101 WRIF Serves Up Drinks For A Great Cause

101 WRIF Detroit looks to help out as many charitable causes as possible throughout the year, from big to small.  One organization that The Riff has been very proud to partner with the last couple years has been The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) which works to treat and cure Type 1 Diabetes. This charity is particularly important to 101 WRIF’s Music Director, Jade Springart, who has Type 1 Diabetes.

Starting in 2017, 101 WRIF put together a “Charity Bartending” Event where Jade spent a few hours behind the bar at a local establishment and collected tips to go to support JDRF.  Moving forward to 2018, 101 WRIF reached out to JDRF again about the opportunity to host the event again, and this year was able to “step the event up a notch”! 

Prior to the event, Jade had been able to connect with Chris Jericho, of the WWE and also the singer for the rock band Fozzy, about being involved with this year’s bartending event.  Chris is also a supporter of JDRF as his family has also been affected by Type 1 Diabetes.  In her conversations with him about getting some autographed items to use for the event, the conversation led to him offering to come to the event and jump behind the bar with her and raise money to support JDRF.

On Friday, March 30, Chris Jericho’s band, Fozzy, played a sold-out show in Detroit at St. Andrews Hall. That day starting at 4 pm, 101 WRIF hosted a party a few blocks away from the venue at The Checker Bar Detroit.  101 WRIF’s Jade Springart and Riff Rock Girl Kara took over the bar starting at 4 pm to start serving drinks for charity.  From 4 pm to 7 pm, 100% of all the tips that they received as well as 10% of the sales for the bar went directly to JDRF.  Additionally, 101 WRIF hosted a silent auction featuring items such as a WWE Folding Chair, signed Fozzy Posters, signed drumheads and photos from various other bands, a “Ticket To Rock” package with tickets to over a dozen shows coming to Detroit this year, and more.  In addition to Jade and Rock Girl Kara, some of the other WRIF staff came out to support or made donations to JDRF, including Anne Carlini, Andy Green from Dave & Chuck The Freak, and Meltdown. 

Aside from the WRIF staff on hand, the band “Through Fire”, who was also performing at St. Andrews that night, showed up to support the event and the charity.  And at 5 pm, the special guest for the day, Chris Jericho, arrived to work “his shift” serving up drinks to Detroiters for this great cause.  Chris jumped right behind the bar with Jade and Kara, and started serving patrons that were very excited to see him.  He took the time to speak to all the people lined up at the bar as well as signing items and taking selfies, and collecting tips for the JDRF tip jar.  Additionally, he and Jade jumped on the microphone and hooked up some very lucky listeners at the bar with tickets to the sold-out show that night.  Initially only planning to stay about a half hour, Chris graciously stayed over an hour at the event and took the time to speak to the couple hundred people that worked their way into the Checker Bar that afternoon. 

Over the course of the three-hour event, Jade, Chris Jericho, and The WRIF Staff were able to raise over $2800 for Juvenile Diabetes Research.  Following the event that day and the Fozzy show that evening, Chris Jericho also “tweeted” Jade that someone at his show that evening made a donation of an additional $1,000 to JDRF while they were performing onstage. 

101 WRIF looks forward to the future of being able to “serve up some drinks” and help in the mission that JDRF has set forth to end Type 1 Diabetes!