Tucson restaurateur/musician Austin Counts is bringing a few of his musical buds to the Flycatcher stage on Saturday, Sept. 9, for a Hurricane Harvey relief benefit concert.
For Counts, who spends his days making sandwiches at his Fourth Avenue Delicatessen in the heart of Tucson’s hip-and-happening North Fourth Avenue, Houston is more than a dot on the map of the Lone Star State. It’s one of the places he called home during his tumultuous move-around childhood. He said he has an aunt who still lives in Houston and is sitting in wait for Harvey’s ultimate wrath, when the rivers overflow and the water in the streets comes creeping through her walls.
“Hurricanes happen on that third coast area pretty regularly, but my aunt said this is the worst she’s ever seen and she’s never seen the city so crippled,” said Counts, who runs his own blues/Americana label Lonesome Desert Records and is a regular to Tucson stages including Flycatcher.
This is not the first time the Americana-blues artist, who counts Texas among the handful of mostly Southern states where he spent half of his childhood, has pitched in to raise money for hurricane relief. A dozen years ago, he raised money to help victims of Katrina in New Orleans, next door to Houston. The proceeds then, and now, go to the American Red Cross, he said.
“I feel like the spirit of Americans and definitely the spirit of Tucsonans is to give when people are in need,” Counts said, adding that much his music draws influences from the five years he lived there in the early 1980s. “For us it’s a chance to try to get back to that community.”
Saturday’s show — dubbed “Don’t Mess With Texas: Benefit for Hurricane Harvey Victims” — begins at 7:30 p.m. at Flycatcher, 340 E. Sixth St. In addition to Counts and his go-to duo partner bluesman Tom Walbank, the lineup features The Muffulettas, Miss Olivia & the Interlopers, the music of Nobody aka Willis Earl Beal, Chris Hall and Christopher T. Stevens. Admission is a suggested $5 donation at the door.
