On Thursday, September 12, Raymond Coleman’s day started at 4:30 AM with the sound of banging on his door in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia. It was the police. The Tyrone-born musician’s van had been broken into and all of his equipment stolen. The guitars. The sound system. Even what he jokingly calls his “box of tricks,” his guitar leads and wires.
“It was awful, like taking my right arm off,” said Coleman, who has made a living as a musician since arriving the the US from Ardboe in Northern Ireland four years ago this week. “I was thinking of all the gigs I was going to have to cancel.” The father of one—daughter Branna just turned one–often does 25 or more a month.
He left a dismal post on his Facebook page later in the morning, and suddenly, his terrible, horrible no-good day took a turn. For the better.
“The next thing I knew, Frank Daly, got in touch with me,” Coleman said. Daly is the front man for Jamison Celtic Rock and co-founder of American Paddy LLC, which produced the Philadelphia Fleadh outdoor concert this past June. Daly wanted Coleman’s permission to launch a crowd-sourcing campaign on the website giveforward.com to help him replace his equipment. Coleman was reluctant. “I don’t want people to think I’m begging for money,” he said. But he agreed.
It took off. Donations, fueled by Facebook shares, didn’t just trickle in. They flooded in. Daly set a goal of $2,500 at the beginning of the day and by Friday morning there were 62 donations totaling more than $2,800, most from people Coleman didn’t know. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I never met some of these people. It’s just amazing to me that there are so many people out there who would help out a stranger.”
Raymond Coleman
He got donations from several foundations, including The Claddagh Fund, founded by fellow musician Ken Casey of The Dropkick Murphys, and the Mimi Fishman Fund, affiliated with the group Phish, but most of the donations came from ordinary people who also left words of encouragement on the giveforward website.
“Best of luck. There’s a song in this somewhere. Swing,” wrote one donor.
Another, who gave the last $6 in her bank account, assured him that “it’s cool. I got cash to get me through till pay day.”
Another, clearly a fan, wrote, “Oh Ray, what an awful thing! How can I not help the man who serenades me with ‘Jersey Girl?’”
And, of course, there were the friends who know the traditional first step in Irish healing is a joke:
“I heard said it was a gang of American musicians who were tired of immigrants coming here and stealing their jobs! So, I heard.”
And, “Lock the doors next time.”
Coleman comes from a musical family. “I grew up surrounded by music. There were sessions up in my Granny’s house every Monday night. My sisters sing, my brothers sing. It’s just a mad outfit,” he laughs. In fact, his brother, Mickey Coleman, is a fixture in the New York music scene and a well-respected singer-songwriter. The two occasionally perform together.
And today he feels like he has a whole other family, starting with Frank Daly. “He is such a good fella, I swear to God, he’s a saint. I’m just sitting here, speechless, I don’t even know what to say, I’m just so grateful, I feel loved,” he said. “It started out an awful day, and the next thing this happens and there’s a change of thought completely. There are so many good people out there, you forget about the bad.”
