Longtime Kerrville resident and singer Robert Earl Keen’s benefit concert for the Texas Hill Country’s flood victims and survivors has been scheduled for Aug. 28 at the Whitewater Amphitheater outside New Braunfels.
Keen shared plans to arrange the concert last weekend on social media. The lineup, which he described as “star-studded” in an Instagram post late Wednesday, has yet to be revealed.
Keen sent his daughters, Chloe and Clara Rose, to Camp Mystic in the late aughts. Chloe had stayed in one of the cabins that washed away, Keen recently told Rolling Stone.
“She has a definite visceral connection to this tragedy,” he said.
The Houston-born country singer was scheduled to perform at Kerrville’s annual Fourth on the River celebration, but the severe weather caused the cancellation of the event.
The festival grounds were flooded, leaving stage and production equipment destroyed, according to Rolling Stone.
At least 121 people have been confirmed dead resulting from the flash floods, with search efforts continuing for over 160 others who remain missing.
“Although the emergency first responders were on the scene without hesitation, the devastation is overwhelming. We must help everyone as much as we can, for as long as we can,” Keen wrote on Instagram.
When asked about ways to help, Clara Rose Keen urged people to extend “kindness and grace” in an email to Rolling Stone.
“People, these people, deserve supportive love more than anything at this time,” she wrote. “As the Eastlands [the camp directors] at Camp Mystic taught me as well as so many other women: ‘A bell is not a bell until you ring it. A song is not a song until you sing it. The love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay, love isn’t love until you give it away.’”