On Saturday, July 27, 2013, county music legend Loretta Lynn will headline the Charlottesville Free Clinic’s 2013 benefit concert at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion. Albemarle County musician/actress Schuyler Fisk, her musical partner Tim Myers and their band FM Radio will open for Loretta.
For fifty years now, Loretta has fashioned a body of work as artistically and commercially successful (and as culturally significant) as any female performer you’d care to name. Her music has confronted many of the major social issues of her time, and her life story is a rags-to-riches tale familiar to pop, rock and country fans alike. The Coal Miner’s Daughter (the tag refers to a hit single, an album, a best-selling autobiography, an Oscar-winning film, and to Lynn herself) has journeyed from the poverty of the Kentucky hills to Nashville superstardom to her current status as an honest-to-goodness American icon.
Her latest album, the Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose, is poised now to remind the world yet again of Lynn’s power as a vocalist and her skill as a songwriter. As she puts it on ‘Story of My Life’, the new albums closing track: Not half bad for this ol’ KY girl, I guess Here’s the story of my life. Listen close, I’ll tell it twice.
For the past 11 years the Charlottesville Free Clinic has hosted a benefit concert as its biggest yearly fundraiser. Bruce Hornsby performed at the CFC’s 10th Anniversary concert at Cabell Hall in 2002, followed by the Indigo Girls at the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center in 2004 and Emmylou Harris at the Paramount Theater in 2005. Since it opened in 2005, the Charlottesville Pavilion, now the nTelos Wireless Pavilion, has hosted the CFC¹s benefit concerts, including Willie Nelson in 2006, Bonnie Raitt in 2007 and 2012, Alanis Morissette in 2008, Sheryl Crow in 2010 and Alison Krauss & Union Station in 2011. Cumulatively, the benefit concert series has raised more than $1.1 million for the CFC.
Founded in 1992, the Charlottesville Free Clinic provides free medical care, prescription medications, dental services and mental health support for uninsured low-income adults and their families in the greater Charlottesville/Albemarle community. Three evenings a week, volunteer medical professionals provide care for patients with acute and chronic health problems. During the day, the CFC’s on-staff nurse practitioner provides ongoing care for patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure. Additionally, CFC patients are referred to local primary care providers who treat CFC patients in their offices throughout Physician Partners Network. Patients with specialized medical needs receive care from community physicians who treat CFC patients at their offices for free or at a reduced cost.