P4TH Girls Are Loud

In November 2019 I played the Girls Are Loud fundraiser to get 74 girls orphaned by Ebola into Hope Orphanage, Sierra Leone. We’d managed to raise the target amount before we’d finished our Vegan Kitchen dinner, but getting them into the orphanage was only part of the job.

With the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic causing havoc with both gigs and fundraising, P4TH took to the interpipes for this one, with three days of women and girls showing solidarity through music and poetry. You can catch up with all of the acts, and messages from the girls, here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7LvBt2XUDS_oF7G-ykJXwQiDgDFYRtu2

We raised enough to buy new shoes for all of the girls and enough groundnuts to plant half of their agricultural sustainability project. This year they hope to obtain land and build sleeping quarters for the older ones and a school for the primary aged girls. Keep your eyes open for ways to get involved. This will now be a monthly online gig, so if you want to perform or you want to see what’s happening, get involved at https://www.facebook.com/punk4thehomeless/ 

1: Your Side of the Street

2: Fragile (like a bomb)

3: Rainbow Chasers

4: Panic in the Water

5: Music Note, Aubergine, Smiley Face

This was a really memorable gig for a number of reasons. I got to share a bill with some amazing acts. Activistas were certainly in fine form. I had also not seen Jesse Eden Freeman or Track Not Found before and I really enjoyed discovering them both. Between us we managed to raise enough wedge to get 74 girls, mostly Ebola orphans, into a school in Sierra Leone. 

It was also the first time I had a gig reviewed, and twice at that, both in IssuePunkZine (http://www.issuepunkzine.co.uk/) and Echoes and Dust.

“Tonight’s gig is an interesting mix of spoken word and music and kicks off with Pixie Styx. Now, I hadn’t heard of her before so didn’t really know what to expect, but she turned out to be a singer-songwriter of unusual sensitivity and honesty. Normally singer-songwritery stuff isn’t really my thing, but here was a depth, a vulnerability, and an engaging self-deprecating humour that meant the often sobering subject matter was sensitivity presented.  Somehow she balanced the different elements of her set effectively. Really good!”  

Tim Foster https://www.echoesanddust.com/2019/11/track-not-found-the-sumac-centre-nottingham/