Music for Wild and Wet

If you can still breathe.

COURTESY PHOTO Kat Epple

If you can still hear.

If you can still listen to Kat Epple light a line of fire from a flute, or Andy Wahlberg make love to the night with a harp guitar, or the McIltrot brothers bring the Southern mountains to the marsh with a mandolin, and deed you a once-upon-a-time in the high lonesome, then you'll want to get to Estero.

On Saturday, March 29, beginning at 6 pm, these internationally renowned musicians, "back from their exclusive three-year tour of Europe, Scandinavia and the Subcontinent," as Cab Calloway once said of The Blues Brothers, will give up their music at the Estero Park Community Amphitheater for a mere $20 a ticket (12 and under are as free as the wind).

And then, because they care just as much as you do, they'll give up the gate - hoping you will give up the cost of the ticket - in order to keep things really wild.

The 3-hour concert is a fundraiser for 60,000 acres of Wild and Wet straddling Lee and Collier Counties on the traditional western edge of the Everglades, preserved and maintained as CREW.

COURTESY PHOTO Andy Wahlberg

CREW, by the way, is a synonym for the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed, arguably the single ugliest name ever invented for one of the most beautiful places ever preserved, in Florida.

You can either buy tickets at the gate, or call CREW boss Brenda Brooks at 239-657-2253, to get yours. Or you can e-mail Brooks at crewtrust@earthlink.net, for tickets. To learn more about CREW itself, go to www.crewtrust.org.

if you go

>>What: Benefit Concert for CREW

>>When: Sat., March 29, 6 to 9 pm

>>Where: Estero Park Community Amphitheater

>>What To Bring: Lawn chairs, food, drink. No alcohol.

>>Cost: $20 a ticket, 12 and under free

>>Information: At the gate, or telephone 239-657-2253, or write to crewtrust@earthlink.net