_Tobin Voggesser_

Last week, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats played the first annual Take Note the Concert, raising money for Colorado’s new music education initiative.

Take Note Colorado makes the state the first in the United State to offer free instruments to children in grades K–12 for music education. Colorado governor John Hickenlooper spoke about the initiative at the concert, which ended up raising over half a million dollars for Take Note.

Other Colorado-linked acts that played at the concert included The String Cheese Incident’s Bill Nershi, OneRepublic, The Fray’s Isaac Slade, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, Tracksuit Wedding and comedian Josh Blue.

“This is so important to us,” Rateliff said during the concert. “It is a blessing to be with you all. We are here to make sure that people get instruments in their hands. This community gave us room to cut our teeth and make mistakes. We have lost so many great musicians in the last couple of years and the torch is being passed. What we are doing tonight may help pass that torch to the next generation. We need to make magic in the world, all of us. Fear and ignorance breed hate and we need to stay away from that as much as possible.”