Boots on the Sand benefit concert draws thousands, raises over a million
A sold-out benefit concert for victims hardest hit by Hurricane Ian last Thursday at Hertz Arena brought stars from the country, rock and country-rock music genres.
The Boots on the Sand benefit concert featured Lynyrd Skynyrd as the main act, with support from Ted Nugent, Gavin DeGraw, Tracy Lawrence, Brian Kelley, John Rich, Raelynn and Ira Dean, who helped put the event together.
Rich said he has friends in the area who had loved ones lose everything and that he saw what happened on TV.
“Nobody had really put on a giant event to raise money for all the people who got hit so hard,” Rich said. “They put the call out to me and all these people and decided to do something big for these people and we jumped at the opportunity. This is our shot to make a difference.”
The event was put on by a non-profit organization Boots on the Sand, which was put together to help those in need after the storm. Jennifer Parisi helped organize the show with her boyfriend, Dean, and said she was excited to see the hard work from so many people in such a short period pay off.
“We did a year’s worth of planning in six weeks, but obviously, it was a relief concert so we had to pull it together quickly,” Parisi said. “We’re thrilled, we sold the place out, everybody is so excited to be here and we can’t wait to have a wonderful evening.”
Tim Cartwright helped organize the charity that had to get its 501c3 set up in six weeks when it takes six months to file with the IRS.
“They couldn’t pull this off without an existing 501c3 charity, so we lent our charity to them so we could pull this concert off,” Cartwright said. “We put a special account together for them and special accounting set up.”
Lawrence, who has performed in Florida countless times, said he has a lot of friends here, including Dean, and living in Texas, knows what dealing with hurricanes are like.
“The country music scene shares in everything we do. We’ve done a lot of things for each other and it’s a great community,” Lawrence said. “I see a lot of blue tarps on a lot of houses and there are a lot of people struggling and it will take years for everything to come back.”
Dean deflected the credit to those who did the leg work for sponsors, getting the performers together and all the other things needed to put on a show.
“All I did was see the devastation and I saw nobody was doing anything. I’ve been really blessed in the music industry to have great friends,” Dean said. “I started making calls and all I could do was bring them here. These people need a show to forget about their problems.
All donations went to Volunteer Florida, The Florida Disaster Fund, the Community Foundation of Collier County, Collaboratory of Lee County and others. They had a goal of $1 million, which was met before the first note was played through donations and an online and live silent auction.
Most of the acts took the stage for about three or four songs, with a highlight being Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno coming onstage during Nugent’s set for a bow.
But it was Skynyrd who many came to see, and they gave an hour’s worth of all or their all-time hits that nearly everyone knew by heart such as “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Freebird.”
Fans were happy to see their favorite performers come together for a good cause.
“It’s exciting to see these people step up. There’s a lot of devastation here but everyone moved in, so it’s nice to see people put something like this together,” Ryann Cinderich said.
“As soon as they put tickets on sale, that was how I was going to help,” said Gina Shultz of Fort Myers, who did fairly well during the storm but whose neighbors, not so much. “There are so many great artists here tonight, it’s amazing. I came to see Skynyrd and the others were amazing.”