The Nils Lofgren Project

Talk about lucky!  About a year and a half ago we were very lucky in CMAS to have Nils Lofgren (the E Street Band, Neil Young) come in and speak to CMAS about his career and his music, the industry - pretty much all the things that he has ever done professionally as a musician. He was scheduled originally to come in for, I think, about an hour and he wound up staying for just shy of three. Needless to say it was pretty amazing. Nils is an incredibly gifted musician - pretty much everyone knows that. It's evident in all the work he does. It's evident in the people he works with. But more than that, he's just a really gracious person. Nils is one of the kindest most gentlest souls I've ever met and very much willing to share anything that he can with others.

Certainly that session with CMAS was extremely successful. It was extremely inspiring - not just for the students, but also for me; as well as any number of other faculty from the school that attended. In the wake of that, I was blessed in that Nils wanted to stay in touch, and about 10 months ago, back in February of this year, kind of out of the blue, I got a phone call and he wanted to know a) if I'm still teaching at the school and had the CMAS program and b) if I would be interested in having CMAS work with him as part of his upcoming album that at the time he was still putting together.

Obviously the answer was yes. It is a rare gift when an artist of his stature and skill offers to work with your students. Something that we simply could not pass up. Basically, the project is rooted in Nils feeling that he's aware of all the new technology and is aware of the need to involve and reach out to a younger generation (more specifically people that are the age of my students) but he's not quite sure how to do it. So his idea was basically to turn my students into a kind of record labels of sorts. Not having the kids on the phones pushing the CD or anything like that, but just having them help him work through what I might or might not work. 

We started this process very recently. He's coming in frequently to CMAS and he's talked with students now quite a bit about what he has in mind.  He's played a good bit for them and has relayed some great stories to them.  He's basically giving them open access to Nils Lofgren the legendary guitarist, songwriter, singer, producer, and it's been just wonderful.

Right now we are focusing on helping him create two videos for two songs that are on his new album "Old School." The album by the way is unbelievable and if you get a chance to pick it up you absolutely should. It's on iTunes and it is also available at his website and any number of other places www.NilsLofgren.com.

Anyway, CMAS is not really a video production program. CMAS is about music. It's about writing it. It's about performing it. It's about producing it. Both live and in the studio. But we are not a video production class. However, several of the my students in CMAS are also very accomplished students in our Media Communications program at the school where they do work very specifically on video production, so we are tapping lots and lots of resources for this. 

One of the videos is basically going to be a more standardized kind of storyboarded video for the song "Miss You Ray."  The other one is going to be a kind of "making of" documentary for the song "Dream Big." We're hoping that after those we can move on into more detailed production and songwriting skills with Nils. He and I have even discussed the possibility of doing a live show  - one of our songwriter nights as it were - but featuring him. We're still not quite sure how that will work or if we can even manage to make that happen, but to even be talking about it is pretty amazing.  

Both Nils and I are hopeful that this will be a lasting partnership.  Something that the CMAS program does with him not necessarily every year, but that the students have this resource of an artist such as Nils.  It's a remarkable opportunity and it is a tremendous honor and I cannot ever fully thank or express how grateful I am to Nils for giving my students - and honestly me - the opportunity to work with him like this.

Much more coming soon...

Lemons, Lemonade, and CMAS

Lets be honest, nothings ever 100% perfect 100% of the time; and as much as what CMAS students are capable of, and as much as they've accomplished in the past, sometimes mistakes are going to happen.  That's part of learning, but that's also part of the real world.  You put yourself in a big high profile gig and sometimes during that performance there may be problems.  And last week that's what happened.  

It wasn't anybody's fault.  Nobody intentionally messed up.  The truth is that even the most "simple" CMAS show is pretty complex, by any standards: three totally independent Mix desks (FOH, Monitors, Pro Tools recording), some serious PA wattage (excess of 40,000 watts for some shows) etc., etc.; but that is no excuse.  We had a problem and the show suffered.  The performers did great, the crew worked really hard, but we made some errors on the production side of things and it was a problem.  So we were thrilled when we were going get to play one more show (at least) because the varsity football team was in playoffs and we were hosting last night which meant another Super Bowl style halftime show for us.

It might have been a bit nerve-racking as the students were feeling, all week, a good bit of pressure and where a bit worried could they pull it off?  Could they redeem themselves from last week and do it in such a way so that they would still feel good about everything that they've done in the past as well?

The answer turned out to be yes.  The students went back last week and completely reevaluated their process - voluntarily I might add.  They came to me after the problems from last week's show and said, "We don't want to do it like that again.  Ever."  It was a important learning lesson for the entire CMAS program.   A somewhat brutal one in front of a couple thousand people - not exactly my first choice - but an important one none the less.  Details matter.  Plain and simple.  Your best show in the past only matters if your next one is at least as good, ideally better, and certainly not worse.  More importantly, the audience simply does not care.  For them the equation is very simple: it's good or it's bad.  The reasons why, on either end of the spectrum, simply do not matter to the audience. Some tough lessons at any age, but certainly for a group of high-schoolers.

But they were flawless last night. It was amazing, and what's more, they were calm about it.  I was nervous a bit on their behalf.  Not that they cannot handle the job, far from it; but I wondered, leading into last night's performance, if they would be overly anxious.  Would they not have a good work ethic or attitude towards each other?

But this was the calmest most well-prepared easy-going show they've ever produced.  And it was certainly the highest pressure they've ever had because they know that if they make a mistake once they may be forgiven for it, but if they go out the next week in front the same crowd - huge crowds, by the way, we're talking several thousand people now at these games - and they make a mistake again, even if the crowd loves the CMAS program as a concept, the crowd may start to wonder can they really pull this off?

But CMAS did pull it off.  They did an amazing job last night.  Even managed to avoid the rain. It started to come down just as we were getting all the gear back in. Fortunately that's why they make road cases.

We also had the pleasure of recording the Peoria High School marching band up in CMAS Studio B. What a great group. They were so kind and receptive and appreciative of the opportunity to be recorded by our students.  To get a professional level recording in our studio.  They were just thrilled.  They were really gracious and it really showed the benefits of this kind of musical camaraderie across genres, and more than anything that was really nice to see and it's something that I would like to foster more of and bring in even more schools to do the same.

In the end it was really an exciting night for CMAS and I could not have been more proud.  Last week was tough for the students, and they really were upset; but it turned out they might've done themselves a favor.  They redid their process and that is now going to make every event they do even better.  And if you've ever been to some of their previous events it's hard to imagine how they could improve them.  It was just incredible and I'm so proud of all of them and I just can't wait to get back to it on Monday and see how much further we can push this thing we call music education: CMAS.