Benefit concert for Olympia water warriors

Noah Medrud, 13, has seen firsthand how important it is to have clean and reliable water.

He travels internationally with his dad as part of Friendly Water for the World, which gives people access to clean water by teaching them to make and install simple water filters. Guitarist Scott Huckabay is playing a benefit concert Saturday for the Olympia nonprofit.

“It’s nice having running water,” said Noah, an eighth-grader at Ridgeline Middle School in Yelm. “In India, they had running water occasionally, but there were a few times when it wasn’t running at all, and very occasionally we actually had hot water.”

Noah and his dad, Wayne Medrud, a technical consultant for Friendly Water, visited India in January and February, and Uganda and Burundi in the summer, helping to train people to make biosand filters.

The filters are simple, durable and can be made with locally available materials. The people who learn to build them can set up their own businesses, boosting the economy as well as the availability of clean water.

Friendly Water, which began as a joint project of the Olympia Friends Meeting and Olympic View Friends Church in Tacoma, also has projects in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Honduras, Kenya, South Sudan and Zimbabwe — and locally.

Huckabay, who lives in a remote area of California near Mount Shasta, discovered the organization when he attended a skill-share day at the Olympia Friends Meeting House.

“I was very inspired about their work and wanted to help out,” the guitarist said. “We talked about doing a benefit concert to help raise awareness on their vision of what they are doing to help others in need of clean water throughout the planet.”

Huckabay also was interested in the filter itself.

“Scott (Huckabay) said, ‘I need one of these,’ ” Wayne Medrud said. “I basically bartered with him. I said, ‘I’ll give you a biosand filter and a little bit extra and you come and do a concert for us.’ He said sure.

“I’ve seen him a couple of times,” Medrud added. “It’s kind of a cross between Jimi Hendrix and meditation music. He plays the guitar acoustically by beating on it with his hand. He plays it with a violin bow. He makes sounds come out of it like you wouldn’t believe.”

Huckabay tours internationally and has opened for the likes of Crosby Stills & Nash, Joe Satriani and Sarah McLachlan.

The board and volunteers at Friendly Water are hoping a concert will bring more money and volunteers its way as it continues to expand its work.

And Noah is looking forward to his next trip. “Our next stop might be Cambodia,” he said

Noah has made friends on the past trips, some of whom he’s kept in touch with on Facebook. In India, he was honored in a ceremony.

“In Rishikesh, in northern India, the guru at the ashram that we stayed at honored him in a ceremony and referred to him as ‘a world water warrior,’ ” Wayne Medrud said.

This story was originally published October 16, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Benefit concert for Olympia water warriors."