From printing tickets to securing sponsorships, Elon junior Anne Wilson did it all in her effort to stage a June 23 benefit concert in Chapel Hill, N.C., featuring the Kurth and Taylor Band. Details...
Wilson and her 17-year-old friend Jenny Cunningham never dreamed that their own private joke would actually become a reality. Or that it would end up raising close to $20,000 to help sick children and their families.
But that’s exactly what happened June 23, when 18 months of hard work by Wilson and Cunningham culminated in a concert in Chapel Hill, N.C., by their favorite group, the Kurth and Taylor Band.
Wilson, 19, first became aware of the band’s two lead musicians as an 11-year-old while watching the popular daytime soap opera “General Hospital.” Wally Kurth, who plays the character Ned Ashton on the program, and Chad Brannon, who portrays Zander Smith, would periodically appear on the show with their band. Kurth and Taylor plays a unique brand of music which Wilson describes as “not really country and not exactly rock, but somewhere in between.”
Throughout high school, Wilson followed Kurth and Taylor and occasionally traveled to see the band perform live. In November 2000, during Wilson’s freshman year at Elon, she and Cunningham traveled to Orlando, Fla., to a Kurth and Taylor concert. Complaining about having to travel such great distances to see their favorite act, Wilson and Cunningham, both residents of Cary, N.C., vowed they would try to bring the band to North Carolina for a performance someday.
“It was a complete joke between us,” Wilson says of their scheme. “At the time, we were 15 and 17. What were we going to do to make that happen?”
Then the girls learned about the Kurth and Taylor Foundation, which provides direct financial assistance to the families of sick children to pay for the costs associated with prolonged hospitalizations, often in distant cities. They approached Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina with an idea: help sponsor a benefit concert in Chapel Hill for Duke Children’s Hospital and the Kurth and Taylor Foundation.
“Blue Cross gets approached all the time for things like this,” says Wilson, “and most of them get turned down. But we had done our homework and the company was impressed with our proposal.” BCBS agreed to a $10,000 sponsorship deal, which helped defray the band’s travel and setup costs for the concert. “It was a little intimidating to go to a big company and ask for something like this, but it was a great experience,” Wilson says.
Wilson and Cunningham worked tirelessly from spring 2001 until the June 23 concert at the Chapel Hill Sheraton, handling promotions, ticket distribution, hotel bookings and travel arrangements for the band members. “Probably the biggest bump in the road was when Wally called at the end of January and said they were going to have to reschedule the show from April until June,” Wilson says. “We had already distributed a good number of tickets, so letting those people know (about the change) was tough. But most everything else went without a hitch.”
More than 200 Kurth and Taylor fans turned out for the concert and the special VIP session with the band after the show. Proceeds from the show benefited not only the Kurth and Taylor Foundation, but the pediatric AIDS unit, cardiac care unit and cystic fibrosis patients at Duke Children’s Hospital. “It was fun and we’re pleased we did it,” Wilson says. “Although it was great that we got to see our favorite band right here at home, the thing I’m really happy about is that we have helped some worthy causes because of this.”