Month: February 2021

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