Category: Uncategorized

White Light Foundation and Twiddle would like to acknowledge with respect the Onondaga Nation, firekeepers of the Haudenosaunee, the indigenous peoples on whose ancestral lands we stood at Apple Valley Park in Lafeyette, NY.

We are honored to announce a $2500 donation to Iroquois Nationals to benefit their work with youth lacrosse from Twiddle‘s four night run at Apple Valley Park. Lacrosse is a special game for Mihali and we are pleased to help support the local community in this way.

The Iroquois Nationals mission is to prepare Haudenosaunee and Indigenous youth for international competition, raise awareness of the traditional and cultural aspects of the game of lacrosse, and expose their players to educational opportunities.

Love Relentlessly

We are excited for the sold out Twiddle shows this weekend in Swanzy NH at Chesire Fairground and in New Haven CT at the Westville Music Bowl! For this weekend we have chosen to support The Boys & Girls Club of Milford, CT and the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester NH. Each organization will be receiving a $1000 donation to help provide enriching after school activities and quality programs for local area youth. We are honored to support their great work!

Also we are thrilled to host a LUV-A-DUCK Clean UP in New Haven on Saturday night! The ‘Luv-a-duck Clean Up’ is a volunteer based initiative, led by our frends Jay Segal and Sara Egan, to help clean up venues after Twiddle plays a show. Please fill out this form to join the effort. After the encore, head to the WLF Table (located near the Merch table) to grab a trash bag and some gloves and help us keep the scene green!

Stay tuned for more exciting news this summer. See you this weekend!

Love Relentlessly

To the White Light Foundation and Twiddle community, Today we want to communicate with you that Steve Perlah has resigned from the White Light Foundation. Steve has been the President of the foundation since its inception six years ago and we honor all he has done for the foundation. Steve poured his heart and soul into the vision from day one, and he truly willed the foundation into something bigger than all of us. As the foundation grew, Steve fostered incredible partnerships with many amazing organizations that joined WLF to help make a difference. We will always be grateful to Steve and his family for their efforts to make the foundation run smoothly and grow. We wish Steve the best moving forward.

As Steve leaves the foundation the board of directors are working diligently to move the foundation forward with Twiddle and continue the good work. As things get back to normal and we start having concerts, Twiddle will continue to support the foundation by giving $1 of every headlining show ticket to the foundation. White Light Foundation will donate that money to charities where Twiddle plays and help to spread the positive message from the band and our community. We look forward to seeing all of you soon and restarting that process.

As we look back over the past 6 years, our collective commitment to doing good has manifested in dynamic ways. We have donated to countless non-profit organizations around the country, supporting causes near and dear to the Twiddle family. WLF has awarded grants to Children’s Hospitals, Addiction Treatment Centers, Animal Shelters, Food Pantries, BLM causes and countless other 501c3 groups that also “love relentlessly”. Our recurring scholarships at Castleton University that benefit students in financial need, passionate about music, and individuals dedicated to community service, is something the band members are particularly proud of.

While the foundation is blazing forward without Steve as President, his sacrifice, leadership, and passion for doing good will forever be woven into the White Light Foundation’s core. Thank you Steve!

Love Relentlessly,

The White Light Foundation Board of Directors

Kevin Rondeau
Dave Bouchard
Charlie Connor
Edmund Edwards
Katie Irwin
Greg Knight

Please join us Wednesday, March 3rd at 7:30 PM EST on facebook for an entirely improvisational “WLF Jam” from Twiddle. In solidarity with the White Light Foundation’s efforts to address systemic racism, there will be a White Light Frankie pin drop immediately following the 20+ minute jam. 100% of these proceeds will be added to the $15,000 already pledged to these causes. While the jam is free, you can support the WLF’s efforts by donating at paypal.me/wlfdonate.

We are excited to announce the final recipients for the Month of Giving in support of Black History Month. While February has come to an end, our giving and learning has not… we have a few additional things coming up and we very excited about them (more to come).

We are returning to last summer. First Twiddle was scheduled to support Vampire Weekend in Bend, OR, Boise, ID, and Missoula, MT among other locations so we decided to start our giving there. We are thrilled to support The Montana Racial Equity Project, Central Oregon Black Leaders Assembly and Treasure Valley_NAACP. There amazing organizations on the frontline of ending systemic racism in their communities.

When the tour was cancelled, the band pivoted and drive-ins were scheduled. One event was with the team at Adirondack Independence Music Festival and unfortunately due to gathering restrictions that was cancelled as well. We are thrilled to support Soul Fire Farm who is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system.

Each of these organizations have received $1,000 grants thanks to your support and generosity and we encourage you to visit their pages and learn more about the incredible work they are doing.

Love Relentlessly

As many of you know, the Twiddle and White Light community lost a dear Frend last November. As illustrated by the prevalence of Facebook photos, Lon Conscious (Lon Gellman) was the personification of Love Relentlessly. But, Lon’s love was felt well beyond the confines of #TwiddleNation. From the Grateful Dead to Phish to Twiddle to Eggy to Baked Shrimp, Lon’s life was a guide to the best live music to LeanLikeLon to. And then there was the The Garden community … the Rangers, the Knicks.

For us, Lon defined NYC. He loved everything about the city, to talk to him was to understand what the boroughs are all about, and of course, he didn’t drive (why would he?)

When Eddie Shechtman and Marla Gellman Kallin asked that donations in honor of Lon be made to WLF, we knew they would make an impact. But, like Lon himself, we had no idea how far and wide it would LEAN. But lean it did … Pin Farmer Productions at Daydream Farm created a pin to honor Eddie and Lon’s 30 year Frendship, Eddie, Matt Lebetkin, Christopher Prinos and the team at Concepts In Promotions created LoveLikeLon shirts and so on, Dr. Remidi’s Necessities LLC created shirts and stickers, Baked Shrimp held a virtual tribute concert (and announced the LonCon music festival with Mihali and Aqueous scheduled to perform to keep Lon always on the rail) … and that does not mention all of you who donated, posted, shared, watched, and leaned …

We are fortunate to have known and loved Lon. We are grateful that 30 years ago at Queens College Lon and Eddie met. And, 30 years later, we are honored to announce the Lon Conscious Memorial Scholarship to support continuing students in financial need in the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. Between the donations to date and a contribution from the WLF general fund, we are thrilled to start the scholarship off with $12,000. This will fund $1,000 annual scholarships for students beginning in the fall of 2021, will provide funding for 5 years and assure the awarded student will receive the scholarship for 3 consecutive years.

Additionally, we will continue to support the scholarship with contributions with donations through the link on this post, #twiddlenation, the Love Like Lon apparel, and whatever incredibly generous ways you all come up with to honor Lon.

Love (Like Lon) Relentlessly

For the third week of our Month of Giving in honor of Black History Month, we are supporting 4 more amazing organizations on the frontline of ending Food Apartheid and Community Bail Funds. Each of the following organizations are doing incredible things in their community to fight systemic racism and we are honored to, with Twiddle, send each of them $1,000 grants in support of shows that were cancelled due to Covid-19. Please visit the organizations to learn more about the specifics of their work.

Fresh Future Farm in Charleston, SC (The Music Farm)
Our Kitchen Table in Grand Rapids, MI (The Intersection)
Northwest Community Bail Fund in Portland, OR (Wonder Ball Room)
Black Farmers Collective in Seattle, WA (Neumos)

Love Relentlessly

During the 2nd week of our Month of Giving to support organizations on the frontline of racial justice (both criminal and social) with Twiddle we are thrilled to announce the following organizations have received grants of $1,000 each: BeLoved Asheville, Gideon’s Army, Central Ohio Freedom Fund, and Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.

Each organization has received a grant thanks to all of you. We invite you to check out each of these amazing organizations who are doing the heavy lifting in their communities (Asheville, NC, Nashville, TN, Columbus, OH and Detroit, MI) to help increase the availability of healthy and sustainable food, ending wealth based incarceration, or disrupting the school to prison pipeline.

While we would much rather be supporting these incredible charities through Twiddle’s concerts at venues like The Orange Peel , Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, The Bluestone , and The Majestic we will just have to wait a little bit longer for that honor.

Love Relentlessly.

Last week we shared with you our plans to support organizations on the frontline of bail reform and the elimination of food apartheid in support of Black History Month. With Twiddle we are thrilled to announce this week’s recipients: Nashville Community Bail Fund, DC Urbangreens Inc, NC Community Bail Fund of Durham and Lawrence Community Gardens. Each organization has received a $1,000 donation thanks to all of you.

We invite you to check out each of these amazing organizations who are doing the heavy lifting in their communities (Nashville, TN, Washington, DC, Durham, NC and Lawrence, IN) to help increase the availability of healthy and sustainable food or ending wealth based incarceration.

While we would much rather be supporting these incredible charities through Twiddle’s concerts at venues like Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, 9:30 Club , Lincoln Theatre, and The Vogue Theatre, we will just have to wait a little bit longer for that honor.

On Friday we will be sharing with you an interview we did with Nashville Community Bail Fund. The team at NCBF are doing some incredibly innovative things and we asked them to help educate us (and you) about the impacts of systemic racism in the judicial system and Nashville – we hope you will check it out.

Love Relentlessly.

As we prepare to make our final Month of Giving announcements, with Twiddle, in support of Black History Month and organizations on the frontline of Bail Reform and ending Food Apartheid, we wanted to share with you an interview we did with the team at Nashville Community Bail Fund (one of the first organizations we supported this month). WLF Board Member Greg Knight led the interview.

Although we had been studying the issues, it wasn’t until we sat down with Rahim, Jessica, and Jameel, that we we started to understand, not only how important the work being done on a local level is, but how interconnected the issues are and the depths systemic racism goes. NCBF is doing some amazing things to not just help those impacted by unfair bail practices but to engage with the Nashville community to unite people of all backgrounds around the cause. We invite you to watch and see how. We are grateful to NCBF for helping us learn.

Thank you all for your support. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

Love Relentlessly