Update: Concert has been canceled. Member of popular country band has ALS. He’ll play Modesto show to raise funds

Update: The concert has been cancelled, The Bee was told Tuesday.

Original story: Diagnosed with ALS, John Driskell Hopkins of the Zac Brown Band will play a concert in Modesto to help raise funds to research the disease.

Hopkins learned in 2022 that he has ALS, according to an email from Mike Piscotty, president for the ALS CURE Project, which is sponsoring the show.

The Outlaw Country concert at the Gallo Center for the Arts is set for Sunday, Oct. 22, at 6:30 p.m.

Outlaw Country will feature headliner Hopkins and his seven-piece John Driskell Hopkins Band, performing their country music, complete with a fiddle and slide guitar, according to a press release.

“You can expect to be treated to renditions of Zac Brown Band hits,” the release said.

Opening the show will be Nashville recording artist Josh Melton. After that, Canadian country music artist Jason Blaine will take the stage.

Then Hopkins and his band are set to play a 90-minute show, Piscotty said.

Piscotty lost his wife, Gretchen, to ALS in 2018 and started the nonprofit ALS CURE Project along with his son Stephen Piscotty, a professional baseball player who has played in the past with the Oakland Athletics and St. Louis Cardinals.

The nonprofit holds fundraisers and leads ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease) cure research. “We are 100% volunteer based, allowing us to contribute 98% of every dollar raised to ALS research,” Mike Piscotty said in an email. “To date, we have funded over $2 million in ALS research since 2019.”

ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, affects motor neurons, which are the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement and breathing, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “Eventually, in people with ALS, the brain loses its ability to initiate and control voluntary movements such as walking, talking, chewing and other functions, as well as breathing.”

There is currently no known treatment that stops or reverses the progression of ALS, the institute reports, and most people with ALS die from being unable to breathe on their own, usually within three to five years from when the symptoms first appear.

Piscotty, who lives in Discovery Bay, called guitarist and singer Hopkins “an amazing man working hard to raise money for a cure.”

The event includes VIP tickets that offer a pre-concert meet and greet with the artists, a silent auction and a live auction of items such as guitars autographed by the artists and vacation and experience packages, according to the press release.

Tickets are $29-$99 and are available at www.galloarts.org.