The www.musicbuildstour.comONE Music Builds Tour will be launch later this month, bringing top-selling bands Third Day, Switchfoot, Robert Randolph and the Family Band and Jars of Clay to a city near you. The tour will kick off in Detroit on August 21st and wrap-up in Denver on October 12 and include 23 stops along the way.

This isn’t just going to be a typical rock concert – ONE’s going to be a big part of the show too. Just to name a few of the special things being planned, there will be videos featuring ONE in between sets focusing on three of ONE’s most exciting initiatives: ONE Sabbath, the ONE Campus Challenge and ONE Vote ’08. We also plan on having two booths that will ride along on the whole tour where concert-goers can sign up and learn more about ONE and our issues.

We see this tour as a big opportunity for ONE members across the country to get together, have some fun, hear some great music, recruit new friends to the effort and add some noise to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease.

We’re still hammering out other details and ways we can bring as much attention to ONE as possible (can you say limited edition concert t-shirt?) and we’ll keep you up-to-date as the tour gets set to kick off in Detroit. For now, be sure to check out the ONE Music Builds Tour site, www.musicbuildstour.com, for more info about the bands and a full list of tour stops.

-Peter Grieser

Saturday was a big day for me. Not only was it my first time officially volunteering for the ONE Campaign, it was also my very first live concert! Dierks Bentley, along with Miranda Lambert and Halfway to Hazard, played a concert at the Jones County Fair in Monticello, Iowa. Dierks is a big fan of ONE and invited us to set up a ONE table at the show. There were over 15,000 people there so we spoke to many concert-goers about ONE and how they can get involved.

Many fans were really excited to see Dierks Bentley’s new CD where he is clearly wearing his ONE band in 3 photos! We even talked to Miranda Lamberts father as well as David and Chad, of Halfway to Hazard. They were very supportive of the campaign and even signed up to be members and wore bands!

Everything was going very well until suddenly the sky turned black and a horrible storm rolled in along with tornado warnings. We, unfortunately, had to shut down our table early and wait the storm out under a small pop up tent, for over 2 hours! Since the show was set up on a tractor pull field, we were also completely surrounded by lakes of mud! Finally the show went on and Dierks came out to play! We didn’t get to talk to Dierks but we did notice during the show that he was wearing his ONE band, we even got a wave because he saw our ONE banner. Even though we had to walk through knee deep mud after the show to get back to our cars, it was overall fun to get involved and attend my first concert! I’m glad I could help and I hope to volunteer again in the near future!

-Teale Witherell, ONE member

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much of a volunteer turn out this weekend – I think people were freaked out by the size of the show and the fact that you had to take public transport and couldn’t park. Because of that, we were extra excited to have Elaine from Birmingham join us – she was already coming to the show and volunteered to spend several hours of her time with us behind the booth. We were really grateful for her help – we were pretty busy back there, and my touring partner Joe was spending most of his time floating around getting sign ups, so I definitely needed the help! I hadn’t seen Elaine since she volunteered with us at one of the U2 shows back in the fall of 2005, so it was great to get to hang out and catch up. She is one of our super volunteers – always doing amazing work for ONE and (RED) in her community in Alabama, having been involved with the campaign since its launch three years ago.

All night long we got to meet fan after fan that was excited to be involved with ONE and (RED). In the process of talking to thousands of people, I somehow managed to become the best friend to a group of about eight 7th grade boys. They kept coming back to the table – first they were just hanging out, wanting to know ‘what can I get for free?!?!?!’, giving me flashbacks to Warped Tour. I talked to them about the campaigns though (the fact that I teach elementary and middle school aged kids when not touring definitely helped!) and eventually they all signed up and all took pins. Then they came back to get stickers. Then they came back yet again, so I gave them all a white band on the condition that they’d each get at least three of their friends to go online and join the campaigns. They obliged, so I took their photo as a group. I then I had to sign a ‘contract’ on a piece of scrap paper stating that I most absolutely promised to put their photo online (I posted it on my flickr site, and I’m hoping BN also posts it on the (RED) blog or I might have problems…) or else they would sue me. I explained that I work for non-profits and thus had nothing to sue for, but that did not seem to register with them. Then they declared I was the coolest person at the show that day. They stopped by a few more times throughout the afternoon, somehow managing to find yet more 7th grade boys to bring with them to sign up, so I guess they are already working to make good on their word!

We also met lots of other cool people – many wearing and carrying Product (RED) items, a fan from Africa, a teacher working ONE into her curriculum this year, and countless others. Sometimes you can feel like you live in a bubble – you wonder how far these campaigns reach, but night after night of doing this work always reminds me of how people will always find their place, their purpose and calling and run with it.

We’ve got some Dave shows in Florida coming up early this week -as always, more updates soon…

-Brande Jackson, ONE Concert Outreach

From Brande Jackson:

The ONE concert outreach team has been busy the past few weeks – we just finished the Warped Tour, and are still on the road with the Dave Matthews Band.

Warped Tour proved to be as much fun as always – we talked to thousands of young people across the country about the work of ONE and what they could do to get involved and make a difference. As always, we had amazing volunteers join us throughout the course of the tour as well. The diversity of our volunteers always impresses us – we get to meet people doing amazing things for ONE in their own community, and Warped always provides us with a unique chance to get to work with young volunteers that are making poverty history in their high schools and colleges. A big thanks to all of you that joined us this summer and braved the heat and loud punk rock – we hope to see you all again next year!

Our Dave dates have proved to be a great success as well – we are very excited to have Product (RED) joining us for this tour. We kicked off this exciting collaboration in Milwaukee, where we were joined by new and veteran volunteers (a special thanks to Alyssa, our Chicago based rockstar volunteer who once got over 500 people signed up at a single show!) alike that helped us get thousands of DMB fans educated and involved.

This past weekend, we were back at the Gorge, in central Washington. Friday night we had veteran volunteer Sammi join us, coming in from Seattle, as well as Rachel and Carnie, first time volunteers who got involved via (RED) and drove all the way up from Portland. The crew did great – they kicked off the weekend in style, getting hundreds of DMB involved with fighting AIDS and poverty. As always, the night was full of unique stories – people planning trips to Africa, Peace Corp volunteers and more – I am always amazed at the extent of stories we get to hear doing this work.

We had a great team on Saturday night – Kelly and Jason are leaders of the ONE Spokane group. Kelly is a high school teacher who was in Uganda earlier this summer, and he also brought two of his students along, Jamie and David. David is property of the Navy as of Wednesday, so we were very honored that he choose to spend the last of his free time with us. He and Jamie have been active with ONE and other Africa focused organizations at their high school. Sandra drove in with Jason and Kelly – she to is active with ONE in Spokane. Kristina was a first time volunteer who signed up to volunteer via (RED) – she came in a bit late and missed part of our volunteer training, so we were concerned that she wouldn’t feel 100% in doing outreach, but she proved us wrong, and ended up getting more sign ups than anyone! Tim had joined ONE at a U2 show a few years back, he’s not totally sure how he got on my volunteer list, but he was glad he did! Ryan first learned about (RED) via the Vanity Fair (RED) issue earlier this year – this was his first volunteer experience and he did great. Rounding out our team was Sammi from Seattle, for her second night in a row. I couldn’t even find most of our volunteers while they were working – they took to the lawn as soon as we were done with our training and talked to hundreds of fans in the process. We ended up having one of our best nights of the whole tour thanks to this amazing crew!

Sunday brought more wind, and more great volunteers. Jennifer and Sean both are involved with the ONE Spokane group, and both are also teachers. Sean teaches college part time, and Jennifer is an elementary school teacher. We also had Colette and Zach join us, a couple from Seattle that got involved as volunteers through (RED). And of course, Sammi joined us again as well! Once again, our volunteer team proved to be rockstars, getting a ton of DMB fans involved with ONE and (RED).

All weekend long, we were greeted with flashes of white bands and thumbs up from those that had joined us at an earlier show or on another tour. I also met two fans who had to buy new bands because their dog ate theirs, the best story I heard all weekend! We met countless people who shared what they were doing to fight poverty and AIDS in their own community, and heard from dozens of people that had already bought (RED) products and were excited to learn they could do more.

We’re heading to Atlanta for the next round of DMB shows – watch for more updates soon!

-Brande Jackson, ONE Concert Outreach

We just launched our third summer on tour with the Dave Matthews Band. We kicked the tour off in Boston two weeks ago with a powerhouse crew of volunteers. Among those that joined us were Amy, who is one of the lead volunteers in the Boston area, and Wendy, a South African native who for some reason kept accidentally asking fans if they wanted to ‘help end world peace’. WE knew she meant world poverty, but the fans who stopped looked pretty confused! It worked though, once they stopped she explained what she MEANT to say and got them signed up and involved! In Philly we had Brit, Brent and Maria join us – Brit had just met us the week before at the Virgin Festival and brought her friend Brent along, and Maria was also a first time volunteer. In Pittsburgh we got to work with Brian, a lead volunteer for the area who comes out and helps at every show we do, and his team of great volunteers – they hold the record so far on the tour for the most sign ups, though we’re pretty sure our teams in Milwaukee and Florida are going to do their best to steal that title! We’ve already also been through Hartford and DC, and have gotten thousands of Dave fans involved with the campaign. We’ve got a good six weeks left of the tour ahead of us, and expect it to be even bigger and better than the last two years.

We got to take part in the Virgin festival again as well. It was two days this year instead of one, which gave us more time to get lots and lots of people involved with ONE. In addition to getting a few thousand more people to sign the ONE Declaration, we also managed to recruit a TON of new volunteers for the campaign, people that were eager to join us in reaching out and building support for ONE. Over the weekend, we also had some very cool volunteers join us. Andy is in the Navy – we are convinced his military training allowed him to withstand the intense heat and humidity – and just got involved with ONE, working with us was his first volunteer experience with the campaign. He was joined by Tracy, a Southern California transplant who now lives in Baltimore. They really gave it their all on Saturday, and got lots and lots of people involved. On Sunday, Tracy came back out, and we were also joined by Sara, Deidree and Sajid – all Baltimore/DC area ONE supporters who played a big part in making the weekend a success.

We also rejoined the Warped Tour last week. We were at the west coast Warped dates earlier this summer, but had to drop off to tour for a stretch. We are back in action though, getting thousands of young people across the country involved and active with ONE. Warped can be intense – it’s loud, always hot, has long days, and everything we bring out seems to be coated in a layer of dust and dirt within a day – but it’s also one of our favorite tours to do, giving us a unique chance to reach out young fans in just about every part of the country. It’s always so cool to hear about organizing around ONE happenings at college campuses, high schools and even elementary schools. Our volunteers on Warped always reflect that as well – we’ve had some amazing high school students join us at various shows over the past few weeks, doing a great job to get more and more people involved with the campaign. A lot of our volunteers, in fact, are fans that first learned about ONE at another concert. We’ve taken ONE out to Warped since the summer of 2004, and it’s really rewarding to see the impact that has made – every day we talk to young supporters who are doing amazing things for ONE in their community.

We’ll be out on the road taking ONE across the country for the next six weeks – be sure to get in touch with your local organizer if you’d like to join us, as we always are looking for volunteers to help us in making poverty history, and watch for more updates soon!

-Brande Jackson, ONE Concert Outreach