Being a musician can put you in some interesting circumstances you may not get to experience otherwise.  Yesterday was one of them.

My Fever Pitch band played a gig at the State Correctional Institution in Camp Hill, PA. It was one of the most unique, intense, fun and satisfying musical experiences I’ve had so far in life, and I think some of my bandmates would agree.

I know playing for prison inmates may be controversial to some.  Maybe they think the inmates deserve nothing in the way of pleasure or entertainment- because they’re prisoners.

But ask yourself- what are the things that people can be imprisoned for doing?  The acts range from the truly horrible down to the very petty, and that assumes that everybody who was convicted was done so accurately.  The lives of people who end up in prison are highly diversified, just like the rest of us.  Making assumptions is risky, and almost certainly inaccurate.

Others might say, “What about the money?! Why are we wasting our tax dollars on something so frivolous as entertainment and activities for prison inmates?”  

Well here’s the thing- we aren’t.  The budget for things like this comes from the prisoners themselves (at least in PA).  As it was explained to me by prison staff yesterday, the inmates can have money.  They don’t lose it automatically upon incarceration.  Plus, relatives and friends can give them money. The funds are managed in what sounds like a “prison bank” of sorts, where inmates can keep track of and manage their funds just like in the outside world.  When they pay for things like commissary, hygiene items, snacks, sending letters, etc., a bit of that charge goes into a statewide fund, which is then distributed back into the prison system in the form of various things including entertainment budgets.

So no tax dollars are being used.

For those still not convinced that prisoners should have anything other than the most basic of basics- imagine your next screw up as your last.  Maybe you were speeding, got caught and lost your license for good.  Maybe you blew a negotiation at work and lost the contract, were fired immediately and forced to forfeit your pension.  Discarded.

That sounds crazy, right? But that’s what some of us do when talking about people that we consider “not us”. We discard them; criminals, inmates, the homeless, poor people, those that vote for the other party, etc.  But these people are all part of our community, and generally speaking, discarding them doesn’t make the community better.

So yeah, we played a prison gig. And it was great!  And we’d do it again.

The most complicated part of the whole experience was getting in and out.  Prior to the gig, each band member had to complete a small batch of paperwork, and also submit a list of all the equipment they planned to bring into the facility.  This list had to be approved before the band’s arrival.

On the day of the gig, we met prison staffers in the parking lot and they inspected everything we wanted to bring inside- it had to be on the previously submitted list.  When that was complete, we loaded all of our stuff onto a truck and headed into the security/gate area.  The sign-in took many minutes and included metal detecting, ID checking, receiving visitor badges, and getting reunited with our equipment.  From there, we put our stuff on carts and were escorted across the grounds to the gym where we were to play.

The room was pretty similar to a middle school sized gym, with bleachers (3-4 rows high) surrounding three sides.  From there, it was like a “normal gig” in that we just set up our stuff, did a sound check, and got ready to play.

We were a little nervous. Not for safety reasons, but because the demographic of the audience was different than what we were used to.  We had planned a set list that included several new tunes and we were hoping not only that the people would like them, but also that we would play them well.

We were told that our first audience would be The Blues.  The blue uniforms indicate that the inmates are fairly new to the system and may be awaiting transfer to a different prison, where they would serve the bulk of their term.  The group was generally young, energetic, and about 180 strong.

We started in on the set, pretending to be confident.  But it didn’t take long for the confidence to become real.  The men were very supportive and even engaged.  They seemed to really like the music selection.  When I took my first trumpet solo, the place exploded like I had scored a touchdown!  Then the guitar and keyboard players got the same treatment.  Our singer, my daughter Bailey, did an outstanding job and was a major hit.

It wasn’t like at a “regular gig” where half the people pay the band no mind and just talk over it.  Here, everybody was focused on what we were doing.  As inmates, they have a limited amount of free time and they chose to spend it listening to us- so they were definitely interested to see if we were worth their time.

Fever Pitch

As we got deep into the set, the inmates were clapping along, some stood up to dance in place, and many were chanting and singing along on various parts of the songs.

When we finished, they surprised us by loudly calling for an encore.  After we played it, they chanted “Fe-Ver Pitch” until they began heading out the doors.  

It felt great to get such a positive reaction from a group that we weren’t sure we could satisfy.  The entertainment coordinator said he didn’t remember a band ever getting that kind of reaction in his decade of employment there.

Later, we played the same set to another group.  They were an older, somewhat smaller group, who were all permanent residents of the facility.  Their energy was not as high as the first group, but they were very interested and attentive, and even called out a few requests, which we were able to pull off.  They definitely let us know that they enjoyed the music and many called ‘thank you’s” to us as they left the gym afterwards.

Getting out of the facility was a bit lengthy.  We had to wait about 30 minutes for a check to be completed before we could have all of our equipment inventoried again, to make sure nothing new was going out.  From there it was a walk across the facility to the gate for checkout, then to our cars to go around to another gate to pick up our equipment, which was waiting there for us. 

It was a full day.  We had arrived at 10:30am and left close to 9:30pm (we had a few hours off between sets).  But it was one of those gigs where you feel like your efforts are really making people lives better. That doesn’t always happen, but when it does, everybody wins.

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