Young aspiring musicians and songwriters in Hays County will have the chance to work on their songs and find a mentor at a camp being held later this month in Buda.
Campers ages 10-18 taking part in the Young Songwriters’ Workshop June 25-29 will spend about three hours a day working on their original material and hearing from established Texas songwriters about their writing process and methods, Director Jason Wooley said.
In its fifth year, the Young Songwriters’ Workshop will relocate from its previous home at Cheatham Street Warehouse to Buck’s Backyard in Buda. A performance by campers at the end of the week will be a part of Bigfest, a three-day charity event raising money for nonprofit School Fuel. The group distributes bagged lunches at local San Marcos schools to try to end food insecurity among students.
According to Wooley, each day of the camp kids will have access to between two and four working Texas songwriters who can serve as mentors to them.
“Our guests will work with the kids and workshop their songs,” Wooley said. “Anything from helping out with a lyric there, or helping them with chord progression. The main idea is to interact with working musicians and workshopping original material for students of all levels,” he said.
Sami Serrano is a young Texas musician who performs live in San Marcos and Austin. She took part in one of the first Young Songwriters’ Workshops as a camper, and will be back this month to mentor students in the same position she was.
“The program gave me structure,” Serrano said. “I wasn’t sure of what I was doing, really. I knew how songs sounded, but once I went to the camp they guided me on what a chorus and a verse were and rhyming patterns and methods to use if you’re telling a story.”
Learning to write a song is important to continue the Texas music tradition, she said, but can also help a songwriter cope with hard times.
“Songwriting is a really good way to express yourself,” Serrano said. “You can turn whatever you’re going through into something beautiful.”
If nothing else, Wooley hopes students leave understanding there is no right way, necessarily, to approach songwriting, which means there’s no wrong way to do it, either, he said.
“I hope my students come away thinking instead of ‘I could be a songwriter,’ that ‘I am a songwriter. I just have to workshop and work on my craft,’” Wooley said.
For more information about the Young Songwriters’ Workshop, visit bigfestmusic.org/young-songwriters-workshop.
