The Sustaining Roots Music Community Project (SOOTS) is a Community Workday Program at Raleigh Charter High School(RCHS) that serves as a link among the communities of Southern Blues musicians, the Music Maker Relief Foundation (MMRF), the greater Raleigh community, especially RCHS, and its local businesses.

Left to right: H. Tempest, A. Davis, C. Montague, G. Hubbe, M. Gongaware, K. Pearson and D. Nowell (front, seated, smiling)

SOOTS began as an idea, and the students have made it in to a reality.

In 1999, a new, progressive high school rose from the ruins of the Historic Pilot Cotton Mill and called itself Raleigh Charter. In 2005, Newsweek ranked Raleigh Charter the ninth best public high school in the United States. A year later this school began an innovative Citizenship Program in which students and teachers developed and led service programs together. Thus in 2006, The Sustaining Roots Music Community Project (SOOTS) was born to help the critically acclaimed and internationally renowned Music Maker Relief Foundation (MMRF) in assisting elderly Southern American blues musicians.

Four years ago SOOTS hosted the First Annual Sustaining Roots Music Benefit Concert in conjunction with Music Maker. MMRF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Southern Blues music. Backed by B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, and Taj Mahal, MMRF does everything from recording, pressing and releasing albums to paying the medical bills that so many aging bluesmen and women struggle to meet. Best of all, MMRF seeks to give these artists “a hand up rather than a handout,” and the best way to do this is to find these artists a gig in which they can share their wealth of talent and earn next month’s rent.

We invite you to join in the fun as SOOTS and MMRF give back to Southern blues artists who have given so much of themselves to lend our regional culture, music and tradition its soul-food flavor.

What makes our work so fun? SOOTS operates on the philosophy that the South’s authentic blues tradition is best homegrown, and thus we seek to support it in a homegrown manner. When you see SOOTS t-shirts they have been designed by students and silk screened in a classroom. When you attend the SOOTS annual “Fat Tuesday Film and Music Festival” you enjoy homemade student prepared gumbos and, for the second year, live music-- featuring Lightnin’ Wells and Tarboro bluesman George Higgs. Then, the icing on our cake is our annual “May Day Cake Bake,” which offers the best local Southern kitchen-created desserts our students can conjure. Our work is hard - but oh so fulfilling. When you help us help our community’s musicians you’ll find everyone is smiling.

The Fourth Annual Sustaining Roots Music Benefit Concert will feature Piedmont blues artist Boo Hanks, Durham blues guitarist John Dee Holeman and Tarboro bluesman George Higgs. The event will be held on Friday, April 23rd at the Historic LongView Center on downtown Raleigh’s Moore Square. Doors open at 7:00 pm, and we invite you to attend. The night’s proceeds go to support Music Maker Relief Foundation’s treasured artists.

Let’s work together to preserve priceless local rhythms.

Sincerely,