Response Time

Alumna helps produce charity CD

It's not often that staff members at a domestic violence shelter can feel good about their jobs. With a woman beaten every 15 seconds in this country and four killed each day by their partners, the work is stressful, heart wrenching, frustrating, and never ending. And it rarely, if ever, gets recognized.

So when a group of local Boston-area artists got together on a project to raise money and awareness for Respond, Inc., one of the oldest shelters in the country, it was exactly what the staff members needed.

"When we started working with them," explains Charan Devereaux MPP 1997, executive producer of the final project — a 27-song CD compilation of female Boston musicians — "they'd had some tough times. A woman they were counseling was murdered by her husband.

"The executive director told us that the money is great," Devereaux said of the $23,000 raised to date for the shelter, "but the boost in morale that 'Respond' [the CD] gave the staff was even better. The project has been the most positive thing that has ever happened to them as an organization, giving them a lot of opportunities to talk about domestic violence issues through radio, print, and television interviews."

The CD also generated a tour of concerts on both the east and west coasts, including an anniversary show celebrating the shelter's 25th anniversary. Available at local record stores, on amazon.com, and by phone (1-800-694-5354), the CD has also garnered national attention in the media, including Billboard magazine, MTV, and VH1 — thanks in part to the lineup of artists who all donated their time, including Devereaux, Melissa Ferrick, Patty Larkin, Mary Lou Lord, and Jen Trynin.

Devereaux, a musician and photographer (who had a photo exhibit on Northern Ireland as part of her PAE project), notes that although they've been "lucky to get national attention," the project is very much a grassroots, local effort.

Initially, Devereaux and a group of Boston-area musicians who regularly attend open mike night at Harvard Square's Club Passim decided they wanted to work together on a project. Sitting on saggy couches eating banana pancakes at Devereaux's apartment, the group came up with the idea to collaborate on a benefit album, with all proceeds going to a small, women's organization that hadn't yet received much exposure. Eventually, as the project started to take off, more and more people got involved.

"The real story of this project is how studio engineers, producers, photographers, entertainment lawyers, mastering professionals, graphic designers, illustrators, publicists, record label employees, and the president of Signature Sounds all gave their time to make this project something pretty unusual," Devereaux says. Not to mention, of course, the female artists who donated their material — some songs specifically written for the album, others previously recorded.

Which goes to show says Devereaux, who is also in the midst of co-authoring a book about international trade negotiations with professors at the Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, that anything is possible. "If 27 ornery artists can get together on a community service project," she says, "anyone can."