Burbank helps musicians
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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Former radio star formed Play it Forward to help pay medical costs
By Chris Varias • Enquirer contributor • March 8, 2009
By Gary Burbank's estimation, the chances of making it big as a musician are about 1 in 10 million.
If those odds hold true, that's plenty of lead guitarists, banjo pickers and heavy-metal drummers who not only earn a meager wage but do so without the benefit of health insurance.
It's a situation that pains the former WLW-AM fixture. Before Burbank made his living on the air making people laugh, he made music, and local musicians frequently got air time on his afternoon show.
Burbank had kicked around the idea of a way to help uninsured musicians, but it wasn't until he was talking to a longtime figure in the local music community that he became serious about it.
"He's a very well-known musician who has been very successful. He had this cold for a month and a half, the flu or something," Burbank says of the musician, whose name he doesn't want in the newspaper. "I said, 'Why don't you see a doctor?' He said, 'I can't do it. I don't have any kind of medical (insurance) and I just have to tough it out.'
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