“HAAM Day,” it screams from the cross-street banner as you cruise South Lamar. It spills onto your coffee table as you flip through the Chronicle. It bounces up in conversation with your neighborhood bartender.
More than 300 musicians grace 100 Austin-area venues today, as the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM) celebrates its biggest fundraiser of the year.
The day features an eclectic lineup spanning roots reggae at Juiceland, psychedelic pop at ABGB, wee-hour jazz in the Elephant Room, and everything in between. Sprinkled throughout the schedule is a healthy serving of curated showcases and special events – like a (second) proclamation reading from the state capitol steps with Texas swing king Ray Benson and lady power gang PAACK.
This one-day music buffet is part of a 19-year history rooted in supporting the Austin music community. Originally started in 2005 by philanthropists and musician champions Robin and Bud Shivers, the organization has grown to help more than 3,000 working local musicians, DJs, and music teachers access affordable medical care each year.
This year, HAAM aims to raise $875,000 as part of their campaign to serve even more musicians in 2025. If you want to help, there’s a few ways. Spend your money at restaurants and businesses sharing sales with HAAM. Second, donate directly through HAAM’s website. If you don’t do any of that, simply enjoying the once-a-year live celebration of Austin music is a great way to show support. (Pro tip: Use this map to find performances by location, event, and time.)
We sat down with CEO Paul Scott to talk event details, show-catching tips, and HAAM’s future plans.
Austin Chronicle: Three hundred musicians is a record-breaking number for this year. What’s behind that big turnout?
Paul Scott: Yeah, it’s interesting. Every year we’ve grown, but this year just seems to be a really engaged community. We’re finally getting past that COVID hangover to a certain degree, and so many of our musicians now have started getting their career and music pathway going again. That means we’ve got musicians that are willing to come to the table and bring full day music across the community. When it comes to businesses, restaurants, and shops, we’ve almost doubled what we did last year in terms of (venues) coming in and wanting to support us with some proceeds from the day, so that’s been great. Then the community just really steps up when it comes to understanding what music means and what this day means in terms of making sure our musicians have access to health care going into the next year.
AC: What does the community say that music means?
Paul Scott: We’re going into our 20th anniversary next year, and so with this HAAM Day, we started asking people, “Music is to you – what?” What’s been interesting is just the variety of what music brings to people. Music is life, music is joy, music is health. Particularly now we see more and more where science is proving that music therapy is critical to so many different illnesses. Whether it’s mental health [or] cognitive recovery, music is just integral to everything we do in our lives.
AC: What is the difference between the regular performances and curated showcases during HAAM Day?
Paul Scott: We have almost 250 performances happening across 100-plus venues, starting at 6am all the way until Wednesday morning at the jazz clubs. We take charge of certain showcases so we can focus on different populations, genres, and partnerships. Then the community comes in and sets up their own music opportunities. Some new [showcases] are going to be Latinpalooza – a great showing of Latin music. Same with a partnership with the Austin LGBT Chamber [of Commerce]. They’ve chosen to move [their Pride in Local Music program] into HAAM Day this year. We culminate the evening with Shinyribs. We also have the Tiarras, Nik Parr and the Selfless Lovers, Hot Club of Cowtown, and multiple other showcases people can go see on our website.
AC: Do you have any advice on trying to decide which shows to catch?
Paul Scott: I would encourage people to try to hear different types of music. You can go and listen for 30 minutes and [then] go a quarter of a mile [to] find another HAAM day artist performing somewhere. The main thing we’re telling people is just go out, enjoy music, and say thank you to our musicians for what they give us.
AC: How important is HAAM Day compared to all of your other fundraising efforts throughout the year?
Paul Scott: This day is almost triple any of our other fundraisers. It’s significant. Our goal is to raise $875,000 this year. It helps us determine how many musicians we can help with access to health insurance coverage, primarily, but it also impacts what other services we can provide going into the next year.
AC: What is the vision for HAAM from here?
Paul Scott: HAAM Day has gone from raising $50,000 in the first year to $875,000, hopefully, this year. So that’s great progress, but with great progress comes great responsibility. So with that, we’re [asking], “How can we help our musicians more? How do we help them find housing? How do we help them get support to run their business?” We have [partnered] with PNC this past year [to launch] financial literacy classes so our musicians can access that information about how to run their music business better. So those are the areas we’re looking at. Then also, how do we expand our current services? We’ve got a million-dollar gap in terms of what we need to provide to our musicians for dental care. We ran out of our dental funds 10 weeks earlier than we ever had before, because the need was so big. Same for health insurance, since the premium rates have gone up. If we got another million dollars in both those categories we could really provide comprehensive services to our musicians.
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This article appears in September 20 • 2024.