photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Americana Music Academy is pictured at its current home at 1419 Massachusetts St. Friday, Oct. 7, 2022.

A fixture of Lawrence’s local music scene, Americana Music Academy, is gearing up to celebrate a milestone this week — 20 years since its founding.

The academy is one of just a handful of nonprofit organizations dedicated to teaching and promoting American roots music and its influences across the country. Lawrence’s academy offers private and group lessons, hosts jam sessions and other live music events, and offers a scholarship program for students who’d otherwise not be capable of pursuing music instruction.

A pair of events are set to take place later this week to mark the occasion. First, a 20th anniversary celebration will take place from 6:30 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, at Liberty Hall. It’ll feature a laundry list of musicians: the Alferd Packer Memorial String Band, the Breezedale Trio, Delaney MacFarland, Easy G and the Blue Notes, Matthew Mulnix, Michael Paull, Smoke Damage, and Aila Glendenning.

The next day, Friday, Oct. 14, at 8 p.m., Americana Music Academy founder Thomas Alexander will return to Lawrence to host a late-night blues jam session at the academy, 1419 Massachusetts St.

The event at Liberty Hall is free, but all proceeds from a suggested $25 donation will go toward the academy’s new Home for the Future fund. The nonprofit’s new executive director, Christy Miller, told the Journal-World the fund is intended to help purchase property somewhere down the line.

“It has long been the dream of the folks affiliated with Americana since its founding, board members and everyone along the way, how wonderful it would be for us to own our own property,” Miller said.

Miller added that won’t be a short-term goal, noting that the academy is pretty happy with its current location and would need to seek matching funds to pair with donations to be able to reasonably afford to move.

photo by: Pete Romano

From left to right, Jenn Thomas, former Americana Music Academy director Rachel Black, Michael Paull and Mary Conn play at the academy’s annual holiday show in 2017. Paull is set to perform during the nonprofit’s 20th anniversary celebration later this week.

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Though Miller’s predecessor, Max Paley, just left the position at the end of August for a job with Kansas Public Radio, he’s still contracting with the nonprofit to coordinate the music for Thursday night’s celebration.

Paley has been involved with the nonprofit almost from its start, starting with playing in jam sessions around 2002. He started teaching mandolin there in 2006 while in college, then left for Denver for about 11 years before returning to Lawrence near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paley took over the executive director role in September of 2020, which he told the Journal-World was a challenge because the pandemic had caused operations to go fully remote. He said he’s hoping that elements of the upcoming events like Alexander’s return to Lawrence will be a draw for folks who haven’t been as active in the academy for a while.

“We’re kind of hoping that this event not only celebrates 20 years, but sort of also reintroduces Americana to the community and allows us to triumphantly say ‘We survived, and we’re still here,'” Paley said. “Twenty years has been great, and we’ll be here for the next 20. And hopefully, much longer than that moving forward.”

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Alexander started Americana Music Academy in August of 2001 as a gathering place for musicians, artists, teachers and learners. By January of the next year, the academy was offering its first classes.

photo by: Pete Romano

Thom Alexander, the founder of Americana Music Academy, plays at the end of one of the nonprofit’s holiday shows. Alexander founded the academy in 2001.

Starting the nonprofit in the first place was a decision Alexander told the Journal-World he made based on a life experience of his own. Right after graduating high school in California, where he grew up, Alexander worked for a summer at a similar nonprofit in San Francisco called Blue Bear Waltzes School of Music. That experience left him impressed, enough so that his interest in starting something similar hadn’t waned even years after he and his family moved to Lawrence in 1993.

“It just occurred to me, here are all of these musicians in Lawrence that had all these connections all over the country and all over the world, and we didn’t have a central point,” Alexander said. “There was not a place where local musicians and regional musicians and national musicians could come together and work together.”

So Alexander made one himself, and he quickly assembled an early teaching roster packed with local musicians. There was drum teacher Charles Tennyson LeMaster, who died in 2007, and local bass player Stan Sheldon. Brothers Rick and Eddie Faris also taught some classes; Rick now fronts the Faris Brothers band, and Eddie in recent years has spent time performing with bluegrass band Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Another short-term volunteer offered music therapy to kids in the Lawrence school district thanks to grant funding.

The academy started out at the corner of Eighth and New Hampshire streets, right across the street from The Sandbar, then a few years later moved to a house at 1419 Massachusetts St., where it’s stayed ever since.

Alexander and his wife moved on from the academy and from Lawrence in 2011, first to Kansas City and then to South Carolina, where they live today after 23 years in Kansas. Alexander said he’s still teaching guitar lessons to 50 kids a month.

But Alexander said he’s always kept an eye on the academy from afar. In his view, the next important step for it to move forward is the capital campaign for a new building. The academy has always been a community venture, he said, and it’ll have to stay that way if it is to replicate the success of its first couple of decades.

“It’s been a really successful thing, and it sounds to me like they’ve done everything right,” Alexander said of his successors. “It sounds to me like it’s going to still be there after I’m gone, so that makes me really happy. … Everybody loves the school, it has a consistent amount of students every year, and people still support it. I can’t ask for anything more than that.”

photo by: Bryan Byers

Over the years, Americana Music Academy has led to the formation of many bands, like “MGM,” comprised of members Marc Briand, Greg Pelligreen and Mary Conn. Here, the group plays at a past Lawrence Busker Festival.

For her part, Miller said the anniversary is a great opportunity to stop and reflect on everything the nonprofit has done so far, and also to look forward to what the next 20 years will be like.

The further-off goal of finding a property is one of those possible elements of the future. In the more immediate future, Miller said revitalizing group lessons — which were disrupted by the pandemic — is a goal for the fall and next spring. Miller said the academy also wants to bring back smaller-scale house concerts.

Looking for more opportunities for community partnerships and outreach, such as having students perform at local nursing homes a few times a year, is also on the table.

“We have this wonderful gift of making music,” Miller said. “How can we share that with other people? That’s an act of response and gratitude for the music that we have and the joy that we get from it.”