Buying these coronavirus tour t-shirts will help out-of-work tour crews

With the coronavirus upending the music industry, if not life as we know it, people are banding together to help in any way they can – whether it’s blasting Slayer and Queen electric guitar riffs from a balcony in Italy or, in the case of Frank Fanelli, former singer of The World We Knew and owner of CAT Clothing, raising money for those in the touring industry who are out of work due to the pandemic.

Fanelli has logged time working with artists and bands as a tour manager, merch seller and LD for acts like Black Veil Brides and Pennywise, and now he’s selling Merch Daddy t-shirts, a design he came up with while working on the Warped Tour several years ago, to help those in need.

According to Fanelli, “For every $20 you donate, you’ll not only get one of the new Merch Daddy t-shirts, but I’ll be splitting all the donations between everyone who can prove of the touring job they lost through the band themselves, the booking agents, or the management teams.

“This will take time to sort through, but we’re all cooped up in our homes anyway, so we’ll stay busy with this work. If donations flourish, as a team we can hopefully chip away at rent, buy groceries, feed/our children, pay the phone bill, etc.” 

You can pick up a shirt at Fanelli’s GoFundMe page.

Donations close at the end of March, and as Fanelli says, “Thank you for your consideration, and don’t forget to wash your damn hands!”