Step Up and Help Out Peter Lang

Injured guitar great denied insurance, can't perform to raise funds to support family.

By Fred Mills

BLURT contributor Rev. Keith Gordon alerted us this morning to a Catch-22 ordeal legendary fingerstyle guitarist Peter Lang is currently experiencing - and it's a classic moment when YOU, dear music lovers, can help out. We realize that not only is everyone strapped this year but it's also that "giving time of year" when you're being hit up left and right by charities. But maybe consider helping out one of our own here, just a bit, and if it means foregoing that annual contribution to United Way (where half your dough will go to questionable administrative overhead anyway), well, so be it.

Writes Gordon at his About.com: Blues blog, "In May 2008, Lang was involved in an automobile accident that resulted in injuries requiring several surgeries, and has suffered a nerve impingement that may prevent him from playing his guitar again. Caught in a bureaucratic "catch 22," Lang's auto insurance company refuses to pay his medical expenses, considering his injuries to be "pre-existing," while his health insurance company won't pay, terming his injuries the result of the accident. Either way, Lang's medical bills keep piling up, and Lang is unable to perform and thus support his family."

Ergo, there's been a fund established, and you can get the details on how to donate at the Lang Fund website.

For those unfamiliar with Lang, he of the so-called 6- and 12-string fingerpicking "American Primitivism" movement, you should check out his Wikipedia biography. Suffice to say that the man has been around since the early ‘70s and worked in some capacity with just about everybody, including John Fahey, Ry Cooder, Jerry Garcia, Emmylou Harris and Leo Kottke, and over the years he's consistently figured highly in "best guitarist" polls.

Gordon adds that at the Lang website the guitarist has made six of his albums available for digital download as a way of saying "thanks." So if you want to think of your donation as a "purchase" that's fine, too - we guarantee it'll be the best deal you snag all year.