lessons to youth in foster care. All of their most recent high school graduates went on to college this fall, demonstrating that they are truly making a difference. The November fundraiser will allow them to sustain and extend their programs throughout the state. Kids in a New Groove's unique music mentorship programs have a proven track record of helping these youth improve grades, behavior, and overall life skills. Lessons become a lifeline as teachers move with foster youth between placements, giving these youth a chance to trust and develop lasting relationships.

Fostering Opportunity
The program was started in 2009 by Karyn Scott, a former felony prosecutor who-time and again-witnessed the severe problems faced by foster youth-including homelessness, poverty, and lack of a college education. She retired from law to start a family, but in 2006, discovered a struggling Austin band, Alpha Rev, at a backyard party and helped shepherd them to a lucrative record deal with Disney's Hollywood Records. She also started a small independent record label, Flyer Records. The catalyst to merge these two passions-music and helping foster youth thrive-started at that backyard party. Soon, Kids in a New Groove was born and two years later serves foster youth all over Texas, including Dallas, Houston, and Austin.

Musical Heroes
Blues Traveler- featuring harmonica virtuoso John Popper-ascended from the jam-band underground to mainstream stardom, boasting eight studio albums and four live discs; six of them certified Gold or Platinum, with combined worldwide sales of more than ten million units. The band's best-known single, "Run-Around," was the longest-charting radio single in Billboard history. Taking a break from touring, Blues Traveler will perform at the One World Theatre for the November 18th Music For The Soul Gala, performing hits from their illustrious career.

About Kids in a New Groove
Kids in a New Groove is a 501c3 non-profit that seeks to enrich and enhance the lives of foster children by nurturing their hearts and minds through music. They offer private music mentorship to Texas youth in foster care, and the program has a proven track record of helping these youth improve grades, behavior, and overall life skills. Teachers involved in the program all have advanced degrees in music education and have been surprised to see how quickly the program has a positive influence on their students.

Kids in a New Groove offers several different types of lessons based on the child's chosen area at no cost to the child or foster family. Students take a variety of different lessons, including voice, piano, percussion, guitar, and music production, to name a few. Students also perform in an annual recital and have the opportunity to make live recordings in a professional recording studio. They currently provide lessons only to children in Texas, but will be expanding to other areas in the near future. Many children are referred through Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteers or Child Protective Services caseworkers. Those interested in submitting a child for the program, please visit kidsinanewgroove.org/faq

About Blues Traveler
It's not every band that's still staking out new musical territory and embracing fresh challenges more than 24 years into their career, but that's the case with Blues Traveler. Having long ago graduated from the jam-band underground to mainstream stardom, the iconoclastic combo has consistently stuck to its guns and played by its own rules. Their body of work encompasses eight studio albums and four live discs; six of them certified Gold or Platinum, with combined worldwide sales of more than ten million units. The band's best-known single, "Run-Around," was the longest-charting radio single in Billboard history. Along the way, the band has played more than 2,000 live shows in front of more than three million people.

More About Blues Traveler
Forming as high school friends in Princeton, New Jersey, the four founding members moved to New York City after graduating, and Blues Traveler quickly earned a local reputation for its high-energy, heavily improvisational live shows, with Popper's soulful singing and flamboyant harp-blowing matched by Kinchla's inventive combustible guitar work and the rhythm section's propulsive punch. Their inspired performances placed Blues Traveler at the forefront of an emerging movement of rootsy jam bands, a vibrant community that also produced Phish and the Spin Doctors. Blues Traveler soon took to the road and won a reputation as a tireless touring act, winning a fan base up and down the East Coast before they'd even released an album.

After signing a deal with A&M Records, Blues Traveler released its self-titled debut, including the hit track "But Anyway," in the spring of 1990. The album won the group a national audience that continued to grow with the following year's Travelers and Thieves and the live EP On Tour Forever, and 1993's Save His Soul. 1994's Four became a quintuple-platinum breakthrough for Blues Traveler, spawning the Grammy-winning smash single "Run-Around" and the follow up hit "Hook." The in-concert collection Live from the Fall arrived in 1996, followed by the 1997 studio effort Straight On Till Morning. The 1999 release of Popper's debut solo project Zygote was followed that August by the shocking news of bassist Bobby Sheehan's sudden death at the age of 31.

Blues Traveler eventually bounced back from the loss of their comrade, regrouping as a reenergized five-piece with the addition of Chan's brother Tad Kinchla on bass and Ben Wilson on keyboards. The new lineup made its recording debut with 2001's Bridge, followed by the live What You and I Have Been Through. The acclaimed studio album Truth Be Told arrived in 2003, followed in 2004 by Live on the Rocks and its companion DVD Thinnest of Air. 2005's Bastardos!, produced by ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett, reasserted Blues Traveler's experimental edge. 2007 saw the release of Cover Yourself, a set of acoustic reworkings of Blues Traveler favorites. For their latest release (and Verve Forecast debut) North Hollywood Shootout, the quintet ventured out of their creative comfort zone to explore some adventurous new horizons-yeilding a landmark in Blues Traveler's large and widely loved body of work, demonstrating the enduring strengths of the band's songwriting while capturing the spontaneous spirit of their legendary live shows. www.bluestraveler.com

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