Doug Clark: Spokane Street Music Week all about generosity

Hard to believe it, but the calendar doesn’t lie.

We’re less than a month away from the lucky 13th annual Spokane Street Music Week, and it’s time again to shake the tambourine and spread the word.

If any of you out there in Newspaper Land ever thought of getting involved, this is the historic year to pick up your instrument or put on your dancing shoes and be a part of this fun charity event.

And by historic I mean that 2015 marks the year the event will pass the $100,000 mark in total donations to Second Harvest regional food bank.

That represents some 600,000 pounds of donated food or a half-million meals, which, as they say, ain’t too shabby.

This year’s installment will run during the noon hours of Monday through Friday, June 8-12. (Spokane Street Music Week always takes place during the second full week of June.)

The excitement takes place on the sidewalks of downtown Spokane, the historic Garland District and, for the second year in a row, Coeur d’Alene.

It’s the greatest outdoor event without port-a-potties.

And simple, too. Buskers (archaic word for street performers) show up a little before noon, collect a red bucket and an ID badge, and then head out to find a patch of sidewalk to sing, play or strut your stuff.

At 1 p.m. just head back to the designated sites and deposit your buckets along with whatever donations you managed to collect from pedestrians passing by. You can take part one day or every day, it’s entirely up to you.

Newcomers should contact me via the information below. I’ll put you into our vast Street Music Week email database so you can receive everything you need to know in order to take part prior to June 8.

Street Music Week is all about creating a cool vibe for a worthy cause.

It’s also all about generosity, not virtuosity.

Performers of every level are welcome. All it takes is a little courage and big heart.

On a side note, Spokane Street Music Week ( www.streetmusicweek.com) will once again have a big presence at the food bank’s upcoming Taking a Bite Out of Hunger food tasting and auction on May 20 at the Arena.

Sorry. The tickets are sold out, I’m told.

However, you should know that instruments signed by Spokane rockers Myles Kennedy and Peter Rivera will be auctioned off for the food bank on behalf of Street Music Week.

Rivera, former lead singer and drummer with Rare Earth, has autographed a pair of congas.

My longtime pal Kennedy, who performs with Alter Bridge and Slash’s band, The Conspirators, inked his name onto a beautiful electric guitar donated by Paul Reed Smith.

(Hint: Anyone who wants to bid on these items better know somebody who has tickets.)

Speaking of big hearts, sometimes you don’t even have to be an entertainer to have an impact.

Jim Lyons, my longtime Street Music Week second in command, blew my mind the other day when he told me a story about how his friend, Greg Moore, helped guide him to the right City Hall channels last year to get Street Music Week sanctioned in Coeur d’Alene.

Moore, of course, is the Coeur d’Alene police sergeant who was shot and killed last week in the line of duty.

“He had the greatest smile in the world,” said Lyons. “Such a good guy.”

Lyons, an ER nurse at the time, said he met Moore while working late nights in the emergency room at the Lake City’s big Kootenai Health medical complex.

Moore, he added, was one of the late-working police officers who was always coming into the hospital as part of the job. They became friends and often ate their 2 a.m. “lunch” together.

Last year about this time, Lyons said he shared with Moore his frustration of not knowing how to get Street Music Week started in Coeur d’Alene. Lyons had made several contacts in the downtown community without success.

Moore had the answer. “You need to go see Woody,” he told Lyons.

Woody, as in Coeur d’Alene City Councilman Woody McEvers, that is.

And the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

“The staff thought it was a valid thing to do,” Woody told me last year during an interview.

It was and it is.

As I recall, last year’s fledgling street music effort in Coeur d’Alene brought in around $7,000 of our $25,000 total, which is absolutely amazing for a first year.

“Greg told me afterwards that all the police thought the event was cool,” said Lyons, who wants to dedicate Coeur d’Alene’s second Street Music Week in Moore’s honor.

So thank you, Myles and Peter. Thank you, Jim and Woody. And thanks to a fine man whose life was so senselessly cut short.

See you on the sidewalks in a few weeks.