Robinson sings the blues with GMS students

Assisting with the composition of a song verse, musician Tad Robinson helps Greencastle Middle School students Arial Hollingsworth, Natasha Hollingsworth and Jenna Mills tap into their inner songwriters. Robinson was at GMS through The Castle program, which integrates the arts into other parts of the curriculum.

Jimi Hendrix once said, "Blues is easy to play but hard to feel."

In that case, some Greencastle Middle School students were busy trying to learn the hard part from a local bluesman recently.

Tad Robinson spent a day writing blues songs with students from the classes of Suzanne Funk, Dawn Tucker and Amy Howard.

Robinson's lesson, made possible by The Castle program, seemed to echo the Hendrix theory -- the form of blues music is simple enough, but really getting to the root of the feelings is a bit tougher.

He introduced one of the most basic elements of blues -- the AAB form, in which a line is repeated twice before a resolution is revealed. Robinson demonstrated the form by performing the Albert Collins song "If Trouble was Money."

If trouble was money, I'd swear I'd be a millionaire

If worries was dollar bills

I'd buy the whole world and have money to spare

"It's causing a lot of tension in the listener," Robinson said of the "A" lines. "They want to know the punch line, what's going to happen."

Digging deeper, they discussed the emotions of the blues. Words like trouble, worries, pain, alone, trapped and broke seem to come up over and over again.

"Blues seeks to get those things out so we can feel better about them," Robinson said. "This music that came up the Mississippi was a gift to the world and now it's played all over the world."

In a few short minutes, the kids had discussed poetry forms and the feelings behind the writing and got a musical history lesson. The trick was, it all seemed more like fun than it did schoolwork.

"This is a really good way to get them into the content of whatever they're learning about," Castle founder Beth Benedix said.

In this case, it was part of the students' unit on "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." Music served as a lens through which to view the culture of Mississippi River corridor that brought us both blues and Mark Twain's writings.

Such an outside-the-box approach to the curriculum is one of the basic goals of The Castle program, which seeks to invigorate the curriculum through such an integrated-arts approach.

The program utilizes artists and other volunteers to teach the students by means of visual arts, movement, music, theater and writing. The hope is to nurture self-expression and encourage developmental skills for lifelong learning.

With the help of donors such as Rotary, the United Way, the Putnam County Community Foundation, Old National and Walmart, the Castle has been able to bring in people like Robinson, Bobbie Lancaster and T.J. Tincher to integrate the arts into the curriculum.

"Our mission is to reinvigorate the curriculum, boost morale,' Benedix said.

So far, the program has served students at Greencastle Middle School and Fillmore Elementary School, with plans to expand into other schools and grade levels.

Having watched the program at work in her English classes, Funk was effusive in her praise.

"There's no way I could spend the time bringing people into the classroom like they have," Funk said. "My students have done so much writing this year and working together. It's been much more natural, more organic -- and the kids have enjoyed it."

The energy of volunteers like Robinson has not hurt that effort a bit.

"Here is the assignment," the bluesman said with a grin, "and it's a fun assignment."

Starting with a refrain that Robinson composed on the spot, the kids wrote their own verses to a blues song about the recent Boston Marathon bombings.

Trouble, trouble, trouble in old Boston town

But tragedy was all they found

After introducing the refrain, Robinson and retired GMS teacher and Castle coordinator (and folksinger) Mike Van Rensselaer, worked their way around the room, helping the kids with form, with rhymes, with tapping just the right emotions.

The end result was several student-penned verses to the song such as this:

I'm sad, yeah, I'm sad, but I'm also mad inside

So many people hurt

When they crossed that finish line

"This is incredible. Wow," Robinson said of the crop of verses. "Great writing. Thank you, folks."

He finished each class by singing and playing the song they had worked together to compose. It's the payoff moment that a teacher would struggle to pull off without outside help.

"Now the kids can say, 'My song's so good that Tad Robinson would sing it,'" Benedix said.

Anyone who would like to learn more about The Castle program may contact Benedix at beth@castlearts.net or visit www.castlearts.net.