The Harrington Family Foundation

Like many inspired ideas, this one began at the beach. Over orange juice. Jason Mraz's CD, "Waiting for my Rocket to Come," provided the background music.

Joey Harrington had an idea: a concert. He turned to Steve Bramucci, one of his best friends.

"It'd be pretty cool if we could get Mraz to come and play for our friends," Harrington remembers saying.

Because Harrington is a well-known NFL quarterback with his own charitable foundation, it turns out he actually can get Mraz to come and play for his friends.

Blues Traveler, too.

His friends and anyone else who wants to pony up $22.50 for a ticket can see both June 26 at the Crystal Ballroom. Every dollar will benefit the Portland Shriners Hospital for Children through the Harrington Family Foundation, Harrington said.

If the timing works out, that night's musical act on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" will be Harrington jamming with Mraz and possibly Blues Traveler's John Popper. That's tentative.

Almost every other detail is worked out and ready to go. Not bad, since it was only late January and early February that Harrington devised this plan while on vacation in Newport Beach, Calif.

"It's fun. Kind of stressful," Harrington said last week from Michigan. "I've come to find I thrive on that. I thrive on chaos. . . . "

So why not organize a concert while preparing for his second NFL season while acclimating himself to new Lions coach Steve Mariucci?

Last week, Harrington began the first of three weeks of organized workouts at Detroit's practice facility in Allen Park.

After those wrap up, he will return to Oregon, where he will be busy. He has a new home in Portland to settle into. There will be a news conference in Eugene to announce another fund-raiser -- selling pieces of his old New York billboard.

And he'll promote the concert.

"I'd like this to kind of become the foundation's signature event," Harrington said. "Year by year, start growing it. My ultimate goal is to have the Dave Matthews Band come play."

After the original brainstorm at the beach, Harrington took the idea to his agent, and they went to work. They hired the same production company Warren Moon uses for his Las Vegas bowling fund-raiser, an event in which Harrington participated last year and will again this year.

If all goes well, and the concert sells out (the Crystal Ballroom holds 1,500), Harrington said he figures to write a check for at least $30,000 to the Shriners.

That's welcome at a time when money is especially hard to come by.

Harrington said he chose Shriners because he has seen the work the hospitals do. He played in high school and college all-star games sponsored by the Shriners.

Specifically, the money from the concert will go toward the hospital's recreation therapy program, which provides patients everything from skiing to martial arts to horse back riding to arts workshops free of charge.

Most of the instruction is done by volunteers so, as Grennan says, "it doesn't gobble up a lot of staff salary dollars."

As a result, the money the concert generates could finance the program for a year.

And for Harrington, it plays right into one of his biggest interests -- music.

"This feels like my own," Harrington said. "It feels like something I'm doing."

When he's not doing football.

About the time Harrington was hatching the idea for the concert, the Lions fired Marty Mornhinweg as coach so they could replace him with Mariucci.

"He has a vision," Harrington said of Mariucci. "He has the enthusiasm and the infectious attitude that get other people excited. And he has won before. He has that base. He has been in that situation."

That experience was the one thing Harrington says Mornhinweg lacked.

Not that Mariucci has made life all that easy for Harrington. On Tuesday, Harrington said he threw maybe one incomplete pass all day. On Wednesday, Mariucci unleashed a blitz drill and sent all kinds of pressure at Harrington, who threw incomplete pass after incomplete pass.

"Wednesday," Harrington said with a pause, "Wednesday was dogged."

Thursday was pretty good. Friday, pretty average.

"I'm still not where I want to be," Harrington said. "I'm still not as comfortable as I'd like to be. It's just a matter of getting in and doing it."

It's not altogether unlike organizing your first concert.

Ryan White: 503-412-7024; ryanwhite@news.oregonian.com