Covid cancels another thing: Songs For Sarah IV Edition
Raise your hand if you are ready for Covid-19 to be over. *Raises both hands*
This isn’t the blog I had planned on writing about Songs For Sarah IV but unfortunately it’s 2020 and nothing has gone as planned this year. Like the event for example, it was suppose to be a live in person concert, then a live streamed concert to benefit autism. Now it’s a cancelled event that has left those involved bummed out over the cancelation. Due to the state of the world and our purple status here in Franklin county, I was informed earlier this week that the live stream wouldn’t be able to take place. Understandable of course, safety first always. Still, none the less of a downer. I decided that I would go ahead and share with the world what Keith Cretin, local musician and dad to Sarah, Todd, lead singer of tOd and The Bad Ideas and myself chatted about when we sat down very safe and socially distanced a few weeks ago to bring awareness to the event.
Wondering what Songs For Sarah is all about, well good you’re about to find out. Let’s start off with it’s the brain child of Keith. He started it in celebration of his miracle child on her 18th birthday. His daughter Sarah was born with mitochondrial disease and is also autistic. The doctors told Keith and Sarah’s mom that her journey probably wouldn’t last past the age of five. So in celebration of her beating the odds and turning 18, the first Songs For Sarah was born.
He had retired from music entirely and 6 years ago a friend of his convinced him to start a band to play a local show dedicated to the Ramones. That band, Joey 74. They kept the band together after the show and essentially that’s how the idea of SFS came about. Keith said “we were just playing shows, I tell people some guys shoot pool, some guys they play cards, some guys they go bowling, whatever, that’s how I treated this, play guitar, have a practice, drink some beers, and then hey we play a show. We had just been doing shows and what not and I said alright let’s just have a show (to celebrate) and give all the money to an autism charity.”
The Autism Society of Central Ohio was the one he chose because “they help people help themselves by giving them that link to other people.” Which turned out to be very instrumental to him when Sarah’s autism was falling under the territory of all new ground.
“So we did that first show and we raised a bunch of money. It was at The Tree bar, which isn’t very big but we packed the joint, it was great. Joey 74 played, I played myself, Morning Theft played and Lustkill played. So it was a great night”
Keith jokingly “blames” Todd, who is the lead singer of tOd and The Bad Ideas as to why the event is still happening. “With Todd and those guys getting involved, it’s kind of funny, I think he’s probably the one to blame for Songs For Sarah continuing.” Todd approached his friend Keith after the first SFS and told him that if he was thinking about doing another one, that tOd and The Bad Ideas would love to participate. (Their appearance in that next Songs For Sarah is actually how Keith ended up in the band, but that’s a story for another day)
“He was like you should do it again and I was like uh really.” Keith said as Todd pipes in, ” what are we doing for this years, is there a this years?” Which lead to Songs For Sarah becoming a reoccurring thing. “It wasn’t something that was necessarily planned to be a thing, but it just became a thing.” The fourth installment planned for this year however faced many obstacles during the planning stages. They had not one but two venues fall through, booking conflicts with bands they wanted to preform, production issues and of course a global pandemic on top of all of that to boot.
“The short version of the whole thing is there were just a lot of obstacles that kept dropping in the way and I remember sitting over coffee thinking ok what do we need, we need a venue, ok done, we need this, ok, we can do that, I even started looking into buying a camera, we’ll make it happen.” Todd said
Despite all the things in the way, as Todd said, they found a way to make it happen. Originally booked at N8 Glass Music and Art studio for December 5th 2020, Songs For Sarah IV was a go. Athena Rex, Emmy Lazarus and the Recently Deceased and of course, tOd and The Bad Ideas were set to perform on a live stream for the world to see with the goal of playing some tunes, raising some money and giving it away. That is until Covid-19 numbers hit an all time high here in Ohio and the stream was cancelled for safety reasons.
It was a tough blow given everything that Keith and Todd had already been through with trying get Songs For Sarah IV up and running in 2020. Todd posted this on Facebook on the 5th in regards to the show.
“Today was supposed to be full of activity in preparation for SONGS for SARAH IV … unfortunately, no matter how much we prepared, and our best efforts, tonight’s show was canceled. In the grand scheme of things, in reality, it’s a minor setback, but right now it doesn’t feel like it. I’ll be back at it with Keith to make it happen eventually, and we hope everyone will tune in when it does.”
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Songs For Sarah IV will happen when it is possible. Todd and Keith both will make sure of it and they have good reason. As Todd told me when I asked about all the initial sets backs and over coming them “I’m glad we found a way to make it happen cause it’s important and the story behind it, doing it for Sarah is important and I’ll be damned if I’ll let all this stuff keep us from delivering.” It’s too important not too.
Rumor has it, they are shooting for spring of 2021 for that new delivery.
So there you have it. The story of how, in his own words, a guy who’s still wearing the same leather jacket he had in 1984 with a love of the Ramones and rock and roll decided to celebrate his daughter’s life by just hanging out with his friends and playing some songs and making some money and giving it away, turned into something much more for a great cause.
If you’d like to learn more about Songs For Sarah or for updates on the new show date and time, please visit:
https://www.facebook.com/songsforsarah.net/
https://www.todandthebadideas.com/
Or if you would like to donate to the Autism Society of Central Ohio, you can do so here:
https://www.autismcentralohio.org
Thanks for reading everybody! Until next time, peace, love, and wash those hands you raised so Covid-19 can leave.
