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Long-form interviews and conversations from Mason County, Washington. Host Jeff Slakey sits down with local leaders, legislators, small business owners, and community voices for unhurried conversations about what's shaping the Hood Canal region — government, education, healthcare, the outdoors, and the people making a difference.
New episodes drop throughout the week. For daily local headlines, subscribe to KMAS Morning News with Jeff Slakey.
Well, folks, once again, we know Mason County to be such a giving community and oftentimes such a community in need. I have a great phone call conversation right now with Chris Eakes, who is starting something new. It's the weekend of the 12th and the 13th, and it's Operation Scrooge.
Chris, how are you? Doing great, Jeff. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me on.
Well, it was great seeing you the other day at the North Mason Gratitude Luncheon. You were playing some music, and you got a chance to talk to that group a little bit about this upcoming 24-hour telethon that is going to be raising money for folks in our community. Now, people know you as a great musician around the county, but also working now in the Hood Canal Schools as the music instructor there.
You're getting a better chance, unfortunately, to see a lot of the need that's out there. Is that kind of where this all started? Absolutely. Absolutely.
Being able to be in the school and seeing just exactly what's out there and what's not out there, if I'm being honest, it's a great opportunity. Like you say, it's a sad, introspective side of what's going on, but it's definitely opened my eyes to a great need that I think the community can help fill. Well, you're in a good position to put on something like this, being so musically inclined, one, but so connected as well to the greater Mason County music scene, as which we know, of course, Union is just chock full of amazing talent.
Absolutely. There's as much talent as there's much the want to help when available. That's I think kind of where this is going to start off.
Explain to me a little bit about the who, what, when, where, and why of this Operation Scrooge. Sure. So December 13th at noon, we start a telethon and we're going to have 24 bands or musical acts play 24 hours straight.
We're going to do it the old telethon style. I'm not sleeping. I'm going to live on coffee for 24 hours.
We've put together a crew of volunteers on the tech side. There's people dropping off crockpots of food to the studio. We've got volunteers donating their time to help guide people in and out so that bands can get in and out.
There's no live audience. It's only going to be live streamed on the internet and social medias. So you'll have to find it out there on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook.
But for what we're doing, it's all of these amazing local acts have donated their time and they're going to play an hour each, roughly. We've got local co-hosts that are going to kick in with me every so often. Every couple hours we have different locals that are going to hop on the screen and do a little dialogue and stuff, including you.
Yeah. No, I'm excited for that. It's going to be great.
I can't wait. I can't wait. So this is going to be a fun one and it's going to be in the backdrop of the beautifully historic Robin Hood Village, which is the home to the birthplace really to so much great music in Union.
You along with Kelly Cahout from Hoodstock were able to secure that location. And like you said, you know, your, your family is okay with this because they're not going to be all at your place for the next 24 hours. Yeah.
We started grassroots and we were planning to do it at the home studio and said, we can make it work. And then like you say, Hoodstock and their, their amazing sponsorship secured the Robin Hood Village resort for us. And it changed everything.
It added a legitimate level to this as well as gave us the ability to kind of expand out a little bit and breathe. We ended up with a beautiful 4K H8 camera setup that we'll be using between the two rooms. We're splitting up into two studios.
So it's going to be an entire production and we can't wait. You mentioned YouTube, Twitch, Facebook for the live stream. I'm sure that's also the opportunity where people are going to get the links to donate there.
Absolutely. What are other ways or how can people donate early? If they want to donate early, the GoFundMe is out there and it's on the Operation Scrooge Facebook social media page. It's available.
We haven't been pushing that because like I said, the idea is we really want to hit it like a telethon. We want to give hourly totals and give, you know, when the big money comes in, we want to be able to cut to that live and say, Hey, we just had a donation of X amount of dollars. Thank you so much to so-and-so.
And we want to give the telethon that true aspect of the excitement. It's great if you want to donate early, feel free. I definitely don't want to dissuade anybody from donating, but the idea is we're going to hammer that GoFundMe link on the day of the telethon and really centralize our donations there.
What's your monetary goal and what do you know that goal to be able to then help in the community? Sure. Sure. The goal right now, the soft, if you will, goal is $7,500 and that puts about $500 out for 15 families.
And that's what we have initially. We've got about 50 families signed up looking for assistance. The Hood Canal School District has taken on that task of vetting families as they do every year for local organizations to try to help with.
There's a great need this year. So we're partnering with them to get the most that we can. After that, they also have a food bank there.
So we've set up our structure on social media so that our breakdown of exactly where every dollar is going to is visible. But the goal is to get to 10,000 and that extra 2,500 after the first 75 is going to be able to help their food bank. Then after that, we're looking to stabilize Operation Scrooge going forward.
And then after that, after 15,000, we're going to put on every $500 helps another family. Oh, yeah. So we're just going to keep going.
Our hard goal is the wish, if I will, is 25,000. That helps so many families, sets up their food bank, and then enshrines Operation Scrooge to be able to help the next year. We don't have to go through all of them, but give me some of the big bands that will be performing over the 24 hours.
Absolutely. Local Legends, Honeybabe, The Lugs, great friends of mine. I really reached out to just friends and said, hey, I need a favor.
I don't ask for much, but can you come on out? And we've got Zach Heineman, Orishine, Groovelab, one of the best bands in the area, in my opinion, that comes with the horn section. I'm biased, of course, because my son plays in it. Sure.
They're coming out as well. I'll give you that. That's fine.
Yeah, absolutely. Five Guys and a Flute, which again is my band. Classic.
I don't know if he's going to be spinning for two hours straight. He's doing an overnight. It's hard to fill those late night slots.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those troopers that come out, like the Scott Lessman, the Ava Adams, the Justin Page, that are out there at 3, 4, 5 a.m., they're doing it live, and they're doing it just for the love of the community. So it means so much to me that they just willingly hopped into these slots.
You talked about the Facebook page for Operation Scrooge, and we'll put the links on that too for folks to be able to find easily. But how can we get folks across the country to be cued in on this one? I know there's a lot of Union love out there. I just saw some postings about Christian Bush, who had been in Union for the last two Songwriters stages.
He's kind of in the Atlanta area, the East Coast time zone. So how can we get our friends, not just across the country, but around the world to link up when it's good for them to tune in and donate? Yeah, sharing is caring. That is the most important thing.
Sharing the Facebook page, because we are centralized on Facebook right now. Next year we'll probably have our actual own full, a real website. But for right now, just to get things going, to get everything out and information available, since it seems to be the most readily available platform, we're centralized on Facebook right now.
And that is the place to get all the information. Invite your friends and family to the page, share the event. The event, it'll actually hold the live stream in it when it goes.
So it'll notify you whenever you're responded to it, whether you're going or interested. It'll let you know, hey, there's a post or, hey, they're live right now. And that's the most impactful thing that people can do for us right now.
It's Operation Scrooge. It's a huge undertaking, but no better man than I know of that's able to put this together in a short amount of time to help a large amount of people. It is Chris Eaks on the line as we get ready for Operation Scrooge, 25 bands, 24 hours, live streamed around the world with a goal to raise as much money as possible to help not only folks in the Hood Canal School District area that you see on a daily basis, but all around Mason County.
I look forward to participating with you for a few hours there in the evening on the day. And it's just going to be a heck of a lot of fun. I wish you luck.
We'll get the shares going, make sure people are aware. And yeah, it's just going to be a really cool time. Thanks so much, Jeff.
Greatly appreciate your time.