ORANGE PARK – Music has a way of bringing people together and that’s exactly what a few musicians who call Clay County home hope to do next month.

Brothers Donnie and Johnny Van Zant are teaming up with Bobby Ingram and the Curt Towne Band and two other acts to hold the “Help Somebody If You Can” concert on Nov. 11 to raise funds for Hurricane Irma relief in Clay County. The 7 p.m. show will be at the Thrasher Horne Center on the campus of St. Johns River State College.

“We’re happy to be a part of it,” said Curt Towne of Green Cove Springs. “We all came together for the same cause – that is to help our fellow neighbors and our friends and our families. We’re all in this together.”

Towne’s band will play some of its original music and then serve as the band for the Van Zants who will perform some of the songs they made famous – Donnie with .38 Special and Johnny with Lynyrd Skynyrd, while Ingram will perform hits made popular by Molly Hatchet. Also joining the Southern Rock legends are Heavy Petty, a Gainesville-based Tom Petty tribute band and Pinto Graham from Connecticut.

The concert was announced Tuesday at a press conference at the Thrasher Horne Center where college officials, including THC Executive Director Denton Yockey and President Joe Pickens offered the venue at a low rate in order to maximize the funds being raised.

The goal is to raise funds to provide aid for some 1,400 families whose homes were flooded during Hurricane Irma in mid-September. The funds will be managed by a new nonprofit called Recovering Clay, which is part of Mercy Support Services. For almost five years, Mercy has worked to help families in crisis get back to self-sufficiency by providing case management services and housing.

“The objective of that organization is to make sure that we go above and beyond raising funds to help people, that we do not compete with existing nonprofits that are already trying to raise money to help the increased numbers of folks that are coming to them,” said Joelle Marquis, a consultant involved in the project.

Also involved is a nonprofit called St. Michael’s Soldiers, which was founded by Kathy Signorile and her husband Jim.

“Clay County is home. Clay County is full of people who love beyond love. You can find a best friend in the line at the grocery store in Clay County while you’re waiting. It’s important, like the song says, to help somebody if you can,” Kathy Signorile said.

Jim Signorile helped secure sponsorships from St. Johns River State College worth approximately $9,000 and his employer, Fields Auto Group to hold the concert. Along with Recovering Clay, concert proceeds will go to aid the SAFE Animal Shelter and Friends of Clay County Animals, the nonprofit that exists solely to provide aid to Clay County Animal Care and Control.

“This is strictly to raise money for storm relief,” he said. “This has just been weighing on our hearts. It’s like a buddy of mine said, ‘If you don’t like feel like your overwhelmed, you’re not trying hard enough,’ that’s when we starting making a lot of phone calls and it started coming together.”

Concert tickets start at $29 and can be purchased at the Thrasher Horne box office or online at THCenter.org and individual Clay County hurricane relief donations can be made online at claycounty.gesture.com.