47.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Shine-a-Light burns bright
Benefit enjoys best turnout to date
Hundreds crowded into a sold-out Cannon’s Blackthorn in Rockville Centre last Saturday to raise money for the disabled on Long Island while rocking out to acclaimed bands The Felice Brothers and Strand of Oaks. The annual Shine-a-Light benefit concert is put on each year by the Tommy Brull Foundation.
“It was amazing. Both bands came in with a really good attitude and were excited about the whole scene we created,” said concert-organizer Martin Brull, who co-founded the Rockville Centre-based nonprofit to honor the memory of his late brother Tommy. “It was our best show yet.”
This year’s fundraiser will fund the construction of a special-needs playground in Rockvillle Centre, as well as benefit Camp ANCHOR in Lido Beach.
The show sold out days in advance, a first for Shine-a-Light. Brull estimated that there were about a hundred more people in the crowd than at the previous year’s show.
His brother Tommy died at age 23 in a car accident on the Williamsburg Bridge in 1999 on Christmas Eve. Established in 2008 by the Brull family and Tommy’s friend Kenny Lucchesi, the goal of the nonprofit is to aid those suffering from physical, mental or emotional challenges.
The Shine-a-Light concert series began in 2011 and featured the indie-rock band Deer Tick as a headliner. Each year the proceeds benefit Camp ANCHOR, a year-round recreation center for children and adults with special needs living in the Town of Hempstead. The Brulls worked at the camp with Lucchesi during their youth.
Brull noticed the crowd was particularly energetic at Saturday’s show, singing and dancing along with the bands’ energetic performances. And the cause really seemed to resonate with the performers, with band members taking special care to honor Tommy’s memory.
“Most of the bands do, but especially this year they got excited about the cause,” Brull said. He recalled that a member of The Felice Brothers described the event as “the best thing he’d ever been apart of” while on stage and that Timothy Showalter of Strand of Oaks raised a glass to Tommy’s memory.
Brull, a Rockville Centre native and local surfer, said that music was a big part of his relationship with his brother.
This year the benefit raised around $10,000, but Brull says the foundation is still counting up all the money and that the actual total may turn out to be higher. He expects ground to be broken on the new playground some time this summer.
Collectively, the foundation has raised around $80,000 for Camp ANCHOR.
