Jam Bands

Chase has been taking guitar lessons since sometime in 8th grade. I think. Gotta say - I can't quite remember. But in any case, he's been taking from Christian, the son of one of Troy's very best friends from high school. He's such a nice kid and has really helped Chase love the guitar. He's just Chase's speed.  He's also the lead singer in a fairly ROCKING band called Acacia Ridge. Lots of screaming. But like musical screaming, so you know, screaming in a good way. Turns out Christian is a total rock star.

Anyway, Christian has been involved with a summer camp for a number of years called Jam Bands. I think he attended it as a high-schooler and is now one of its teachers. They get kids together for a week and during the week the kids divide up into mini-bands. Each kid gets to be a part of 4 bands. They spend the whole week learning a song (so, four songs per kid) and at the end of the week there is a concert at an outdoor amphitheater. 

Chase expressed a lot of interest in going so we set it up. At the beginning of the week he knew absolutely no one and I think I was a little sorry he had done the camp. But as Chase always does he made all these great buddies and memories and had a lot of laughs. He was super excited to go in the mornings and spent the whole day learning how to be a true lead guitarist.

Friday night rolled around and our family headed to the theater and I'm not going to say the performances were amazing - these were pretty young kids. Chase was one of the oldest kids there. But it was so fun to see them having such a good time being rock stars. Chase absolutely loved it, and we loved watching and listening to him.

His bands played Shut Up and Dance, Renegades of Funk, Heartbreaker and Dream On.

He's asking to go back again next year and I think he really gets the vision now so I'm guessing he'll put in some more practice time on the songs he'll have to learn before camp starts. It's such a cool concept - a band camp for rock stars.