In one of the more unusual stories to cross our news desk, Andrew Wilkinson, director at Moneysworth Life Insurance, spoke to Health & Protection about how One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson helped get his son Harry’s band Maruja back on the road after they had thousands of pounds worth of music gear stolen at the weekend.
Wilkinson revealed Maruja lead singer Harry, whose day job is working with people with mental health conditions, has been into music since he was a child and set up his first band at school when he was 13.
Wilkinson’s support of Harry has extended to taking to him to his first gigs around the Manchester area, following the band as one of its most committed fans and paying for some of the equipment subsequently stolen by robbers.
The band have released two songs including Tao which came out in March last year. Wilkinson revealed the band has since steadily attracted interest from around the world, with their music now approaching 333,000 streams.
The unsigned band have been practising and writing new material for the past two to three months and were due to go into a studio in Wales this week to lay down tracks for a new EP.
But at the weekend some of the band’s musical gear was stolen leading to the cancellation of their studio booking.
Consequently, the band launched a GoFundMe page asking for donations towards a total of £6,000 and in the first few days had reached £1,700. But then someone made a large donation of £4,000 taking the band close to the full target. It was a name that Wilkinson didn’t at first recognise.
“When I saw it, I mistakenly misread the name – I thought it was a family relative of the bandmembers. But it wasn’t at all and then there’s just this huge amount of retweeting,” he continued.
“I’m not that familiar with One Direction’s music or with this guy’s music but he’s got millions of followers and his fans almost treat him like royalty.
“It turns out that the person who made that donation is Louis Tomlinson of One Direction. Since then the likes and retweets on social media have gone mad, over 27,000 likes in less than 24 hours, mostly of course from Louis’s own fans. He has 35m followers on Twitter and 18m on Instagram.
“What looked like a really bad event has actually turned into a real bit of good luck, probably their biggest break so far because Louis hasn’t just helped them out with the money, he has effectively given them a leg up in terms of the publicity.
“He’s saying this is a band that’s worth listening to. It’s very positive and he’s followed them as well. I think it’s just a fantastic thing to help them.”