This past week, I was lucky enough to spend time at the University of Northern Iowa at Amp Camp with many other music educators and UNI students. We shared the goal of facilitating an incredible experience for 70 kids ages 9-19 centered around participating in music by means of modern band.

Opportunities for the Amp Campers included:

• Participating in introductory courses on electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, voice, keyboard, and sound
• Participating in deep dives on all the instruments as well as topics like specific genres, stage presence, and marketing
• Forming their own bands with other campers they may or may not already know
• Choosing their own songs to learn and work on as a band
• Choosing which instruments they would like to play/explore
• Writing one original song as a band
• Performing their songs (covers and originals) on stage with professional sound and lighting
• If performing wasn’t what they wanted to do, they could take the tech track and learn about sound and lights all week to then help run it for performances

Meeting Kevin

Amp Camp was established in 2018 by Kevin Droe, Associate Professor of Music Education at UNI. I got to know Kevin through my attendance at the Modern Band Summit, a big modern band conference for music educators all over the country that is put on every summer in Fort Collins, Colorado by Music Will (previously known as Little Kids Rock). I will never forget meeting Kevin for the first time. It was 2024, and I had received an award that paid for my registration and housing at this conference. At that time, I had been teaching for 8 years, but had only had a modern band ensemble for 2 years. I was stoked to attend this conference and go to clinics led by other educators with more experience and success in this approach to music education that I was so deeply interested in and that my students were becoming absolutely obsessed with.

Growing up playing clarinet and then continuing a classical clarinet education at Florida State while I earned my education degree, instruments like electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums were not only far out of my knowledge base, but way out of my comfort zone, as well. With that being said, I became enamored with the electric guitar when I started teaching it in modern band for the first time in 2023. After I took my first Music Will training and decided I wanted to offer modern band as a class, I went to my principal and told her of my big hopes for the school year and that I would need a ton of modern band instruments, amps, and sound equipment to get started. Shout out to Kristin Blathras — I feel like most administrators twitch at the thought of the sounds of a rock band reverberating throughout a school, but she became just as excited as I was about what this might mean for students and their ability to participate in music in a way that’s meaningful for them. When I got everything, I spent hours on the electric guitars, changing and experimenting with the amp sounds, playing and singing songs that I loved to listen to, and pretending I was a total rock star like the ones whose shows I frequent here in Chicago.

Fast-forward to the Modern Band Summit in 2024, where upon registration you are asked if you would like to perform in a band with other people from a similar region as you. All I could think of was how nervous I got playing clarinet in front of anyone… ever. So nervous that my soft palate would give way, I would shake, and I really wouldn’t be able to play anything like I was able to in the practice room. I internalized that maybe I just hated performing — that it wasn’t for me. I had accepted it. Yet when this question came up… something led me to choose the option: “Yes! Put me in a band.”

Lucky for me, I ended up in a band that Kevin was asked to organize, and my self-conception was turned on its head. I requested and was put on guitar for “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger and “What I Like About You” by The Romantics, and I practiced like I used to practice my clarinet: until I felt incapable of making mistakes. I still remember walking to that first rehearsal in Colorado with my band. I was so nervous. Shaking. Unable to sleep the night before. I felt like a fraud. I wasn’t a guitarist, and now I was going to be in a band and UP ON A STAGE PLUGGED INTO AN AMPLIFIER playing guitar. What was I doing?! I wondered if it was too late to drop out, since there were other guitarists in the band, as well. I walked into the rehearsal room, and Kevin walked over to me with a huge smile on his face and shook my hand. He told me how excited he was that I was there and how much of a blast we were going to have in this band. I was introduced to other people in the band, many of whom were returning members; everyone was so kind and welcoming and excited to be there. I immediately felt at ease. I will always remember the feeling I had after we rehearsed that first time. As soon as we started playing, Kevin started dancing around with a tambourine, an even bigger smile across his face now, singing backup harmonies into no microphone. Jon (the other guitarist) and I made up choreography to do while playing. The whole band looked at each other, jumped around, and laughed all throughout playing together. There was no emphasis on playing the exact voicings in the tab that I had labored over, no talk of how the rhythms we chose were not identical to the ones in the song. We stuck to the general form, played the same chords, and the rest we made up as we went as a group. I felt it then: this was my place. My nerves melted away and I became addicted. All I wanted to do was play music with this band! Shelley, Kevin’s wife, introduced herself to me after rehearsal. She was so warm and made a point to tell me that she really appreciated my energy — I felt so included and valued in this group.

My 3rd year at Modern Band Summit just came and went this past July, and I was in Kevin’s band for the third time. Each year, the feeling of belonging in that setting has deepened for me, and Kevin’s energy and passion for being there seems to grow in tandem.

The Amp Camp Experience

This brings me back to Amp Camp, where Kevin has created an environment for people as young as 9 years old to experience what I was able to experience for the first time at 30 years old. I was taken by many aspects of how it was run. First, we performed as a staff each day. The first day, the whole staff was on stage performing for the campers. We were in an auditorium, but the campers came to the edge of the stage in front of the chairs and jumped and clapped and moshed like it was a real rock show! Knowing Kevin, I knew this was an intentional decision established in the camp culture in years past. It turns out, campers had been actually trained on kind and safe moshing, and although a collection of pre-teens and teens in a small space jumping around and bumping into each other might sound like a recipe for disaster, there was never a problem. I think the campers felt trusted (in every other environment, they’re constantly being told “keep your hands to yourself” or “stop – someone’s going to get hurt”), and because they felt trusted, they were sure to take care of those around them so they would continue to be trusted. The staff was also split into smaller staff bands that performed a couple more songs, modeling stage presence and performance decisions for these campers who would perform their songs at the end of the week. We jumped in sync, pumped our fists, held the mic to the mosh pit of campers for them to sing back to us, moved around the stage, interacted with our bandmates as we played, and clapped our hands over our heads. I, again, felt that thrill of performing, of connecting with my fellow bandmates, but also with the audience who was right there with us, singing and dancing and enjoying being in the music as one collective group of human beings.

After the intro sessions on each instrument and sound, campers gather into the auditorium and separate into bands so that they can write down their general genre/artist interests to help pair them with a coach that has similar interests/knowledge. Somehow, every person gets included in a band pretty seamlessly whether they know many people or nobody else, and campers are eager to offer space in their bands to those who need it. Ages and ability levels are all mixed together in these bands. Each band is then assigned to coaches, and throughout rehearsals they choose which songs they would like to cover as well as compose an original song. The whole process is very student-led and person-centered. The campers have all the power and responsibility, and the coaches are there to facilitate and guide rather than choose and direct.

Each day, the camp was open an hour before and after official “start” and “end” times for campers to jam and practice. Many students took these opportunities to play more with their friends before the days’ rehearsals and activities started. They used the rooms that we used for individual band rehearsals in the music building at these times. Although there were coaches on duty at this time to monitor, there was not always an adult in every room the campers were in at all times. As a public school teacher, I have to say that alarm bells went off in my head. I am not allowed to leave a room of students with no other adult in there. It’s unheard of. When I came into the room I was doing band rehearsals in, all of the equipment was being used by campers of all ages and was rearranged throughout the room. Again, my teacher brain was wondering what was going to be broken or how much of a mess the room was going to be come time to start rehearsing that day. Although I consider myself a teacher that gives a lot of freedom in my classroom and a huge proponent of organized chaos, I began to get worried that without someone to hold these campers accountable for reassembling the room, I would walk into a huge mess to clean up later. However, I came back to start rehearsal with my young band to find that the room was probably in better shape than it had been before the morning jam session. All the amps were off. The cables were safely draped on chairs so that they didn’t get stepped on. The gear had found its way back to the area of the room it started in. Nothing was broken. Again, I marveled at the trust that was put in these campers, and how much they absolutely thrived under it. They care so much about music and participating in it both individually and together, and so they took this trust and they showed us that they not only could be trusted, but deserved that trust. I think it must feel like a mutual valuing: they are valued enough to be trusted to be checked in on every so often rather than loomed over, and so they value the equipment and treat the space with so much care.

Throughout performing together, I could feel the staff get closer, too. There were no forced ice-breakers where you share 2 truths and a lie about yourself and continuously look at your watch, pining for lunch. We were doing something vulnerable on that stage together, multiple times, and although we weren’t speaking words, we were connecting and learning about each other. I watched this happen with the camper bands, too. Campers who didn’t know each other played music together, made decisions together, and shared what they would like to do and what was important to them to experience. They began to sit with each other during lunch, laughing and talking and sharing as though they had known each other for much longer than a couple of days. During recess, performances, and free time at the camp, they were inseparable. I am moved at how unifying music is. This week, I watched it surpass ages, skill levels, interests, and differences, while simultaneously allowing people to express those interests and differences in a way that others will listen to.

When it came to the performances, I was moved to tears a handful of times. There were bands performing from 6-9pm, and watching the campers on that stage filled my heart with so much joy and love. I watched those performers do what they had seen us do as a staff on stage: jump and clap and move and fist pump and smile and dance. The mosh pit was right there with them, singing and moving and supporting and encouraging. The energy in that room was its own organism, both unique to that time, place, and group of people, yet universal in that this was the same feeling of total fullness and fulfillment that I feel each time I perform or get to be in the crowd for any performance of this kind. I cried when a band forgot their words on stage, and the crowd sang the words back at them so loudly and passionately that the band not only was able to find their spot together again, but obviously felt so supported that they really went for it with all they had when they got to the chorus. Those performers’ giant grins and eye contact with the crowd are forever seared into my memory. It was almost as if the band was saying, “Thank you for the unwavering support through a spot where we needed it – here’s all the vulnerability and heart we can muster, just for you.”

At Amp Camp, everyone can be fully themselves, however it may look or feel that day, and not only be accepted for that, but be celebrated for it. The camp is geared towards campers and facilitating an unforgettable musical experience for them, but what I felt the camp offered was even more than that. An emotional growth experience for all involved, kids and adults alike — one of absolute safety and fulfillment, of autonomy, power, and trust, of compassion and teamwork, and of connection and love.