Camp Jam: A Camp For Kids Who Love Music

Cleveland

Camp Jam: A Camp For Kids Who Love Music

By Scott Newell

SOUTH EUCLID -- Forget the summer camp where kids sit around the campfire singing "Kumbaya" on a folk guitar. Cleveland rocks, and there's a new camp here, where the kids play music, a little more on the Metallica side.

Some hope it's the countdown to Stardom. Lily Goldfarb says she "want[s] to be on the cover of Rolling Stone with [her] band."Some just want to have fun. "I would like not to go totally professional, but I'd like to play out live someday," says Martin Millonzi.

Welcome to Camp Jam, cofounded by former .38 Special guitarist Jeff Carlisi. "98-percent of these kids have been bedroom players, they've never had the experience of being in a band," Carlisi says. At Camp Jam, the kids meet musicians with similar tastes. And with the encouragement of counselors like Mike Grant, soon their bass is in lockstep with the beat.

Camp Jam is a great place to pick up a couple of riffs. But it's not just about learning music. "It's really about teamwork. And team building," Carlisi says. And that teamwork may be even more important in a band than on, say, a sports team. "If you're in a band, you count to four and the game begins. It's only a four or five minute game...if anybody drops the ball in that four or five minutes, the entire team loses," Carlisi says.

They learn to take suggestions. And something they learn here could help them make it to the big stage. "One day if they get to that point, they can say, hey I went to this Camp Jam where this guy told me something," Carlisi jokes.

Rock on.

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