The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has expanded its Words & Music program with a new online video series, which partners four teenage songwriters with professional songwriters. Tenille Townes, Caitlyn Smith, Shannon Sanders, and Cameron Bedell are the songwriting mentors in the first five episodes of Words & Music: Journey of a Song. The debut episode will launch on Wednesday (December 13).
Videos by American Songwriter
The weekly series follows each student as they workshop songs, write with their songwriting mentors, record the song, and reinvent it for a performance. Each episode will be available on the museum’s YouTube channel and website.
“Through Words & Music: Journey of a Song, students were given the unique opportunity to expand their skills, collaborate with professionals and learn to stay true to their own creative voices,” said Katie Palmer, the museum’s senior director of education and community engagement, in a press release. “We hope the series will encourage youth and families—and anyone who has not previously tried songwriting—to experience it.”
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According to a release, the “immersive experience” was designed by museum educators and serves as “an extension of the museum’s flagship education program, Words & Music.” More than 10,000 students participate annually in the Words & Music program, which launched in 1979 and teams students with professional songwriters for a performance workshop.
Country singer/songwriter Townes teamed with Abby Whitman, a then-senior at Lipscomb Academy, to write a song together. Their filmed writing session will debut on December 13. Townes tells American Songwriter it felt “so important and inspiring” to be involved with Words & Music: Journey of a Song.
“You know that whatever [the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s] fingerprint is part of is going to be something that’s going to continue the legacy of people’s stories and of music in general,” Townes tells American Songwriter. “I got really excited this time because it was the first time that they were diving into showing what’s behind the curtain of how a song actually gets made. To get to do that through the eyes of four different teenagers was really cool, to get to be on the level of figuring out how a song is made.
“I’ve never written a song in front of a camera before, to be honest, so it was a little terrifying,” she adds. “These kids are so brave. Songwriting, it takes such a huge amount of courage, I think, to be able to step into a room with someone you’ve never met before and be able to tell them something that’s pulling at your heart and walk out of the room however many hours later with something that wasn’t in the world before. At a base level, it takes a lot of courage and then as we were documenting this, I was really in awe.”
Words & Music: Journey of a Song was filmed and edited by the museum’s creative team. The episodes will run on December 13, December 20, December 27, January 3, and January 10. The final episode features all four students performing their songs. Watch a preview of the new online video series below.
Courtesy: Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
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