Tuesday, September 25, 2007 – Vince Gill, Patty Griffin, Jewel and Trisha Yearwood will trade songs and songs during a guitar pull with a twist in New York in October.
All For the Hall New York will be held at the Nokia Theatre Times Square on Oct. 10, benefitting the Country Music Hall of FameŽ and Museum.
Actor-director-novelist Ethan Hawke will emcee the event.
The Museum launched All for the Hall, its first-ever non-bricks-and-mortar fundraising campaign, in 2005. "The campaign addresses the museum's need for long-term financial security and will provide a safety net for the institution and its work," Director Kyle Young said at the time. "This is the kind of ordinary fundraising that all not-for-profits must do."
During a guitar pull, composers present their original songs in-the-round, passing the spotlight from one to the next in a round of four songs. Over multiple rounds, each writer will present several songs.
The pull will introduce some unannounced fifth songwriters to present one song each at several points during the evening. Additionally, to illustrate common roots and traditions, the producers have invited songwriters more closely identified with musical genres other than mainstream country.
All for the Hall New York is the Museum's first attempt at creating an "annual giving" fundraising event outside the Nashville area. "Our story is simple," Young said. "But our challenge here and in New York is facilitating understanding of the important collection, research and scholarship that are the essence of our great music museum."
"On a national level, we have to cause others to go beyond the obvious tourist attraction and see the educational value of our work in preserving the evolving history and traditions of country music. Our Nashville institution, which has been accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM) since 1987, belongs to a varied worldwide community of museums that collectively safeguard our nation's memory and the world's heritage," he said. "As the custodian and interpreter of the vital records of country music history, this museum is an institution of memory in possession of a unique public treasury representing a vast accumulation of human experience, including the lives of the music's creators, marketers, critics and listeners.
"Our simple story is that we need help in the form of reliable annual sources of contributed income. Without it, we will not be able to continue with our dynamic changing exhibition schedule, our school programs, or the hundreds of public programs we present each year. There will be no funds to clean or re-string Mother Maybelle Carter's guitar, to catalog or digitize more recordings or films, to keep our humidity and light at levels ideal for the conservation of artifacts or to provide salaries for our curators, historians and educators. What is now a model living-history Museum stretching far beyond our bricks-and-mortar will become just another roadside attraction with a lot of glitter and no substance. That cannot happen."
