Fountain Hill Elementary School

This is the fourth out of five sessions, with some kind of performance down the line to wrap it up. There is some fatigue setting in with the students, especially with the songwriting chores. But, we’re getting there.

I’ve been bringing in a new instrument each time and today I brought in my banjo. We had a great discussion about African drums/roots, and some talk about using a skin head. (ewwww…) But the teacher and I talked about native people harvesting all of an animal in order to survive. Interesting ideas for these kids.

Part of this residency is giving the kids some sense of what I do as a musician. Today, I brought in copies of my Playground CD to give the kids (even though I have no idea if they’ll be able to play it) and discuss how musicians get their music out. We talked about You Tube and other social media and I mentioned radio (again, how foreign that must be to these kids). We looked at the CD and I mentioned how I hired other creative people in the process: musicians, photographers, designer, producer and funders. It was a great exploration.

Before we got into continuing the verse writing, I figured it was time to create a chorus. We talked about how important it was to have something repetitious, give the audience something to do, and, as one girl said, “theme.” Bingo. It’s been running through my mind to have a slow-build chorus, something Tom Paxton has used.

Chorus: I …..    I can be …… I can be anything I want to be.

I figured out a simple melody and we tried it out. I attempted a back and forth call and response (  “I” echoed 3x), I can be (together), and all together on the last one, as well. I tried it out with the girls doing the I and the boys doing the echo. These kids have very little initiative or experience in singing out loud, and with some creative movement/theatrics/emotion. It really never gained steam. Too bad. It’s going to be difficult to get these kids to perform in front of others, and that’s a major part of the final reward for the kids – that they did it!

We finished up the You Tuber,

I use a camera, lights, and a green screen

I’m gonna take my friends to places they’ve never seen

I post vids on my high-tech computer

I’m gonna be a YouTuber.

We started on Music Teacher but things got distracted with the kids close to 5 pm. At least we got another verse, part of another one, and, importantly, got a chorus started.

I chatted with Rachel at the end and we have to figure out how to present the song and the kids, whether in a video, in front of a select audience (things are different these days in the second year of the pandemic), or what. We’ll figure out something.