Industry called on to help create music center, vocational school for disadvantaged youth in Phoenix — and beyond.
Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Foundation (SRF), a Christian nonprofit Arizona Corporation he formed with Chuck Savale in 1995 dedicated to teenagers and children in need, has long held popular events like the Christmas Pudding Concerts and celebrity golf tournaments to raise money and awareness for their cause. Now they announce their most ambitious goal yet: a 29,000-square-foot center where troubled youth can learn everything about the music industry, including what it takes to run a concert tour.
David Stern of Precise Corporate Staging has been active in supplying sound and lights for the various events and will be heavily in-volved in creating the center. “My wife and I, who own Precise, got involved with SRF because we thought it was a great cause and a great opportunity to give back to the community,” he says. “We’ve donated all the labor and equipment for all the fund-raising events.” The events always bring in big names, and Meatloaf, Ted Nugent, the Tubes, Jack Black and Sinbad had all typically stepped up and per-formed at the Christmas Pudding shows. But building the center is a much larger proposition.
The center will be for teens 13 to 18, and music and dance lessons will be offered. There will be two recording studios, and it will also be a vocational school for training in the live event industry. “We’ll point out that to get the five Rolling Stones’ members on stage, it takes 125 people,” Stern says. “They will learn to design lights, fly trusses, strike sets — and we’ll call on manufacturers to come in and do tech training with them.” Stern is already on board to help build the courses and will be one of the teachers. He’s also already looking forward to using the Center as a recruiting source for future employees.
Before that, they are calling on manufacturers to donate all that will be needed to get this center running. Among those who have al-ready stepped up are Barco, L-ACOUSTICS, Martin Professional and Color Kinetics. Others, including PLSN, FOH and Stage Directions publisher Terry Lowe, are also involved. They need a lot more though and, during the coming year, will reach out to instrument and in-dustry-related equipment manufacturers in particular.
“We look at it as we’ve been blessed with success, and my wife and I felt this cause helps our industry because it’ll be creating future talent out of kids who need a chance. If you have ever talked to Alice about it, he’s especially passionate about these kids who come from broken homes, with a brother in a gang, dad not around — where are they going to go? What are they going to do? This will give them an opportunity to give them a free education and a way to make a living.”
After building this center, they are looking to build additional ones. The second one is already slated for Detroit. “We hope to build a prototype so that every city can have one.”
“We wanted to find a need that wasn’t being filled, and that’s how we came up with the idea of a teen center,” says Savale, who is SRF’s executive director. “There’s no real model for this. There are plenty of organizations like the Boys Club and the YMCA, but they tend to be mostly for younger kids. Once the kids are in junior high, those places tend to not be interested in them as much.”
Savale says that their research for this project yielded some surprises. One is that the kids wanted adults to be there, likely because they are lacking adult interaction in their home. Another is they wanted available babysitting, as many of these teens are already single parents. Consequently, some childcare is worked into the plan so that parents can study, do homework or participate in workshops.
“Alice will be bringing in pros to do workshops, and we’ll be doing some live feeds from around the country.” Ground will be broken for the center in February, but there is a lot of work to do before then. “We have two things going on right now, a capital campaign to raise money for the overall budget, to allow us to put the walls up, and then building relationships with manufacturers so we can get eve-rything donated — down to the drum sets and guitar strings.”
The needs are great, but the stakes are high. “If we can save one kid, then we’re making all the difference in the world,” says Stern.
For more information or to get involved, go to www.srfrock.org, or e-mail Savale at Chuck@srfrock.org or call 1.888.97ALICE (1.800.972.5423).
