Stroke Victim Plays the Blues

The background

Five heart attacks over a seven year period then a stroke four years ago. My life has been simply managing a decline for more than a decade....until October last year when a musician friend stuck a guitar in my hand to try to excercise the fingers of my left hand back into being some use to me. I wasn't hopeful. Music, though, began to inspire me to try harder. It has been an amazing success story. In less than nine months from first picking up the guitar I am now licensed as an official street performer and playing live in public. My life has been wonderfully transformed from inevitable decline to one where I can see more, with hope for better still to come.

The Project

My life is transformed through music and the rehabilitative process in learning to play an instrument. I want to bring this story to a wide audience and will do whatever it takes to do so. To this end I have tried to make contacts in the music business and amazingly have been invited to share the stage in performance with one of the USAs most lauded Blues artists. JP Soars, headline artist with many awards and hotly tipped to be classified amongst the greats of the Blues world has personally given me this opportunity to promote the use of Music in rehabilitation and Stroke Awareness. I only need to get over there and do it. This is the project. To raise awareness of Stroke and how music can inspire and heal. I will willingly support and assist the local USA Stroke agencies and our own Stroke Association here in the UK in what is to be a memorable appearance of a "Stroke Victim Playing the Blues" with one of the greats of the genre.

I can't do it alone

I need help to get there. I am now busking and performing on the streets of my city to begin to raise the capital necessary to take me to the USA. I have sold and am selling what I don't need also to put into the travel pot. Even so, I need help to raise the money to accomplish this trip and accomplish my goals of trying to bring the magical powers of music to others who may feel that there is only loss in their lives. I can prove that though losing some abilities there can be other avenues which open in a person's life to give hope and a purpose. Could you help me to achieve this?