Funk, reggae and hip-hop band Syllable Seven and New Orleans band X Definition will dish out ear candy tonight at Mellow Mushroom to help Baton Rouge cyclists and their families.
A drunk driver hit cyclists Danny Morris and Nathan Crowson on Jan. 21 on Perkins Road. Morris suffered numerous injuries to his femur, ankle, pelvis and other body parts. Crowson died at the scene.
After spending more than 20 days in the hospital recovering from his injuries and a coma, Morris was released in mid-February.
Because Morris has no health insurance, he is having trouble paying hospital fees, according to Kelly Floyd, a friend of Crowson.
All proceeds from tonight’s $5 cover charge for the concert and art show that will also be held at
Mellow Mushroom will go toward helping Morris.
“Anything we can do to help, even a little bit, is what we are going to do,” Floyd said.
Floyd approached her boyfriend Bobby Fields, lead singer of Syllable Seven, to hold a benefit show for the cyclists’ families.
“When Bobby said they were playing at Mellow Mushroom, I asked if they would be up to making it a benefit show,” she said.
Fields, who has never met Morris and had met Crowson only a few times, agreed to make the already booked show a charity event.
“It was something we had been talking about anyway about Nathan. She took that really hard,” Fields said. “Since then, she spoke of doing something to help. We already had the show booked at Mellow, and she kept mentioning benefit. … From there the idea turned into a lot more, and we just ran with it.”
A donation bucket will also be passed around during the concert. The donations will be split between Morris’ hospital costs and a trust fund for Crowson’s 5-year-old daughter Katherine Coburn.
“[Crowson] was just a really kind, gentle, wonderful person. He was a great artist,” Floyd said. “His death was so senseless, and it could have been so preventable. It was just so shocking.”
Crowson’s friends and family have set up a website, crescentandfox.com, to sell his artwork to help his daughter, according to Floyd.
Fields said Syllable Seven hopes to help the cyclists and prevent tragedies like theirs from happening again.
“[We hope] to raise a large enough sum of money to be of some assistance, but also a situation like this has the ability to bring a lot of people together with one common goal,” Fields said.
 
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Contact Danielle Kelley at [email protected]