Let There Be Rock Schools - Georgia in Gainesville is not an ordinary music school. It brands itself as more of a rock & roll community center, combining lessons with an accepting place for music lovers of all ages.
"I've kind of created something that I wish I had when I was growing up and playing music," Owner Kyle Sanders said. "Somewhere to go and basically meet other people that were like me. Cause a lot of kids think there's nobody like them around, think they're different, and everybody in school is different than them. This is a place where a lot of people have met, started playing music together, where I think they probably never would have crossed paths before."
Operating on Main Street, just off the Gainesville Square, Sanders said he opened the school two years ago after a bandmate, Vinnie Paul, passed away. He had seen a similar type of rock school in Maryland, run by a friend, and had wanted to recreate it in Georgia.
"Every time we would play at this festival in Virginia, he would bring student bands out and they would open up the show and I just thought that was the coolest thing," said Sanders. "These kids are opening up for huge bands, playing like big festival style shows in front of a lot of people ... and it's like I'd love to do something like this in Georgia but I'm just super busy and you know with touring we're only home for four to six weeks at a time, and it just wasn't, I never had the time to do it."
But when Paul passed, Sanders took that as a sign to do more.
"It was awful, you know, an awful time, everything just came to a standstill," said Sanders. "And I just realized that was the time to do this because I'd have something positive to focus on and something to keep moving forward and just stay positive about everything, and do something to kind of give back but still do something musically."
The school has lessons for bass, drums, guitar, vocals, and keyboards, as well as a few other instruments. Sanders said he always tries to find instructors when people come to him with different instruments, like the ukelele. The school also forms student bands based on skill level.
Sanders is no ordinary music teacher. A bona fide rock musician, he plays bass in the band HELLYEAH, and has a long history of playing music, including in metal and rock bands Skrew, Medication, Bloodsimple, and MonstrO.
While the music school has a hard rock vibe, Sanders said anyone who wants to learn how to play an instrument or tune up their vocal skills is welcome in the space. So are the parents of students learning how to rock out.
"Some of the parents come in they're like, 'yeah, I used to play guitar but you know I got busy as well.' You're never too old, we're never too late," said Sanders. "For a lot of the adult students it's almost like therapy, you know, it's like a getting away from everything."
While the music school/community center is also a space for those who just want to learn for their own satisfaction or perfect their art, Sanders said they look to group students together by skill and allow them to perform live at varying concerts.
"We have school shows, about every three to four months," said Sanders, though he said this past year it was difficult to find places to play. They put on a few parking lot shows to work around COVID-19, and have also performed on the downtown Gainesville Square as openers for bands playing there.
"Different opportunities pop up, if the Farmer's Market wants us to play, all kinds of people want student bands to come out and play. There's all kinds of opportunities for it."
Their youngest bandmate is around 11 years old, and he's also looking to group adults together to play gigs.
But Sanders thinks it's more than just getting the power of music flowing for his students, it's also about supercharging the community with some rock music.
"It's almost like bringing music back to Gainesville, because... it's like there was a, like a local venue in town that's closed down, and then there's no like rehearsal spaces around there's really not many venues for bands to play," said Sanders. "I've lived here about four years, and then a lot of my instructors have been here for their whole life, and they're like, "yeah, there used to be a music scene here and then things started closing down and they're just the scene was dead,' so it's almost like we're bringing back music to Gainesville.
"So somewhere, where just a lot of kids are just happy to have a place like this to come learn and it's really, you can see them. You can see the impact that it's having like it's starting to grow and the words getting out and more people want to play in bands and, you know, hopefully just bring music back."
