A quartet of Tucson musicians is headlining Rich Hopkins’ annual Casa Maria Thanksgiving benefit concert on Saturday, Nov. 9, at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St.
All proceeds from the concert will support Casa Maria, which serves meals to 400 people and distributes 80 family food bags every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Casa Maria is part of the international Catholic Worker House, “committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken,” according to a description on its website.
Brian Flagg, who has lived and worked at Casa Maria Catholic Worker House for 41 years, said the annual concert raises at least $1,000, but the event’s reach is far more valuable.
It’s an opportunity to introduce Casa Maria to a segment of the community that might never have heard of it, Flagg said.
And it’s a chance for Flagg, his Catholic Worker House colleagues and volunteers to enjoy a night out. Flagg said he and the five others who live and work at Casa Maria are paid $10 a week in addition to room and board.
“It’s a good time and they’re really cool,” Flagg said of the concert. “It’s a festive thing and kind of like a great free concert for people that live and work here, the volunteers.”
Hopkins organized the first Casa Maria benefit more than 25 years ago. Last year, he recruited a handful of high-profile local musicians to record “Glimmers of Hope: Songs for Casa Maria,” which benefit Tucson’s unhoused.
Hopkins “is compassionate and more than a rock star,” Flagg said. “He’s always come down here from the whole time I’ve known him and helped out here. He’s been this great presence here in the history of Casa Maria.”
Catholic Worker House launched Casa Maria in 1981 — Flagg joined in 1984 — with its main ministry being the soup kitchen at 352 E. 25th St.
Casa Maria also has worked to ease Tucson’s unhoused situation, teaming up with its sister organization Barrios Unidos Land Trust to buy and manage 18 affordable housing units including the El Camino Motel.
Hopkins and his Luminarios band will share the Club Congress stage with The Senators, Salvador Duran and Oscar Fuentes, and Liz & Pete’s Sparrows & the Last Train (Pete Ronstadt and Liz Cerepanya).
The concert starts at 5:30 p.m. and admission is a suggested $20 donation and cans of food.
