DayZero
THE CLOCK HITS ZERO. THE MUSIC DOESN'T.
Forty days. Forty nights. One final night — an intimate benefit for the Hollow Bone Initiative in a 1,050-cap room. DAY ZERO is the event. "We Saved the Last Roach" is the stunt inside it.
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN CULMINATES WITH DAY ZERO AT THE ORANGE PEEL.
December 11, 2026 is a proposed target date. No venue hold is signed, no artist is booked, and every name and logo shown here is a pitch illustration — not an endorsement or a confirmed appearance. This site exists so sponsors, artists, venues and press can see the whole idea in one place and tell us whether they want in. Nothing here should be reported as booked.
The final billboard.
WILLIE NELSON
Special acoustic appearance
JOEY TEMPEST OF EUROPE
A once-only acoustic performance of “The Final Countdown”
WE SAVED THE LAST ROACH
Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach, with his son — an intimate acoustic set
KENNY McCORMICK IV
And special guests
40 DAYS. 40 NIGHTS. ONE FINAL NIGHT.
The plant will still grow here.
An intimate benefit for the Hollow Bone Initiative · 100% of net ticket and livestream proceeds benefit the Hollow Bone Initiative
STARTWITHILOVEYOU.COM
Dream bill for pitch purposes. No artist on this board is booked or has agreed to appear.
Mock-up on the actual board · Canton, NC · dusk, southbound traffic
This is what the ask looks like at forty miles an hour. Four names, one date, one room, and a line that does the whole job: the clock hits zero, the music doesn't.
Full circle.
The campaign begins with Willie's face on a billboard in Billy Graham country. It ends with Willie standing onstage in Asheville while the man who wrote "The Final Countdown" brings the clock to zero.
Willie is the answer
Willie Nelson is the human answer to the opening billboard — Billy's America finally meets Willie's America.
Joey is the clock
Joey Tempest wrote “The Final Countdown.” In 2026 the song and album celebrate their 40th anniversary. He is the literal clock.
The last roach
Jacoby Shaddix and his son are “We Saved the Last Roach” — redemption, and one generation handing something better to the next.
Kenny is the future
Kenny McCormick IV opens the night because the whole point of the fight is who inherits it.
Hollow Bone is the landing
The Hollow Bone Initiative gives the entire night somewhere meaningful to land: healing, sanctuary and Asheville.
- The Orange Peel's sellable capacity is 1,050 — an impossibly intimate room for Willie, and a global media story in itself. The venue expressly accommodates benefits and fundraisers.
- The room stays intimate, but the show gets a properly cleared global livestream and documentary recording. Recording requires advance venue permission, and broadcasting “The Final Countdown” requires rights beyond an ordinary live performance.
- Willie is 93 and still active, but no December date is currently on his calendar — so the ask is a special acoustic appearance, not a full headlining set. Even three to five songs is enough. His presence is the answer to the billboard.
- No name gets announced until contracts are signed. And we confirm which of Jacoby's sons is performing — more than one has appeared with him publicly.
- Sponsors underwrite artist, venue, travel, production and broadcast costs — so we can say it plainly: 100% of net ticket and livestream proceeds benefit the Hollow Bone Initiative.
The Orange Peel is
not a backup plan.
Asheville is a town of 95,000 people that behaves like a city of a million when the lights go down. The Orange Peel is the reason. Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins, Bob Dylan, Modest Mouse, half of Bonnaroo on off nights. If you play it well, the room plays back.
Sellable capacity — impossibly intimate for Willie, and expressly set up for benefits and fundraisers.
Named one of the best rooms in America.
Downtown Asheville, walk to everything.
Built as a dance hall. It still moves.
No date is on hold yet and no artist is confirmed. We are stating the target publicly on purpose — a countdown with a secret ending isn't a countdown. If the room or the band says no, night forty still happens on Haywood Road with every local band that spent six weeks covering the song.
Doors to zero.
- ACT ONECue 01
Kenny opens the future
An original song and a short welcome. No speeches yet.
- ACT TWOCue 02
We Saved the Last Roach
Jacoby and his son perform acoustically. This is a father-and-son story, not a Papa Roach greatest-hits show.
- ACT THREECue 03
Hollow Bone
One beautiful six-minute film. No long nonprofit presentation. Show exactly what the proceeds make possible.
- ACT FOURCue 04
Joey Tempest stops the clock
The room goes dark. The countdown fills the screen. Joey performs a radically stripped-down “The Final Countdown” — voice, piano or acoustic guitar — while the clock approaches zero.
- ACT FIVECue 05
Willie closes the story
Even three to five Willie songs would be enough. He does not need a full headlining set. His presence is the answer to the billboard.
- FINALECue 06
Everyone returns
One communal closing song, subject to the artists' approval. Then: THE GOVERNMENT CAN CHANGE THE DEFINITION. THE PLANT WILL STILL GROW HERE.
Subject to change, weather, lawyers, and one very specific Swedish phone call.
Everybody plays
the same song.
By the time the actual band walks out, this town will have heard that riff four hundred times, from people it knows by name. That's how a stadium song becomes a neighborhood song.
- 01
Cover 'The Final Countdown' however you want. Banjo, choir, harp, screamo, marching band, kazoo quartet — the weirder the better.
- 02
Film it anywhere: kitchen, porch, brewery, the top of a mountain. Phone footage is fine, sincerity is mandatory.
- 03
One night of the forty gets your version. Forty nights, forty covers, one town slowly losing its mind to the same eight bars.
- 04
Three winners open night forty at The Orange Peel. Paid, on the poster, in the documentary.
SEND YOUR VERSION
A link is all we need. No press kit, no manager, no genre requirement.
Submit a coverOpen the last night. Get paid, get filmed, get to say you played the song in the room before the band that wrote it did.
Dear Europe,
In 1986 you wrote a song about leaving. Forty years later, a mountain town in North Carolina is using it to talk about staying.
Here is the situation, plainly. American law around hemp is changing on a deadline. Thousands of small farms, shops and workers are counting down to a date they didn't choose. Instead of panicking about it, we're spending forty days and forty nights in public — music, farmers, chemists, pastors, nurses, arguments, mountains, one honest question a day.
Every one of those nights opens with your song. Local bands cover it. Kids learn the riff on borrowed guitars. By night thirty-nine the whole town can hum a countdown.
Then there's night forty. The Orange Peel, 1,100 people, the last hour before the deadline. We would like you to walk out and play it for real.
Somebody will book that fortieth-anniversary show somewhere. It will be a good show. This one would be a moment — the only time that song has ever been played to a room that actually spent forty days counting down.
Same fee. Same window. Completely different footage.
We are not a festival and not a political party. We're a small company, a record shop, a hemp shop, a nonprofit and a lot of neighbors on Haywood Road. We'll handle everything else. We just need the band.
With genuine respect and a fully unreasonable amount of hope,
Craig, and forty days of Asheville
Not booked. Not affiliated with Europe or their representation. Stated in the open so nobody has to guess what we're asking for.
PAPA ROACH CLOSES THE CRUSADE.
WE SAVED THE LAST ROACH.
December 11 is the day the law changes. So December 11 is the last night — the fortieth night — and the campaign ends in the best room in Asheville with the only band whose name could carry the joke and the sermon at the same time.
Jason Harper co-wrote Jesus Loves You This I Know with Craig. He has also spent years as a road pastor to Papa Roach — in the buses, in the green rooms, at the shows nobody wrote about. That's the whole bridge. The last night of a forty-day crusade in Billy Graham's hometown gets booked by a pastor who already has the band's phone number.
A band that has spent twenty-five years playing to people the wellness industry pretends don't exist — working, loud, loyal, unbothered by what's fashionable. That's exactly who this rule change lands on. Thirty-nine nights of farmers, chemists and preachers, and then one night where the other half of the room finally gets the building.
Nothing is on sale and nothing is on hold. The date is fixed by the law, not by us.
KENNY McCORMICK IV.
THEY CALL ME TRINITY.
He came to Shope Creek the first time as a retreater. He came back as an artist, and said the sentence that named a whole documentary. Now he is launching a record across forty nights in Asheville. Everything else on this page is a room. Kenny is what happens inside it.
"The first time I came to this space, I was a retreater. This time, I felt like an artist."
Kenny plays across the forty nights — not one slot, a residency. Songs from the album land in different rooms, in different orders, in front of different people.
They Call Me Trinity launches inside the countdown. Three names, one man, a record about who you are allowed to become when nobody is asking you to pick a lane.
He is the emotional spine of The Deer Trail — the retreater who came back an artist. The line the whole documentary turns on is his.
Papa Roach is the ask for the last night. Kenny is the reason the last night means anything — forty nights of him building to it.
The Lineup We're Chasing · December 11
THREE VOICES.
ONE CHORUS.
Here's the version of night forty we keep drawing on napkins: the lead singer of Europe walks out at The Orange Peel and sings "The Final Countdown" — not alone. Jacoby on one side. Kenny on the other. Three generations of frontmen on one chorus, on the last legal night, in a room that has been counting down for forty days.
Europe's frontman. The voice on the record. Forty years later, singing it in the room where the countdown ends.
Papa Roach on the same stage the same night — the band that carried Asheville rooms long before this campaign existed.
The hometown voice. The one the town already knows, standing in the middle of the other two.
If you can get that phone call to Sweden, we'd like to make the ask.
None of this is booked. No agreements, no affiliation, no representation — just the lineup we're openly working toward, said out loud so the right person hears it in time.
Help us land the lineupTHE DEER TRAIL
IS THE BIG FEATURE.
HE RETURNED AS AN ARTIST.
Narrated by stone mason and storyteller Jill Haynie. Shot in the forest at Shope Creek, the family land of Stephen and Mary Sedmak ten miles outside Asheville. Kenny McCormick IV is the emotional through line; the land is the living character; Camp Mary is the moment separate stories become a community.
It screens as the campaign's headline film — proceeds going to The Well, the Hollow Bone Initiative's founding fund. Because sometimes the trail does not lead somewhere new. Sometimes it returns you to who you were always meant to become.
Mermans Mosengo and the Playing For Change lineage — music as the thing that moves across borders when nothing else can.
The film that asks believers a harder question than we are asking, and gets a room arguing before the credits.
Put your name
on the last night.
Not a ticket yet — a line in the record. Names on this wall are how we show a venue, a band and a booking agent that the room is already full.