March 20 & 27, 2021 - Lucas Brooker

Lucas Brooker had movie star looks, but he was the most unassuming, guitar player you'd ever meet. He was just moving to L.A. and Jack Aron (suckered) roped him into becoming a staff mentor. Amy had left to pursue her Masters at NYU.

Lucas had played in the pit on "In the Heights" and for the first time, we had someone who could legitimately mentor the guitar playing students. (I still have to look up the strings on a guitar.)

Lucas began to notice (well, we all noticed) that the kids were having difficulties coming up with simple melodies. So this was one of the few times (to this point, I've gotten better) where I let one of the Leadership Team members run the entire lesson... for two weeks in a row.

Even after Lucas departed at the end of the cohort, we continued to use his concept of ask a question and answer it. (Unlike Lucas, I had started getting laughed at for drawing a straight horizontal line through the kids' music when it wasn't going anywhere, and then replacing it with a diagonal line up and diagonal line down.)

Lucas also made incredible progress with one of our long standing students who seemed stuck.

He was great for the program, and we wish he stayed longer.