Meeting up and making music together is an ancient tradition among music nerds. These jam sessions are the center of any healthy musical community, giving kids an opportunity to develop their skills in a fun environment. CHS sophomore Esh Schaden has taken it upon himself to create this space for the local community by leading jam sessions at the Neutral Zone downtown. Since its founding last year, the weekly meetup has been helping high schoolers become better musicians, bandmates and people.
The jam session begins after school every Wednesday. Teens with guitars on their backs or drum sticks in their bags trickle into the Neutral Zone. Before anything is played, there’s a long list of chores to be ticked off: mics have to be checked, wires have to be routed, keyboards have to be set up. Along with Schaden, there are two adults responsible for ensuring every session happens successfully. Once all the instruments are plugged into the correct places, the real session can finally get started.
What happens next varies, but generally looks somewhere between a well-oiled writing session and free-for-all instrumental chaos. Reading the room and creating a plan for the day that will leave everybody satisfied is an important part of Schaden’s job. However, he is cautious to maintain the sense of independence of the session, which he sees as an essential piece of keeping things fun and productive.
“My role is partly just to be just a collaborative musician in the group, but also to bring people back together and to help kids learn things,” Schaden said. “I think that sort of what I do is just ask everyone what they want to do and bring it together. If things are falling apart, it’s just covers, and if people are being more cooperative, we can move towards writing, and we can move towards including more people in more ways.”
While commitment and energy from the youth make up the foundation, sometimes the sessions need help from more seasoned sources. Fortunately Jordan Otto and Jhordan Wynne, the only adults involved, are more than happy to share their knowledge when needed. For them, the jam session is just as much an opportunity to help teenagers grow and learn as it is to make music.
“We help everybody find a part that works for them so that we can have a good time making music. The whole goal of this is to be accessible to any teen that’s in the space that wants to join us,” Otto said. “It’s important to do that early in your music career. The younger you are when you start getting comfortable playing with musicians you don’t normally play with, the more time you have to get good at that. And then it will make you more marketable, more approachable.”
Otto strongly believes that making music can be a source of fulfillment and growth for anyone. The weekly jam sessions are living proof of that fact. Each meeting demonstrates that young people, even with limited experience, can come together and create something special. Every Wednesday evening, as amps are packed away and wires unplugged, there is a feeling of pride. Pride, because if only for a few hours every person in that room had united to form something bigger than themselves.
