LITTLE KIDS ROCK

Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

Bonnie Raitt told the kids at Spring Valley Elementary about learning guitar when she was 8 years old. Her hands weren’t large enough to span the fretboard and make an F chord, so she learned to do it with her thumb.

“Tell Bonnie what we call the F chord,” said their guitar teacher, Laura Chinn-Smoot.

“The ouch chord,” a couple of dozen young public school guitar students said in unison.

Raitt inveigled her old pal Tom Waits to join her on piano and sing a duet of “Sweet and Shiny Eyes,” a song they knew from touring together a few years back when Jerry Ford was still president. Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, currently playing with Ozzy Osbourne, picked up his bass, and Norton Buffalo added a little harmonica.

They were all sitting in a circle in the Russian Hill school cafeteria Tuesday afternoon, swapping songs with the music students, beneficiaries of a program called Little Kids Rock that brings music instruction to elementary schools in four states. While TV news, radio reporters and photographers recorded the session, Little Kids Rock Executive Director David Wish, a former Redwood City second-grade teacher, led the second-, third-, fourth- and fifth- graders in writing a song, while the professional rock musicians backed them up.

With the hit film “School of Rock” giving the idea of grade schoolers playing music a little precious currency, Wish pulled together some of his celebrity supporters to capitalize on his opportunity. Wish, frustrated with the lack of musical education in the school’s official curriculum, started giving free after-school guitar lessons to Redwood City students in 1996, and the Little Kids Rock idea grew from there. For the past two years, he has devoted full time to his burgeoning nonprofit. He puts out a CD every year of songs written and performed by the Little Kids Rock youngsters.

The musicians listened and applauded as the students performed a few songs, the young guitarists strumming strongly, the voices melding in that way only grade school choral groups can. When Raitt and Buffalo started jamming a shuffle, Wish grabbed a guitar and walked around showing the kids what chords to play.

The musicians all talked about how they started playing music and offered the students advice. Buffalo said his father played harmonica and his mother was a singer. Newsted, who got his first guitar for Christmas at age 9, switched to playing bass after he saw Kiss. He also described the kind of heavy metal he plays as “lots of real loud ouch chords.”

Newsted is no stranger to the Little Kids Rock program. Last April, he hosted a large group of students at a recording session at the Plant Studio in Sausalito, where he produced rock band Voivod performing one of the songs from the Little Kids Rock CDs.

Austin Willacy of hip-hop a cappella group the House Jacks encouraged the students to play instruments. “I have learned that if you sing and don’t play in a band, you don’t get heard,” he said.

Tom Waits allowed that trumpet was his first instrument and that playing bugle for the Cub Scouts was his first gig. He also recalled his first piano, a trashed upright that had been left out in the rain and was given to him even though many of the keys no longer worked.

“I was fine with that, though,” he said. “I just played the ones that were working. I used to make up little songs when I was angry or sad. I’m still doing that.”

Waits, who has children of his own, told the kids he didn’t remember how many movies he made. “I write songs for movies, too,” he said. “They’re supposed to make the movies better, but sometimes you just can’t save them.”

Raitt also encouraged the students to take lessons and do the practice. “I’m real glad I took five years of piano lessons,” she said. “Look what happened — I don’t have to work a regular job.”

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Source: © Copyright SFGate

ROLL OVER, BEETHOVEN — THESE LITTLE KIDS WANT TO ROCK OUT

Delfin Vigil – Sunday, March 20, 2005

Some day the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame may need to add a new wing – – for the Redwood City sound.

It all started in 1996, when David Wish, a frustrated second-grade teacher at Hawes Elementary School in Redwood City, decided to teach schoolchildren how to play music.

What began as a weekly after-school guitar class for his second-graders quickly expanded to sessions every day. Soon it seemed nearly every kid in the school wanted to pick up an instrument.

Nearly 10 years later, Wish is the director of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that brings free music lessons and instruments to more than 4,000 students in low-income areas in four states. By next year, Little Kids Rock hopes to release a CD of songs written by students and recorded and performed by celebrity musicians such as Tom Waits, Norton Buffalo and members of Metallica, all of whom have appeared at schools and jammed with the kids.

Wish, who now lives in New Jersey, is having a Bay Area homecoming party for Little Kids Rock and a celebration of Music in Our Schools Month on Wednesday at the Mighty club in San Francisco, headlined by ’70s soap star- turned-rocker Rick Springfield.

Thanks to stars like Springfield, who donate their time and money, Little Kids Rock expects to double the number of participating students by next year.

“Back in Redwood City in 1996, we maxed out on instruments for the kids pretty quickly,” says Wish, a jazz guitarist. “Then Carlos Santana gave us a $5,000 Milagro grant. It seemed like all the money in the world, and I thought we’d never have to buy guitars again.”

Wish has since expanded the program to teaching drums, bass and keyboards. The reasons, he says, are obvious.

“If you took a Martian from outer space and had him listen to the radio and asked him what kind of music children are learning to play in schools, he’d tell you bass, keyboards, drums and guitar, right? But he’d be wrong. So where are all these kids who grow up to play that kind of music getting their musical education?”

Wish says he uses the internationally known Suzuki Method, which he blends with the Rolling Stones and Dr. Seuss.

“The Suzuki Method is a set of methodologies that says anyone and everyone can play music if taught properly — by ear, not by reading,” Wish says. “Suzuki says that classical music is not the domain of the gifted. Little Kids Rock does the same thing, but is open to pop music — punk, heavy metal, folk, whatever. It’s still rock ‘n’ roll to me.”

Rather than picking up chords from their older siblings or copying riffs from the dude at the guitar shop, kids ought to be learning popular music in school, Wish says.

“California is ranked last for access to arts education,” he says. “Think about that. You’re talking states like … well, let’s just say states with far fewer resources trounce California in musical education.”

Besides the obvious budget cuts, Wish believes that a big reason kids don’t learn music in school is because they associate “educational” music — classical and marching — as being kind of boring.

“I believe it’s better to let them get to the good stuff first, as opposed to being confined to 17 years of classical piano,” Wish says.

So when students say they want to learn how to play Shaggy, Ricky Martin or Britney Spears, Wish makes a trip to iTunes and invariably comes back with just three necessary chords.

“Take Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” Wish says, explaining his argument against the few who frown upon his approach. “It’s two chords: D and A. Do you realize how many songs are structured around only D and A? When you teach a kid how to play a Selena song that is D and A, you’re also teaching them to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. You’re teaching them to play. Period.”

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LITTLE KIDS ROCK: The next benefit, starring Rick Springfield, takes place from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Mighty, 119 Utah St., San Francisco. 100. (973) 746-8248, www.littlekidsrock.org.

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