Mental and Medical Health Non-Profit Tune In & Tune Up Hosts A Benefit At The Met

May 2, 2025 Updated May 2, 2025

by Rob Duguay

Dr. Al Puerini (left) and Don Culp (right)

The past few years have seen a light shined on the importance of one’s health, both mentally and physically. Going to therapy is no longer seen as taboo while being more accepted and encouraged by the general population. There are also more people keeping track of their body, ranging from the prescriptions they take to going to gym on a regular basis to their overall diet. Taking care of your health can be expensive, especially for musicians, but Tune In & Tune Up has been easing the cost in more ways than one. To benefit the organization, there’s going to be a show called “Give The Drummer Some” happening May 4 at The Met located within the Hope Artiste Village on 1005 Main Street in Pawtucket with the festivities starting at 4:45pm.

I had a talk ahead of the benefit with Co-Directors Dr. Al Puerini and Don “DC” Culp about how Tune In & Tune Up started out, what people can expect from the upcoming show and goals for the future.

Rob Duguay: Tune In & Tune Up is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose main mission is to help Rhode Island musicians and music workers who might find themselves in need of medical and mental health assistance. What was the initial catalyst that made you both want to start this endeavor that helps out so many people?

Al Puerini: “DC” was referred to me as a patient, and when he came in, our common interest in music showed its face right away. I looked at him and said, ”You know, I’ve been trying to start this thing where I can help musicians with health issues because too many musicians I know have been getting sick or dying and they’re not getting care.” He said to me, ”I can’t believe you’re saying that because myself and Russ Gussetti have started an organization called Tune In & Tune Up and that’s exactly what we’re doing, but we don’t have that many medical people involved.” We looked at each other and it was like this perfect match, and from that day forward, we’ve been working together as a team. Russ has since dropped out because he has too much going on in his own life, so “DC” and I kind of took it over.

I think “DC” would agree with this, but we really picked up a lot of momentum during the pandemic. It was so blatantly obvious that when musicians don’t have a venue to perform in, they don’t have any income, they don’t have any identity and it causes a lack of care for medical issues. It causes mental health and behavioral health issues because their self-worth has kind of temporarily gone away, so we stepped up and we started really parlaying what we wanted to do, medically at first and now we have a strong behavioral health arm as well.

RD: That’s fantastic. I know there’s a bunch of different professionals involved in the organization like Kate Noveau, Mike Petrarca and Pamela Howard among many others, so when it came to getting these folks involved, was it from recruiting, or did they come up to you about Tune In & Tune Up?

Don Culp: Just to back up a little bit, Tune In & Tune Up initially started up under the auspices of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. Russ and I started it around five years before I met Al and again, we were coming along, but it really did start to gain momentum and popularity once we started telling people what we had going on. Our resources were limited and it really, really came to fruition when Al and I met that day in his office. As far as our board goes, we started putting the word out there to people we know, and they felt very, very passionate about what we were doing. Prior to Al and I getting together, we were part of a couple health fairs and we had other events that got us on the map, but again, we were very limited in what we were doing because we weren’t under our own non-profit status, we were under the umbrella of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.

We’ve since broken away, but with no bad blood at all. We adore the Hall of Fame, but we realized that we were very limited on what we could do. Once we got our own non-profit status, and Al organized all of that amazingly, then we were able to go and recruit people. We started thinking about getting musicians on board, getting medical people on board and younger people on board so we have that younger demographic covered. Believe it or not, we kind of hand picked people and we made a conscious effort to get the right fit.

I’m proud to say that we have an amazing board of not only talented people who cover the whole gamut, but we need social media and musicians. We have business people involved and we all get along great. It’s just a really good group of people, Al’s daughter is involved, his niece is involved and they’re not only family, but they’re also incredibly talented at what they do. We did what we needed to do to get the train on the tracks and we accomplished it while surprisingly almost exceeding our expectations. We have such an incredible group of people that are passionate and no one gets paid, it’s all volunteer, but everybody steps up. The events we put on to raise funds always have their struggles, but the upcoming one at The Met is one of the easiest we’ve done so far because everybody’s taking jobs and finishing their jobs, which is kind of where this whole thing started from.

AP: I’ve been on a lot of boards throughout my career, and with this board, we have accomplished so much in such a short period of time. I’ve never seen it like this, and the other thing is, everybody on the board gets along tremendously. They respect each other, and I think that’s the reason why we’ve gotten so much done so quickly.

RD: It’s always good when you have that type of camaraderie. Say a musician or someone in the music scene has heard of Tune In & Tune Up, but they don’t know exactly how to get involved on the board side of things or to use the organization to get help themselves. How would they go about doing either with you guys?

AP: As I mentioned earlier, the behavioral health arm has gone very, very well. We have two behavioral health therapists, a woman and a man, who have done a tremendous job and they’ve been very generous with their time. The way we organized it is we publicize it on our website at tuneinandtuneup.com and we’ve also put up flyers at different venues. What we’re doing for musicians is that we’re giving them three free visits with one of these people. Behavioral health therapy is expensive, so we do pay a reduced rate out of the Tune In & Tune Up coffers, but the patient doesn’t have to pay anything.

After the third visit, whatever therapist they’re seeing at the time will either continue seeing them, or we’ll make an appropriate referral to another agency or another practitioner. So far, both of our therapists have gotten quite a bit of business and I think the musicians really appreciate the fact that they can come in and do these initial visits with somebody who is very open-minded and very willing to either help them out themselves or refer them in the right direction.

DC: One thing I’ll add is that we have about $30,000 in our budget and we’re totally transparent with our bread. We want to divert more of that money towards having more of an online presence because we’ve realized the impact of social media and we’ve developed a state of the art website.

AP: Yeah, people can access it.

DC: We’re going to put a lot of information on the website, tons of it. We’re going to have recommendations through a blog Al is going to have called “Doc’s Picks” where he’ll recommend certain doctors for different ailments. We want to get this out to the community and it’s going to be a one stop shop where people can fill out an application. If they want our services or general information, they can contact us through there. We’re both a little older, but we’re tapping into social media and the internet because we’ve realized that it’s better than stapling posters on a telephone pole.

As far as board members go, we’re not really looking for anybody right now, but we’re certainly not ruling it out. We’re currently managing what we have, but anybody who wants to be involved can join up as a volunteer. Some other people have been working events while donating money to us, we’ve had that happen three times already, so there’s opportunities for people to be involved without necessarily being on the board, which is a commitment. There’s meetings and a lot of responsibility, but it’s still volunteer work. I think the website is going to be the best place to gather information about what Tune In & Tune Up is and what our future is going to be.

RD: That makes sense, especially with the way mental health services are going more virtually nowadays. For the upcoming “Give The Drummer Some” benefit happening at The Met, Don is going to be performing at it along with many other musicians like Rick Couto, Marty Richards and Mike “Stumpy” Neckritz taking part in the festivities just to name a few. What would you say is the major selling point for someone to spend a Sunday afternoon checking out the show? Will it be more of a revue type of thing with a lot of musicians collaborating with each other for different songs, or will there be a set by set structure?

DC: First and foremost, we’re going to have a great array of entertainment. Rick, Marty and Mike are some of the best drummers in the area, and each one of us is doing a little mini-set of three songs. We’re bringing in musicians like Mark Cutler, who is very well-known around these parts, Dean Cassell, who is the bass player for John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, and George McCann, who plays with James Montgomery. It’s going to be an amazing and very unique opportunity to see some fantastic drummers and some really great musicians, but we’re also going to be spending a lot of time talking about our non-profit. We have a whole presentation planned for the beginning with Al talking about Tune In & Tune Up, our mental health therapists will speak and we’re setting up a table to educate people about Narcan, so it’ll be a combination of education and a kickass performance, which we don’t cut any corners on.

RD: That sounds awesome. You both have mentioned about the growth Tune In & Tune Up has had over the years and how your main focus is currently on the website and utilizing social media. After that is solidified, what’s the next goal for the non-profit?

AP: What we’re really shooting for is so far we’ve helped a lot of people and we’ve gotten a lot of gratitude, so I think if we can snowball that and get more and more people to contact us through the website, that’s our main goal. One of the things I do when I give to charities is that I always check the website to see how much goes to administrative, and if 50% goes to administrative then I won’t donate. I don’t want to get like that where we’re bringing in a lot of money into administrative, rent and various costs. I think if we can keep it like the way we currently have it with such a buy-in from the community, then we’ll be fine. We’ve helped a guy who’s an amputee, we helped a guy who has cancer, we helped a guy who has diabetes and several others and those guys didn’t even apply, we were referred to them.

I can’t tell you how grateful they were when we helped them out, and we’re kind of doing the same thing with behavioral health with the free visits. We’ve helped a lot of people in that area and we’ll continue to do so.

DC: The bottom line is that we want to conserve as much money as we can for the cause. During COVID, we gave out $14,000 in $100 gift cards to Stop & Shop where each musician filled out an application. For people who ask what the qualifiers are to get help through Tune In & Tune Up, in the simplest terms, we require a musician to make 50% or more of their income through music. It’s also not just for musicians, it’s for stagehands, sound engineers, lighting people and road crew people, so anybody in the music business who lives in Rhode Island and makes 50% or more of their income through their dedication to music qualifies for our program. The gift card thing went so well that we’re planning on doing it again around the holidays.

Stop & Shop gives us a nice deal with a five percent kick back, and it’ll be simple to apply on the website and if they meet the qualification, we’ll give them a $100 gift card to buy groceries.

RD: The holidays are going to be the perfect time for that, especially with all the cooking that’ll be going on.

DC: Right. We also got a check for $150 a few weeks ago and it was just wonderful. The guy just played a gig, people donated and he gave me the money at my karate school, so hopefully we’ll get more of that activity going on as well. The people who have stepped up don’t need to do this, but they do it out of the goodness of their heart and help our cause.

Read the full article in Blackstone Valley's Call & Times here.