It only took three hours for the five alarm fire in a Mt. Pleasant apartment building to displace roughly 200 tenants. It didn’t take much longer for Ryan Wakeman and Chris DeWitt to come up with a way to help. Under the moniker “The Queen of the Water Dolphins”, Wakeman and DeWitt organized a benefit concert to raise donations for victims of the fire.

“We wanted to do something useful with ourselves about the fire, and music is what we know best,” said DeWitt, also of performing band Wild Fictions. “I’ve set up a handful of benefits in D.C. before, and Ryan, of course, sets up shows all the time.”

Wakeman, who used to set up shows at the defunct Gold Leaf Warehouse (aka The Hosiery), decided on another unlikely space for tonight’s festivities. “The space is really small and non conventional – no stage. All the bands will perform facing each other with the crowd surrounding them in a circle,” says Wakeman of their venue of choice, a house turned venue called La Casa. Participating band Kitty Hawk‘s Chris Walker, for one, loves the idea of the alternative space.

“There’s something very very special about not playing in a venue,” said Walker.

“I have a feeling it’ll be like playing in somebody’s living room. I mean, it looks like a living room,” DeWitt said. “It’ll be like practicing in my mom’s house, only with a ton of sweaty people surrounding us.”

Tonight’s show at La Casa with Kitty Hawk, Sugarcane Crawl, Fever, Wild Fictions, U.S. Royalty, The Coats and Ra Ra Rasputin will take place at La Casa at 3166 Mt. Pleasant Street NW. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the first band will go on at 8 p.m. All donations will go to victims of the Mt. Pleasant Street fire.