PUEBLO, CO (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Award-winning country songwriter Michael Martin Murphey will headline a March 18th benefit concert at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo to help support farmers struggling after this winter’s endless Midwestern blizzards.
The show is part of a large fundraising effort intended to offset costs from the snowstorms, which have stranded or killed thousands of livestock in the agriculture-driven counties. Drifts from the repeated blizzards still reach four-feet high in some areas, making it impossible for cattle to graze and feed their young.
Murphey, who owns a ranch in Wisconsin’s Amish country, organized the concert, and invited friends and fellow musicians Waddie Mitchell and Baxter Black to participate in the concert.
“We didn’t call any government agencies or anything, we just got together with the farmers and ranchers and said ‘Let’s do this,’” Murphy told the Denver Post. “‘Let’s pull ourselves up by our bootstraps like they did in the old grange halls 100 years ago.’”
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture denied disaster relief to 10 southeastern Colorado counties hurt by the storms; a decision criticized by Governor Bill Ritter, U.S. Senator Ken Salazar and the American Farm Bureau convention. –by CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
