Ok, we have our official press release for the tour! I’m super-excited now. I need your help. We are all just 2 or 3 degrees of separation away from Kevin Bacon, right? Well, i’m actually one degree……..but anyway, I need help getting this out to the press. Do you know the following-a journalist, a blogger, a local TV personality that might like to cover this story when we come to your town, the producer of the Today show??? Put on your thinking caps and please consider becoming our personalized PR person! This really works…….the personal touch. This is what this tour is about……reaching out via Facebook, Twitter, and making real connections……..so, please share this, and see if you can make a difference…………Here it is. UPDATE-Speech of Arrested Development has now joined as a celebrity spokesperson for the Orange Duffel Bag Foundation, and will appear on select dates,or date on the tour.
As an aside-Please check the Roadmap for the 50 States in 50 Days tour and see if your State is represented yet…..if not, please think about hosting a house concert? Singer/Songwriter Kevin Montgomery Launches his 50 States in 50 Days Tour and Partners with Orange Duffel Bag Foundation to Help Teens Aging Out of Foster Care and Homeless Youth
For Immediate Release
Nashville, Tennessee – Singer/songwriter Kevin Montgomery announced his 50 States in 50 Days Tour kicking off on October 29, 2010, in Alaska and ending on December 17, 2010, in Hawaii. His mission in partnership with the Orange Duffel Bag Foundation is to play a show in a different state every night for 50 nights in a row while seeking to bring light to the epidemic of teens aging out of foster care and becoming the “invisible homeless.” Along the way, Montgomery will blog and videologue stories of those who have aged out of foster care, been homeless as teens or overcame that background. He plans to create a documentary based on the question: “Who was the one person who influenced your life in a positive way?”
Montgomery, who has 15,000 followers on Twitter, 5,000 Facebook friends and 3,500 fans on Facebook, is booking the entire tour using those two social networks. He has also set up a special blog for the tour and its mission as well as a Facebook Group called I Support Kevin Montgomery’s 50 States in 50 Days Tour. Montgomery will be live streaming concerts throughout the tour at certain locations via tour partner Stage It (http://www.stageit.com). Followers of the tour can track his journey via GPS in real time. The indie artist has built a highly interactive relationship with his loyal fanbase by utilizing all the latest tools social media offers.
Montgomery’s father sang and wrote songs with Buddy Holly. His mom sang on Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds” and Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline.”
At 23 Montgomery landed a recording contract in Los Angeles with A&M Records and toured with Sheryl Crow, David Crosby and Peter Himmelman. He eventually moved back to Nashville. He sang on Lee Ann Womack’s I Hope You Dance CD. He also wrote “I Won’t Close My Eyes” featured on Martina McBride’s triple platinum Evolution CD. In April 2000, he packed his bags. He now tours the UK, Europe and Australia extensively. He still hasn’t unpacked those bags, and this marks his third annual 50 States in 50 Days Tour.
Reviewers describe his music as Americana in the Jackson Brown tradition. His most recent album “True,” featured a remake of his father Bob Montgomery’s Patsy Cline classic “Back in Baby’s Arms.” He is recording a new album prior to the tour.
Montgomery’s sister Echo Garrett (www.echogarrett.com) is president and co-founder of the nonprofit Orange Duffel Bag Foundation, which provides community connections and life skills training to homeless youth and older foster youth. The training principles are based on a book she co-authored called My Orange Duffel Bag with Sam Bracken, who grew up in Las Vegas surrounded by mobsters and motorcycle gang members. His mom abandoned him at age 15, and he kept his homelessness secret from his high school. When he flew from Las Vegas to Atlanta after winning a full-ride football scholarship at the Georgia Institute of Technology, everything he owned fit in an orange duffel bag. The graphic mini-memoir/self help book has an unusual format intended to appeal to all learning styles. It features more than 60 original images by internationally award-winning photographer Kevin Garrett (www.kevingarrett.com) and a free DVD with audio book, the book trailer and 7 videos of Bracken, now a successful executive with FranklinCovey, discussing how he transformed his life. Bracken’s story and efforts through the Foundation have recently been featured on CNN in a segment called Mission Possible, on NBC-affiliate 11 Alive and in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Bracken and Garrett will be joining Montgomery on some tour dates.
My Orange Duffel Bag has been named the November Book Selection by the Pulpwood Queens, the largest book club in the world with more than 3,000 members and 320 chapters across the U.S. and in 10 countries. The Pulpwood Queens/Timber Guys are actively supporting Montgomery’s tour and his mission, and Pulpwood Queen founder Kathy Louise Patrick calls it the “must-read book of the year – The Blind Side-meets-Same Kind of Different as Me.” Patrick, who owns the only beauty salon and bookstore in the nation and runs two popular book blogs, pledged to her social network that she would dye her hair to match the book’s orange cover if 1,000 books sold in the month of June. Patrick, the authors and several other supporters, now all sport orange hair as a result of making that goal.
“We’re starting a movement,” says Mike Daly, chairman of the Orange Duffel Bag Foundation. “We want the orange duffel bag to become a symbol of hope for at-risk youth everywhere.”
Media inquiries or Tour Sponsorships:
Kevin@kevinmontgomery.com
or
Echo Garrett echo@seelevelstudios.com 770-977-7509 or c. 404-538-4983
or
Mike Daly MDALY1111@aol.com 770-331-7605
Share This just in……….CNN is doing a live satellite interview with Sam Bracken tomorrow about helping foster youth with the Orange Duffel Bag Foundation. It will be on a show called Mission Possible at 2:30 pm EST. This is huge, and we believe it may have come from last week’s article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Tune [...]
Share The Atlanta Journal Constitution features Sam Bracken and the Orange Duffel Bag Foundation’s work with teens aging out of foster care. They get it. Kathy Louis Patrick has said My Orange Duffel Bag-A Journey to Radical Change deserves to be a bestseller, and with coverage like this………it will get there. From AJC: Sam Bracken [...]
Share The 50 States in 50 Days tour is about sharing……..the Orange Duffel Bag Foundation is about sharing, and Kathy Louise Patrick of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club is putting her money where her mouth is. She shared My Orange Duffel Bag with Joan Rivers this past week while she was doing her hair for [...]
Share Today I went to Starbucks to work on lyrics to a new song. I’m beginning the new record on Aug. 24th in Nashville, and the goal is to have it done by the 50 States in 50 Days tour. Well, I ried unsuccessfully for an hour or so to finish the 3rd verse to [...]
Share Tonight I recorded a really rough version of a new song and put it exclusively on the “I support Kevin Montgomery’s 50 States in 50 Days tour” Facebook group wall. The coming months will be a journey in more than one respect………literally around American in search of the “Orange Duffel Bag” stories, but also [...]
Share We have a clear mission for the 2010 50 States in 50 Days tour. This tour will not succeed without the help from a whole collection of folks. The best way i’ve found lately to connect people is a Facebook group. So, I started the “I Support Kevin Montgomery’s 50 States in 50 Days [...]
Share Who was the ONE person that made a difference in your life? Someone that altered the course of your life by caring, or giving their time? That is the question that I will ask across America on the 2010 50 States in 50 Days tour. I will seek “orange duffel bag” stories, if you [...]
Share So, we have a book. We have the 50 States in 50 Days tour. We have a clear mission. Now, we need folks to emerge and become champions of the cause. Kathy L. Patrick has emerged. She is the founder of the Pulpwood Queen’s Book Club. She sold 1,000 copies of My Orange Duffel [...]
