Madison Flatman moved by school shooting and organizes benefit to help victims in Madison

Who made that Wisconsin sounded so good?

It's Max and Gradio.

We are local music.

Our next guest was moved by the recent shootings at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison

this past week.

Madison Fleming discovered the news on Reddit and with hours was donating blood for the

first time.

Listening to the radio on the way home, the idea struck to rise up and create an event,

harmony for healing, to benefit the victims and family of the victims.

Madison is the singer for Madison based group between two lakes.

So it was natural for her to reach out to the music scene to find musicians and a venue.

Let's find out Madison's passion to help the families during this crisis in their lives.

Madison, welcome to Max and Gradio.

Thank you guys so much for having me.

It's just an amazing opportunity and just being able to share and what's going on in

the world.

It's, yeah, it's really messed up.

Thank you for doing this.

This is really important.

You learned the news of the shooting on Reddit and then obviously you felt moved to do something.

So what happened after it?

Yeah.

So the moment that I heard the news on Reddit, I was like, okay, this is not my problem.

This is not something that I'm a part of, but this is something that I can help with.

This is something that I can help try to fix as much as I can.

And I just, I remember crying when I first saw it.

And I was texting my girlfriend and I was just like, I don't understand why this happened.

It's so close.

It's literally like a few blocks away from where like my great aunt lives.

The shooter actually lives like a couple blocks away from where my grandparents live.

Like they've been seeing like the cops and stuff going up and down the road.

And I just, even though it's something that didn't personally affect me.

Oh, it did.

It did.

Yeah.

I let you ask you, I mean, and I've asked myself this question too.

Of course, school shootings are unfortunately nothing new in the news.

But the fact that it happened here in Madison, where, I mean, where's your mindset?

What you're thinking on that?

It's crazy that I, it's, I thought we were invincible with shootings.

I thought it would never happen here.

I thought it was always going to happen everywhere else until it didn't.

And I know there was a shooting a few months prior in Mount Hurrah and thankfully no one

got killed from that, but finding out about this shooting and just everything, it was a

lot for me to really comprehend just, I just imagined myself as a kid like I remember

when the Sandy Hook shooting happened.

And hearing about that, I was 14 and my thought process in that moment was, oh, well that's

far away from me.

So it doesn't really affect me.

Now as an adult, it's like, I feel scared to go into public.

I feel scared to be in places knowing that someone could easily do an incident like that.

And I'm sure many people who are listening feel that same way.

They feel that pain and that fear of like what could happen and how it is happening.

And I know so many people have different views of how we can fix it and that, unfortunately,

that is something that we are going to be divisive on for a while.

I don't.

I wish there was a resolution for that right away.

But what we can do in the meantime is be strong as a community and that's what I'm really

wanting to do with harmony for healing.

Well, and that's what you're already working on and we'll talk about that in a minute.

I got to ask you about giving blood.

Yeah.

That's what you did right away and you've never given blood before.

No.

That is incredible.

I am terrified of me too.

Me too.

So what I've heard about them, I thought, okay, she's way braver than she's making herself

out to be because you are.

It's actually one of the best things you could do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I just remember I went there and the person that was like clicking my blood, they're

like, so why are you here?

And I like, I didn't want to tell them.

I was like, oh, I'm just, you know, I'm just here, you know, just chilling out.

And then they're like, so why are you here?

And I'm like, oh, because of the victims, because of what happened today.

This is the first time that I've ever felt like I needed to do something.

I needed to do it.

Yeah.

That's incredible.

And now, the next step, tell us about what you're working on.

This is huge.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So after I donated blood, I ended up getting into my car and then I turned on the radio

and I was listening to the series like some pit bull station and they had like this

upbeat EDM song.

And I'm like, okay, I cannot listen to this right now.

I cannot listen to pit bull.

So I ended up changing the station and then I like that one thing, that one little action

made me think I'm like, you know, I want to listen to something that is about today.

And I'm like, you know, many people want to have music that they can connect to after

this.

Like a connecting thing.

It's always been something that I have personally used as a way to cope with my own traumas

and my own things that I've gone through.

And I was like, oh, well, that's great.

I'm like, but I probably won't organize that like, oh, look what's happening.

So I like, I brought the idea actually to my girlfriend.

I was like, you know, it's a really good idea.

I don't really think I'm going to be able to do it though.

Like, yeah, I have like 84 followers on my band page, like I'm not really in a space

where I feel like I would really make that much of an impact.

And I was like, well, maybe I'll just like shoot the idea down and like the Madison Musicians

group or like not shoot the idea down, like shoot it on there and like just tell them,

like this is something I think would be a good idea would anyone be interested in it.

Within 24 hours, I had 50 different musicians reach out to me wanting to be a part of it.

And I'm like, are you blown away by that?

I'm willing to help.

Absolutely blown away.

I'm so happy for your organizing.

That's pretty awesome.

So basically what happened here was the harmony for healing was created.

And that's happening.

Well, tell us about the show.

It's actually two shows, right?

Yes, it is.

You have so many musicians.

You had two shows.

Yeah.

How many musicians?

That's amazing.

Oh, I mean, it has been, I will be honest.

It has been a lot to really organize two shows and getting so many musicians be like,

okay, can you do, can you do, can you do, can you do, can you do, can you do, can you

do, and it's been a lot with that.

But I will say it's absolutely amazing.

So Red Rooster, they saw my post and Dan and Tim, they both reached out to me and they

were just like, we would love for you guys to have this.

We would love for this to be at our venue.

And it's just been all falling into place.

They're like, oh, well, we have a drums set.

We have a backline.

We have this.

And I was like, that is amazing.

I don't have to worry about that because I am a singer.

I don't know anything about it.

So, like, I just like, I'm like, it's just so amazing how many people have come together.

And I have like a whole group of like volunteers, like we have our own little group chat now

where we're just coming up with ideas.

I have Twilla who she's like going to different organizations right now and talking to people.

And it's just, it's absolutely amazing.

Can you drop who's playing, who's playing in the benefit or is that not released yet?

It is not released yet, mostly because I'm still trying to get the schedule completely

finalized.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

We'll get the word out.

Now, you have these two dates.

Are these going to be afternoon night time shows?

What are you planning?

Yeah.

So, they are going to be, I'd say, a mixture of like early afternoon and late afternoon.

So, we're going to be doing it from January 5th to January 12th from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah.

We're going to have a combination of different artists.

So, right now on the plan, we have acoustic artists.

We have blues bands.

We have a country band coming in.

My band is going to be performing, which that was a whole thing of just like, we just

got a new guitarist and no time to wait.

No time to wait.

I'm just like, okay.

So, would you guys be able to do this?

And like, in my head, I'm like, they're probably not going to do it, but that's not, like,

that's not what it's important to me.

It's more important for me to get this event going.

Yes.

If my band's not a part of it, that's fine.

Um, I, oh, we kind of said, I really want to do it, but like, that's fine.

But they, like, 100% were like, on board, we started talking about how our set can really

impact and different songs that we don't want to do, because it might not be the right

time to perform those type of songs.

And we've been collaborating on getting a set together that is just really going to be

impactful.

Awesome.

Help.

Yeah.

Do people just show up those days and is there, um, can you donate the money at the

door?

Is that kind of how this is all going to work?

So we don't want to limit anyone's access to being able to come to the event.

We want people who have been honestly upset and devastated, have a place to really come

and have a comfort zone.

Um, we are accepting donations.

We are strongly accepting and encouraging donations for it because it is a benefit show.

But at the same time, we're not going to turn away people.

And yeah, with the, uh, with the funds that you raised with the donation.

So how is that going to benefit the families?

So the donations are going to be going towards the United Way of Dane County's fundraiser

currently for the school and, um, they have been doing a missing work.

Yeah.

I just saw actually a couple days ago or maybe like yesterday, they raised already 94,000.

Wow.

And I'm just like everything I've read every penny is going to help the family happens

all the time.

When the Madison community comes together, we can really make a difference.

And with the music, it will be so healing for people to always is wow.

Where can we get more info?

How do we follow this?

So we kind of, you know, keep this at the front of our brains that this is going to be

happening.

Absolutely.

So I am using the big platform, like the biggest platform I can, which is my bands music

page because that is where I have most people and connections with Madison music.

So if you go to between two lakes, we have the Facebook event already posted.

You can RSVP on there.

It is also available on the Red Rooster website as well to give you information, um, and

we are still coordinating with different media organizations to hopefully get this on

like every area that we can to make sure it is promoted, um, hopefully soon we'll be getting

flyers down.

And so it's going to be in your face, but we want it to be in your face.

Yes.

Absolutely.

That's awesome.

Uh, Madison, thank you so much for coming in telling us about harmony for healing and

uh, thank you for taking the initiative to make this happen.

And I think it's really going to be impactful and meaningful.

Oh, thank you for doing this.

Thank you guys so much for having me.

Uh, Sunday, January 5th and 12th at the Red Rooster here in Madison, get more information

online.

Let's do some cat and hurricane as Maxine, on civic media, we are local music.