MamaDuke & Bill Hudson (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)

Duke Collins Memorial Concert Gives Life to Bridging the Gap

When life gives you lemons, what do you do?  That, all depends on who you are.  We all know the saying “make lemonade” but how do you do that?  How do you do that when it’s your son that died and it was a heroin overdose.  How on earth do you make something positive come out of that?  One mom, Sharon Gipson. (MamaDuke) found a way.

Duke Collins of the Orange County based bands Droid and The Deadlights passed away in March of 2015.  His mom, lovingly called MamaDuke by his friends is one brave and loving woman.  Her first instinct was to protect her son and come up with a cover story. To say he died from complications of a car accident would have been believable especially since Duke didn’t fit the stereo typical image of an addict.  He was good looking, fit, talented and kind being.  But MamaDuke knew that hiding the truth was denial and that denial is a lack of awareness.  MamaDuke is Native American and a spiritual woman with a huge heart. She chose to be truthful about what really happened.  She decided to shine a light on the dark topic of addiction.

In the beginning, she didn’t know how she would proceed.  She only knew that the truth was the only way.

Three months after Duke’s passing, Sharon sat in silence and suddenly in an instant she knew exactly what to do.  She would start a nonprofit to help addicts with living expenses while they were in treatment.   Duke and his mom had discussed rehab several times and it always came down to the fact that he didn’t have a way to pay his living expenses if he went into rehab for 60 or 90 days.  If he went he would be evicted leaving him homeless and jobless.  He would lose his storage unit and all equipment in.  He would just have to kick the habit on his own he told her.

Sharon decided that although it was too late to help her son, she would raise money to help addicts with their living expenses during treatment.  That if she could spare other mothers from the pain of losing their loved ones than that would be a goal worth pursuing.  This was the beginning of Bridging the Gap to Recovery.  So then the question became how?  How would she do this living in Kansas City, Kansas?

She began reaching out to all her son’s friends on Facebook.  She wanted to have a benefit concert in Duke’s honor and raise money for the cause.  Sharon, just like her son, is very charismatic person who is instantly likable.  Her passion, commitment and bravery is contagious and anyone who speaks with her with half a heart and the ability to do so will absolutely want to support her on her mission.  Wesley Geer, guitarist (ex Korn and Hed PE) and founder of Rock to Recovery proved to be an excellent team member and consultant.  Geer was a friend of Dukes and former addict runs his own nonprofit and is an executive board member of Bridging the Gap to Recovery.  This first event aimed to raise money to launch BTG including raising the funds to file for the 501c3 and build the website.

The Duke Collins Memorial Concert and Benefit became a reality on March 19th, 2016.  The event put on by Sellout Productions was held at The Underground DTSA (an old 1940’s bomb shelter) just in time for the one year anniversary of Duke’s death.  A Native American celebration and blessing opened the show with elders drumming and dancing.  The ceremony was held to bless everyone and to release Duke’s spirit to the afterlife.

A great line up of bands and an all star jam followed that included friends of Dukes.  Sean Michael Lenhoff (of Atomflower and Core 10) and longtime friend of Duke’s MC’d the event.

Jamie Teissere of Sunflower Dead

Radiodrone delivered a powerful set which included tunes off their debut cd The Truth Syndicate Diaries. Check out their videos for ‘Battle Call” and Game Change”   Keep your eyes on these guys, they offer some unique music with messages worth taking note of.  Find out more at www.radiodronemusic.com

Sunflower Dead who just released their second album entertained the crowd with their unique style performing a rad set including their hit songs “Dance with Death” and “Time to Get Weird”.  Sunflower Dead is a band definitely worth catching live and tour dates have been announced with more being added.  Check them out all over the web and at www.sunflowerdead.com.  I predict SFD will go far, they are talented, entertaining, hardworking  and a pleasure to deal with.  They even donated all their merch money from the event to BTG.

Jerry Montano of Death Division was another key member of Team Duke and in charge of putting together the All Star Jam which included  performances by Lloyd Grant (Original Metallica Guitarist),  Bill Hudson (Trans-Siberian Orchestra), Sonny Mayo (SNOT, Sevendust), Wes Geer (Korn, Hed PE), DJ , Nate Lawler (Death on Wednesday), Clinton Carlton (D.I.), Mike Dupke (W.A.S.P.) Ronnie King (Offspring), Sen Dogg (Cypress Hill), and Marcelo Moreira (Circle II Circle) and more.

Michael Del Pizzo of Sunflower Dead

Jerry also performed with his band Death Division and with the Deadlights.  The Deadlights reunited after 16 years to perform live just for this event.  Montano joined with the other original Deadlights members Billy Roan and James Falcone for a killer set featuring  Sean De La Tour (Death Division) performing Duke’s parts on vocals and guitar.  The crowd including MamaDuke were rocking out and hanging on every note of the set. This was indeed a very special part of the night. There’s already been requests for more Deadlights shows, but according to Montano that was a onetime reunion and that the best fans can hope for is that Death Division will play a Deadlights song or two in their live sets.  Death Division is hitting the road in April and plans to be out all summer.  Get the latest at www.deathdivision.com and look for their upcoming single which appropriately enough is entitled “The Truth”

This was a great event loaded with love and outstanding music, all for an excellent cause.  More events are in the works including a couple of shows on June 21^st and 22^nd at The Yost theatre in Santa Ana featuring the Legendary Punk Band, The Adicts.  A portion of the proceeds from these shows will benefit Bridging the Gap.

To find out more about the mission of Bridging the Gap to Recovery visit their page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/btgrecovery.  Donations of any size are welcome and tax deductible.

Brenda Starr / BackStage360

Editors Note: Even though this article ran in a previous issue of BackStage360, we are including the video of the interviews from that night that didn’t make the previous deadline. We feel that the cause deserves your support.

Our very own RocmanRocks speaks about his personal fight with addiction

Editors Note: Mama Duke gave a speech at the event that was written by Jeremy Walker.  Walker, a friend and coworker of Sharon’s wrote the speech based on conversations he had with her during this past year.  Here is a written copy of the speech by Mama Duke:

Sharon Gipson’s Speech (aka – MamaDuke)

On March 17, 2015 I received the worst phone call a parent could ever receive………….. my son, my oldest child ……………was gone.

Duke Collins was a beautiful, caring and talented artist who was taken before his time. Not in a bed surrounded by family and friends after a long and fruitful life, but half naked in a bathroom wedged between a toilet and shower. He wasn’t taken early by an unpreventable cancer or some circumstance beyond his control.

He intentionally drove a needle three times into his right thigh pushing some god forsaken cocktail of opiates into his blood stream.

Duke Collins & Mom

Then hours, maybe days later, I was told over the phone………………. that my son was gone.

*******

My son’s story could have ended there, another talented artist chased to the grave by the demons he tried so hard to out run. I, his mother, was just another family member blaming something, anything, to avoid saying “I lost my son…………… my beautiful, wonderful, special, talented, son………………. because he was an addict.”

For months I was in denial about what happened. I had convinced not only myself but others that my son, Duke Collins had died from complications due to a car accident. After all I raised a man who called me every day just to say hello and who never forgot to tell me how much he loved me. To think my loving son, the man who would give anyone the shirt off of his back and whose smile would light up any room was gone because of an overdose made me feel robbed. Every waking moment of my life has become a blur and a nightmare I can’t escape from. To know I will never again hear my son say I love you mom.

Going to California, to see my son for the very last time and release his spirit to the creator almost killed me. However, I never in my wildest dreams, could have imagined the evil my son had endured until I entered his apartment. I was there, at the apartment, beginning the process of going through a life time of his possessions, and I felt it. I could spend all night, hell, I could spend from now until the day they clean out my house, trying to explain, in detail what I felt in that apartment. Instead, I’ll try and sum it up, I turned the key, opened the door and I froze. There was something so dark, so awful, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t move, I could not enter the apartment. The evil that had possessed my son, my beautiful, wonderful son and is the same evil that has possessed so many others, was still present, waiting to get out and find the next person to ruin.

RocmanRocks with MamaDuke

Over the next week, I was visited by the spirits of the elders, visited by the roaming spirit of my son, Duke and that is when I knew what my options were. I could either hide behind the excuse that my son died in a car wreck or stand up and say, “I lost my son, Duke Collins due to addiction.” and maybe by saying it, by standing here, despite my nerves, despite my discomfort, maybe I can help someone else.

I had to choose, would my morning of my son be a personal journey about accepting loss or could I find a way to do that and help others just like Duke. Could I use it to help some other mother, a mother I will never meet, who may never know what I did to prevent her from that horrific phone call. What would Duke want me to do?

*****

Some of you, here tonight, knew Duke. Some of you knew his music, and some of you are here to enjoy the show. None of those reasons for being here is more important than the others, and that’s how Duke would have wanted it. Good people coming together to listen to good music for a good cause.

We are not here to lament the loss of Duke Collins, we are here to take his short, brilliant life, and use it to make other people’s lives better. To reach out and touch people in the way Duke touched so many lives. We wouldn’t be here if not for the work of Jerry Montano, Wesley Geer, Brenda Starr (Umbrell), Shawn Lenhoff, Mark, Robertson, Ashley Tayler, and many, many others. So many, in fact, that I could not possibly name them all. Something moved us, a beautiful, wonderful light left the earth and touched us all on its way to the elders. Duke brought us together and now it’s up to us to make sure we stay together and keep helping each other.

*******

MamaDuke

Bridging the Gap to Recovery will work hand in hand with other recovery foundations to help put addicted musicians on a path to recovery. We will provide a portion of vital living expenses for addicts while they are in recovery. We are going to do this in honor of Duke, but we need your help. We need you to come to our events, donate to our site if you can, talk to a friend who needs help, contact us if our talking to that friend would help them, do something, anything to keep the conversation going. Don’t let addiction remain in the dark corner of the room, let’s pull it out of that corner and fight it together. Every tiny step could be one less life lost to addiction and one less traumatic phone call to another mother. Do what you can, do this for him, for us, for your friend, for the music you love, for any reason, but do it.

*******

And always, let the Dukeness be with you.

Written by Jeremy Walker /  Edited by Ashley Tayler

Editors note: The Interview with Sharon will be posted here by soon.