Caroline Edinger
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Caroline Edinger and her brother Thomas could speak to the power music has to connect and heal people. Music is what bonded them as siblings when they lived together in Denver. She remembers singing while he played his acoustic guitar on camping trips (he knew 386 different songs to cover) and collaborating with other musicians around the city together. Music struck a chord with both of them.
In November of 2020, Thomas died of an accidental fentanyl overdose at age 33. Caroline says he was a secret user, and most of his friends and family weren’t aware of his drug use. “He was secretly buying street oxy, and no one really knew,” she says. “He was pretty high-functioning.”
Caroline remembers Thomas as someone very involved in his community. He was politically active and was part of a phone bank for the Biden campaign in 2020. He also worked for the Blue Bench, a nonprofit helping victims of sexual assault, and Forests Forever, a preservation organization, and knocked on countless doors as a canvasser. But his music is what many, including Caroline, remember most about him. “He was very innately talented…[he] could just pick up any instrument and hear a tune and be able to just play,” Caroline says. “When I moved out here to live with him in 2015, we started going to these open mics at the Squire Lounge, and from there, the people who were organizing those had one around the city almost every night of the week.”
After Thomas passed away, Caroline wanted to do something to honor his love of music and bring awareness to the fentanyl crisis, and in September 2021, she hosted the Thomas Edinger Memorial Concert at the Roxy on Broadway. “In the name of his death, I wanted there to be some awareness around this terrible epidemic in our country that obviously affected me to the core,” Caroline says. “I searched around: ‘What are the organizations that advocate for people like this?’ I came across Denver’s Harm Reduction Action Center, which is a nonprofit.”
The Harm Reduction Action Center is an organization that provides resources to people who inject drugs (PWID). “PWID have the opportunity to dispose properly of used syringes, access sterile syringes and are offered referrals/resources,” says Lisa Raville, executive director of the Harm Reduction Action Center. “In addition, we provide mobile syringe exchange in high drug traffic areas three afternoons per week, and provide syringe cleanup efforts all over the city.”
The Harm Reduction Action Center also worked to help pass seven pieces of statewide legislation in the past twelve years. One of the bills, SB 15-053, passed in 2015, greatly expanded access to naloxone, also known as Narcan, which reverses overdoses to narcotic drugs. The law allows the chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to distribute naloxone to pharmacies and organizations such as the Harm Reduction Center.
Courtesy Caroline Edinger
At the 2021 concert, Caroline wanted to bring these resources to people in a relaxed environment that also honored her brother. Musicians such as Kaitlyn Williams, Brothers of Brass and Avery Jacob performed, and all proceeds were distributed among the Harm Reduction Action Center, the Blue Bench, Colorado Rising and Clean Water Action. The concert had a pretty large turnout, raising around $1,500 for the organizations.
Caroline hopes to beat that amount with a second concert this year. It will take place at Goosetown Tavern on Friday, November 11, and many of the fifteen bands playing have members who knew Thomas.
This year’s show will not be called the Thomas Edinger Memorial Concert, but the Harm Reduction Awareness Concert. It is meant to be less about grieving, and more about building awareness around the fentanyl crisis. “I really want to make this about awareness, about fentanyl overdoses – overdoses in general,” Caroline says.
The Harm Reduction Action Center will bring supplies to the event, including boxes of Narcan and fentanyl testing strips. Caroline notes that in her time in the music community, it has become apparent that the fentanyl crisis strikes music and art communities a lot, and she wants to bring as many resources as she can directly to them.
“People seeking euphoria is not something that should be stigmatized,” Caroline says. “I don’t want another family to have to go through what I went through.”
The Harm Reduction Awareness Concert, 6 p.m. Friday, November 11, Goosetown Tavern, 3245 East Colfax. Tickets are $10 online and $15 at the door.
