Concert is karmic payback.

Byline: Serena Markstrom The Register-Guard

Eugene is a magnet for wandering souls. Brian Schild, who has rechristened himself Phoenix in the past year and a half, is one.

How Phoenix arose here is a long story, but today is the first big local fundraising event from his budding nonprofit production company, Phoenix Rose Presents.

The 28-year-old from Houston traded his sales job, big truck, nice apartment and a second gig as a semi-professional stock car driver to volunteer at an orchid garden in Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, he got the idea to travel around doing benefit concerts.

Phoenix is back in Eugene to "complete the circle" and give something back to a community that supported him when he was penniless.

Tonight, he's signed a solid reggae lineup well worth the requested price of admission. Headliner Indubious is using it as a CD release show, and local bands Basin and Range and T-Club also are scheduled to play.

What's improbable about the whole thing is that Phoenix is basically a random person trying to do what people with many long-term connections here in town find difficult: fill the WOW Hall without benefit of a famous headliner.

"It's not just a guy putting on a benefit," he said during a recent interview. "There is a lot of heart behind it."

He's giving all he's got

Phoenix rode his bicycle from Maitreya Ecovillage, where he is living and working, to One Cup in the Whiteaker neighborhood to meet for an interview.

Maybe it was the pot of mate, but he seemed alert and open, with none of the panic you might expect to see from someone who has just put all of his money on the line to produce a show in a community that he barely knew existed six months ago.

Nothing traumatic made Schild leave his life behind last February. He had been in sales jobs for years and seemed destined to rake in a bunch of money selling security systems, as his cousin had done.

On his first day, he set some kind of sales record and was greeted with ego-stroking praise.

"It didn't feel good," Phoenix said. "I didn't want to be in that lifestyle."

Someone he knew told him he needed to go to Costa Rica. So he went - and his life changed dramatically.

"It seemed like I met someone almost every day that had something to do with music," he said.

He planned a party to coincide with the full moon, but the area he lived in was hit by a hurricane, so he turned his party into a benefit. Producing the event felt good, so he did another.

The thing to do, he decided, was to experience as many festivals as he could to learn how they work. At the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, Calif., he met an old man. Phoenix spoke of his disappointment with what he observed as the "commodification of spirituality."

"If you want to go to a real festival," the man said, "you've got to go to the Oregon Country Fair."

Fair was no easy ticket

In June, Phoenix arrived in Eugene by bus with about $20 in his pockets. With no plan and nowhere to stay, he spent his first night at the Eugene Mission.

He hitchhiked to the fair site near Veneta and soon learned how difficult it is to get a camping pass on short notice.

"Wow, this is pretty bad," he remembers thinking. "What have I got myself into?"

After checking local entertainment listings, he ended up at a free wine-tasting benefit for local groups that help animals, including S.A.R.A.'s Treasures. And another epiphany came:

If he could figure a way out of his situation, he would return to Eugene and do another benefit for S.A.R.A.'s Treasures, a thrift shop that saves cats from euthanasia. The fact that he is back tells you he succeeded.

He went to a festival in Colorado, then returned to Lane County in a wood-paneled station wagon accompanied by a tarot reader, a folk singer and a Reiki practitioner. Several flat tires and shady auto repairs later, the trio was in the heart of Oregon's festival scene.

Phoenix landed in Eugene about the time of the Whiteaker Block Party, and the hostel that he had worked at his first time through town needed some extra help. He and his friends had their lodging.

"I felt like ... I was a stray"

After Faerieworlds at Mount Pisgah, a friend paid for Phoenix to return to Texas for a wedding, so he worked and saved some money there.

During a 10-day silent meditation, he had a stare-down with a rabbit that reaffirmed his Oregon epiphany.

"I felt like when I first came here, I was a stray," he said.

Originally, he was going to have the benefit at a smaller club. But after volunteering at the WOW Hall and attending an Indubious show there, he decided to accept the challenge and book the bigger venue.

Since then, he has attracted support and small sponsorships. He has done most of the promotion alone, standing outside of popular music shows, such as the recent Julian and Stephen Marley concert, with a battery-powered boombox, handing out his fliers.

"I've just been hustling," he said.

Phoenix probably won't settle down here right away, but he's very attracted to the sub- economy he has observed. With the area's many intentional communities and barter-friendly culture, he is feeling at home in a world that couldn't be further from the one in which he grew up.

"That's happening more and more," he said. "I've met people who were lawyers who say, `If I'm going to be broke, at least have fun.'"

Call Serena Markstrom at 338-2371 or e-mail her at [e-mail].

CONCERT PREVIEW

Do It for the Kitty

What: Benefit concert for S.A.R.A's Treasures and C.A.R.E.

With: Indubious, the T-Club, Basin and Range

What: Reggae

When: 8 p.m. today

Where: WOW Hall, 291 W. Eighth Ave.

Admission: Suggested donation of $10 to $20