Who's Teaching Who?

Raise your hand if you’ve ever written a song about peanut butter and boogers.

Singer/songwriter Jenner Fox has, alongside a gaggle of 7-year-olds. These are the stories told in the classroom that is the Sisters Folk Festival’s continuing education program the Americana Song Academy. Last year’s classes took place in late September at the picturesque Caldera Arts Center on the shores of Blue Lake in the Cascade Range.

Northwest musicians Jeremy Elliott, Jenner Fox and Benji Nagel. Credit: Sisters Folk Fesival

“Each year, we invite a handful of performing artists from the upcoming Sisters Folk Festival to teach at a four-day immersive camp called the Americana Song Academy,” says Erin Pihl, SFF Presents’ communication manager. “Over 50 participants of all ages have the opportunity to take masterclasses on songwriting, arranging and singing from professional musicians. Participants receive one-on-one mentoring sessions and share their music in intimate song circles and open mic performances. It’s an immersive creative experience unlike anything else.”

“Between camp programming and impromptu songwriting sessions, we gathered the nine teaching artists at this year’s academy and recorded short interviews,” Pihl continues. “We asked each artist to share their main takeaways from the camp and to discuss their own creative processes before performing original songs.”

The results were documented and shared on the fest’s YouTube page as the 2024 Caldera Sessions. Also serving as the producer of the videos, Pihl says, “In this series we discover that the experience is equally — if not more — inspirational for the instructors. Many of them left describing the experience as ‘transformative’ with a renewed appreciation for their professions. This gratitude is infectious and shines through in every episode.”

Over 50 students of all ages took classes with professional musicians (and performers at the Sisters Folk Festival) at last year’s Americana Song Academy. Credit: Sisters Folk Fesival

“It was so special to see these artists without any of the usual bells and whistles, just them with their raw talent on full display,” Pihl says. “The Cris Jacobs session really stood out because he’s such a dynamic performer usually seen with his band playing loud, blues rockers, but we got to see him completely stripped down showing off his songwriting skills backed by mesmerizing picking on the acoustic guitar.”

“It’s been super inspiring to be here this week and be surrounded by so many people that just love songs for the sake of writing songs and just love music for the intrinsic value that it provides,” Jacobs says during his session. “As professional musicians, we get so caught up in the business of it all that to be surrounded by people that are still so driven and committed to make music just for the joy of it and for the therapy of it, really reminds you of why you do it in the first place.”

Paul McDonald, a first-time instructor, relayed a similar sentiment. “I didn’t quite know what I was walking into, obviously, since it’s my first time here, but it has really been a beautiful experience for me, just meeting all these campers and the other songwriters and artists that are here as instructors,” he says. “It’s reminding me of why I started doing this. You can get so caught up being on the road and doing it full-time, and it can sometimes feel like you’re working a job, because you’re going from point A to point B, and you’ve got to make records and do all the things to kind of keep it moving.”

McDonald “even mentioned that he had reached out to his team while still at Caldera to thank them for pushing him to do the song academy,” Pihl says.

Sisters’ own Benji Nagel of Skillethead joined Jenner Fox and Jeremy Elliott for their session, describing how he’s “blown away every year by… the raw vulnerability that so many of these campers get to experience in a way that they most likely don’t on a regular basis, in regular life. This camp facilitates those kinds of experiences where people can be emotional and can be vulnerable and feel safe and supported and propped up, and everybody’s cheering them on. It’s a very rare and unique thing.”

“Whether you’re an artist that plays 100 days a year, or you’re here and the open mic is the only time you ever perform, it’s like we’re all kind of on this journey at the camp — from like imposter syndrome to belonging, and hopefully we all end at the belonging,” Fox adds.

Just this week, the Folk Fest released its final session — a special episode with Brad Tisdel, its longtime creative director who founded this noteworthy song academy. After booking the festival for years, it was announced in November that Tisdel will have a new role in 2025 as he’s formed a talent buying company, which SFF Presents will hire to coordinate booking for its annual festivals, including Big Ponderoo (June 28 and 29) and Sisters Folk Festival (Sept. 26 to 28). As for the Americana Song Academy, you can now register for the 2025 camp, which will take place on Sept. 22 through 25 at Caldera.