After this Sunday, there won’t be an encore performance for one of the most successful individual fundraisers for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.
Retired concert manager and promoter Lance Jones has raised nearly $190,000 for the nonprofit since 2020 through Tunes for Tables, a weeklong drive that ties his love of music and curated concert videos with an effort to help the region’s food-insecure families. He does it in memory of Margot Gloninger Jones, his late wife, “and her capacity to love and her spirit of giving.”
The final drive started Monday and will continue through Sunday. Here is how it works, according to the food bank’s website: Individuals who donate $25 or more will receive a link to a curated set of concert videos courtesy of Musicasaurus.com, Jones’ website. To celebrate the final year of Tunes for Tables, this includes a look back over the years, showcasing 18 different artists’ performances that past and present supporters have chosen as all-time favorites.
The curated concert videos are 1 hour and 45 minutes long, with a wide range of music, Jones said. Each one is from a different artist, 18 in total.
Jones has been promoting it through his website and Facebook page, including a video that food bank President and CEO Lisa Scales posted earlier this week. He’s teased out a few of those videos but keeping others as a surprise for donors.
The effort began back in 2006, actually, as a live event. Jones and his wife had just bought a DVD of Martin Scorcese’s “The Last Waltz,” a documentary of The Band’s final concert. They invited six couples over to watch it with them.
“My wife and I noticed that some people were excited about certain tunes and would start applauding them when they were over.” Jones said. “They forgot they were watching a DVD showing. It was as if they thought they were at a concert.”
He started collecting other concert and music DVDs until he had a small stockpile by a variety of artists. The Joneses had met Joyce Rothermel, then the food bank’s top leader, through his wife’s sister, Mimi Lahoda. They attended the same church, St. James in Wilkinsburg, and the Joneses found Rothermel to be “gracious, kind and giving.” So they decided to help her.
They rented the Penn Hebron Garden Center in Penn Hills, rented or borrowed video equipment and a big screen. With a couple of DVD players they could show one video and then another by using a switcher.
The venue, Jones said, was perfect. Guests could enjoy food, drinks and a silent auction on the first floor. Then they could watch the videos on the second floor, a dark room with an elevated screen. With their daughter Maeve operating the switcher, “it was like a video jukebox.”
Jones created the first logo, two musical notes holding hands seated apart from each other on a circular table. “I just thought of that because we want to supply things for those people out there in the community who are struggling with food security and things like that,” he explained. “We want to make their tables filled with the things they need.”
A small committee helped the couple with the event, and the in-person effort continued after Margot’s death in 2007. Jones said “this little private party that could” took place every November for 14 years. “We didn’t raise tremendous amounts of money. We started out raising $6,000 to $7,000, ending up with about $15,000.”
He had decided to stop the effort in December 2019, ironically showing “The Last Waltz,” then COVID-19 hit. But the need for food intensified. Jones couldn’t do the event live anywhere. So the online effort began.
He reached out to his friends, family members, peers and associates to keep helping, a group that has grown to an email list of about 200. And it has worked since then, with the past five years resulting in some great results, Jones said. He posts about it on his website and urges others to share the information on their social media.
What has helped raise more money is the William Talbott Hillman Foundation’s match to Tunes for Tables. It has donated $125,000 of the effort’s grand total, according to the food bank’s website.
How that occurred is another story. Jones’ wife was one of seven children, and she grew up in Morewood Heights, an exclusive hilltop Squirrel Hill neighborhood close to the Carnegie Mellon University campus. They lived near Henry and Elsie Hillman and their family.
All the kids played together, Jones said, and his brother-in-law, Johnny Gloniger, remains friends with Bill, one of the Hillman sons who now lives in New York. The foundation decided to give Tunes for Tables $25,000 for five years, starting in 2021.
That money raised to date has helped the food bank “provide up to 569,601 meals for neighbors in southwestern Pennsylvania,” Kara Travers, the nonprofit’s event, outreach and education specialist.
Jones has become the second longest standing fundraiser for the food bank, she said, right behind Carnegie Mellon University. He definitely is its longest individual fundraiser.
Travers believes the creativity behind Tunes for Tables has brought its success. “Lance found a very special way to tie his love for music and his love to help the community together by creating this unique fundraiser to provide meals to our neighbors,” she said. “It’s a fundraiser that people look forward to each year, knowing that there’s a new curation of videos to enjoy while knowing they’ve given back to the community. It’s like attending a live concert from your home filled with some of the best performances that musicians have given throughout time.”
Jones’ network led to its success, too, and that’s a lesson for others who might want to develop their own food bank fundraising event.
“We tell them to make it as creative as they want,” Travers said. “Lance took it under his wing and took the music path, knowing he could get his friends and family in with the music tie-in. You have to call in your network, share it on social media. What makes this stand apart from other fundraisers, [is that] it’s unique. It has an incentive to it.”
Personally she enjoys Tunes for Tables and usually shares it with her family, and so do others, including Scales.
Jones had a long career in the music industry before retiring and working with nonprofits. The Butler native grew up with it, became an avid record collector by visiting Dave Kleeman’s popular Butler record store, Exile records. At Penn State his strong interest in rock put Jones behind the mic at WPSU-FM 91.5 as an evening disc jockey, according to the Pittsburgh Music History website.
He opened and managed the Exile Records store in Cranberry before working in merchandising and promotions for record distributor Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, then National Record Mart. His concert work started at the Civic Arena as director of booking, and following that he moved on to become marketing director at then-Star Lake Amphitheater in Burgettstown.
He managed that facility for 17 years, overseeing hundreds of concerts and major music festivals. “One of the highlights of Lance’s career was hosting the Farm Aid Concert in 2002 with Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews, Kid Rock, John Mellencamp and Neil Young,” according to the Pittsburgh Music History site.
He also joined forces with Rich Engler and Ed Travesari to book and promote concerts at the Chevy Amphitheatre at Station Square, the Capitol Theatre in Wheeling, and clubs throughout the Pittsburgh area. As regional vice president for Clear Channel Entertainment’s Pittsburgh region, he oversaw all the Clear Channel/Live Nation operations at the Burgettstown pavilion and the Station Square Chevy Amphitheater.
In 2008 Jones left the concert business and worked with nonprofits, including a stint as WQED Multimedia senior account executive in broadcast sales and underwriting.
In addition to the food bank, Jones has produced and promoted fundraising events for UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Free Care Fund, the Flight 93 National Memorial new Shanksville, and Kids Voice.
These days he writes and presents weekly music mixes on his website and reviews and recommends concert DVDs.
He plans to continue fundraising for the food bank but with a different approach. But he is certain on one thing: “I know it will always be music based.”
To donate to Tunes for Tables drive for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, go to https://pittsburghfoodbank.org/tunes-for-tables/.
Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.