Summer Camp Rock

Sending the kids away to summer camp used to mean they'd come back with arts and crafts, sunburns and maybe a few insect bites. But as MPB arts reporter Ron Brown reports, the only thing biting kids at "Band Camp" is the music bug.

Sound recorder Mike Iacopelli has ten gold and platinum albums plus a Grammy Award for his work with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and the Four Tops.

This week, Iacopelli is working with Ben Lindsay, Curtis Nunnery, and Orion Griffin. They’re not music superstars; at least not yet. They’re teenagers learning the craft of making and recording music at something called “band camp”, a special one-week class at Delta State University’s Delta Music Institute.

"This is a technical audio class, so we’re discussing audio recording, live sound, we’re going over microphone techniques… how sound works, microphone patterns, microphone types.”

In addition to learning about studio recording techniques, the campers also learn music theory, songwriting, and performance. For most teenagers, summer camp means swimming, hiking and horseback riding outdoors, for students like Ben Lindsey, they can’t compete with drums guitars and mixing boards.

“It’s something that I love to do and I always was told that if you do what you love, you’ll always be happy for the rest of your life.”

Mississippi native Tricia Walker spent 26 years in Nashville working as a singer-songwriter and producer. She’s worked with Shania Twain, Pam Tillis, Patty Loveless and Faith Hill. Now she’s the Executive Director of the Delta Music Institute and an instructor at band camp. And while she says there are a lot of positive parallels between Band Camp the popular movie comedy “School of Rock”, the comparison is not quite appropriate.

“We just don’t want people to think that rock is all we do… one dimensional. That’s a great tag cause that was as great movie, we’re more the school of commercial music, part of the campus and not only do we teach the performing side of it, but the creation of music and certainly the technology all the recording technology that’s going on today.”

The kids have fun in camp, but it’s not all fun and games. They’re learning real world lessons from music professionals who have been out there in the real world and returned to Mississippi to pass along what they know in whirlwhind week of activity.

“These kids, they come in on Sunday, afternoon, and we start Sunday night, and by the end of the week, we will have done a complete recording session with the playing original songs, and cover songs and we’ll also do a live show at the Bologna performing arts center on Saturday night, in one week. It’s amazing.”

This is the Delta Music Institute’s third year holding a band camp, and while there are similar programs elsewhere, no other place in the world can offer what’s found in the delta… a history of where it all began.

“I think we can make a definite case that the roots of all great American music really started here in the Mississippi delta. From the blues and went south to new Orleans and became jazz, and went north to Memphis and Chicago and became rock and roll and R & B.”

All of the students are talented and young and gifted in one way or another when they walk into camp. But when they walk away after the camp concert tomorrow night. Walker says they’ll have more than just new friends and memories of a typical summer teen camp. They’ll have sharper skills to use down the line when opportunity comes knocking.
For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown.