TROY — The public is invited to enjoy an evening full of music to benefit suicide prevention and mental health intervention services.
The 9th Annual Dustin Mele Memorial Concert, featuring Super 400, Soul Sky, Emeral City and the Bob Etoll Band, will be at Brown’s Revolution Hall on Saturday, March 25, starting at 6 p.m.
Proceeds from the memorial concert will support three organizations, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP); National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and Rensselaer County mental health and emergency assistance programs through Catholic Charities CoNSERNS-U program, all in memory of Dustin.
Each year over 400 people attend the event, and last year’s Memorial Concert broke the $100,000 mark in fundraising, thanks to the generous support of our community, donors and sponsors.
This year, world renowned musician and music producer Robert Etoll will be flying in from Los Angeles for a special reunion of the Bob Etoll Band.
Area favorite bands including Emerald City, Soul Sky and Super 400 will also be performing along with many guest musicians and vocalists.
The Bob Etoll Band is led by Robert (Bobby) Etoll, a longtime resident of Los Angeles, where he founded the successful and widely acclaimed Q-Factory Music library. This boutique catalog of high-end music and sound design serves hundreds of clients worldwide in the motion picture and television advertising industry. Robert is one of the world’s leading composers and music producers of trailers, documentaries, TV theme songs and animated series. Check out Robert’s bio and see more about Q-Factory at qfactorymusic.com.
Bobby grew up in Troy and is thrilled to return to reunite with his old bandmates Peter Iselin (keyboards), Chris Garabedian (drums) and Joe Montarello (bass), Frank Rossi (vocals) as well as some notable special guests, in support of the Memorial Concert and Bobby’s lifelong friend Joe Mele.
Other top local musicians sitting in throughout the evening include Chris Carey, Tommy Love, Scotty Mac, Matt Mirabile, Tony Perrino, Johnny Rabb, Sean Matthew Whiteford, Chris Sanders & more.
Joe Mele lost his son Dustin to suicide in 2013. A veteran of more than 40 years on the local music circuit, Joe rallied the area’s elite musicians to raise awareness of the growing suicide problem. Dustin’s friends and family believe that with erasing the stigma of depression and making proper mental health care more easily available, lives can be saved. Suicide is at epidemic proportions and touches more and more lives and families every day. Over the past nine years, the Mele family has gone above and beyond to try to bring awareness and assistance to those who are struggling in the Capital Region.
Over the past eight years, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) credited the Dustin Mele Memorial Concert as the top fund-raiser in upstate New York for AFSP’s largest annual event, Walk for R.I.T.A., which raises money for suicide awareness, suicide prevention and family support programs.
This year’s Dustin Mele Memorial Concert event is sponsored in part by Brown’s Brewing; The Catholic Monument Design Center; DrywallXchange; Fagan Associates; Guth DeConzo Consulting Engineers, PC; Modern Press; Nippertown; RadioRadioX, and Screen Designs Inc.
If you would like to make an online donation, you can do so through any or all 3 benefiting organizations:
Catholic Charities Dustin Mele Memorial Fund: https://fundraise.givesmart.com/e/_1rZ2g?vid=x2ayh
AFSP Dustin Mele Memorial Concert: https://supporting.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=2776700
NAMI Capital Region: https://namicapitalregionny.org/get-involved/donate/. Don’t forget to mention the Mele Memorial Fund so we can add it to our Fund list and send a thank you!
For more information on the Annual Dustin Mele Memorial Concert, visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DustinMeleMemorial.