BRINGING OPPORTUNITY TO OUR CITY PT.1

THIS PROJECT WAS MADE possible BY THE BOBBY STONE FOUNDATION AND THE CITY OF CHATTANOOGA

BY KESSLER CUFFMAN

Executive Director of Dynamo Studios

(This blog is part of a multi part series. We will cover city impact, student impact, and musician impact next!)

On October 23, 2022 we rented a huge cabin on the side of a mountain and brought a collection of highly accredited music producers and songwriters to Chattanooga. Their success ranges from loads of platinum and diamond records to loads of Grammy nominations and awards. Here is what happened.

DYNAMO STUDIOS X SUPA FRIENDZ X SAFETY CLUB

*Team photo from dinner capping off the final night of camp at* ***Five Witz Brewery*** *and* ***The Barrelhouse Ballroom***.

Through community partnership, Dynamo Studios empowers students and creatives through innovative and exciting educational experiences built around music production and the arts

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Hear from multi platinum record selling and multi grammy nominated songwriter, producer, and A&R VScript

Producer/writer camps are a truly unique and special experience in the music industry. It’s about bringing the best of the best to the table, having an outrageously good time, and making a TON of world class music.

“Songwriting Camps — Where the music industry’s greatest songs are crafted” — BMI

First off for those that are new here and don’t know about songwriting camps: Songwriting camps are used by publishing companies to grow their catalog of songs written by signed writers. It’s a gathering of producers and topliners in a pre-selected location for the purpose of cross pollenating creativity and writing songs. A camp usually takes place in a spacious destination with a lot of separate rooms where writers can be divided into smaller groups. Often the purpose of the gathering is to generate material for a specific artist.

Recently, we had the unique opportunity to bring some of the music industry’s top writers and producers to create here in Chattanooga. All of this started when Bridgez, VScript, and myself started throwing around the idea of what we could do if we brought a camp to Chatt. In Chattanooga, we have an incredible amount talent, but its scattered and fragmented. People just aren’t working together consistently or gaining major opportunities in the industry beyond our city. We quickly realized that we are more or less starting with a blank slate and that’s something that excited all of us.

The invitee list included writers and producers for Justin Bieber, Kanye West, H.E.R., Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, SZA, Khalid, Drake, Post Malone, Tory Lanes, Snoop Dogg, Eric Bellinger, Nick Jonas, DJ Khaled, Kehlani, etc etc. These teams have loads of platinum records, gold records, and even a couple diamond records to their names (in addition to loads of grammy nominations).

This project took bold funders that were willing to invest in something unique that had never really been done in Chattanooga. What they saw in the vision is something that had the legs to really create a wave in our local music economy. What happened here, set the stage for far more than a wave in the music economy — This set the stage for shifting the narrative of our local community and culture entirely. In the near future EVERYONE will say “WE MAKE MUSIC IN CHATTANOOGA.”

Although the main goal of a camp, in the simplest sense, is to crank out as much high quality music as possible, this camp represented so much more than the music itself. It represented the start of a movement in Chattanooga. You see, when I first started mapping out the camp, I set out to answer three very important questions through carrying out the camp:

What does bringing this sort of talent to Chattanooga do for our city?
What does this opportunity do for local producers and writers?
What does this opportunity do for the students we serve? (If you are new to Dynamo, this is the primary focus of our organization) ***

This camp marked the start of a movement that will open life changing doors for our local music community well beyond the walls of our city and create opportunities for major producers and writers to begin working in Chattanooga.

At present we have some seriously big projects in the works that we can’t share just yet, but what we can say based off of this inaugural camp is this:

We will have multiple platinum records coming out of Chattanooga.

We will have Grammy nominations coming out of Chattanooga.

Chattanooga producers and writers are now positioned to make a lot of money and breakout in the major music industry.

And most importantly, this throws open the doors to career success for our students on a wildly large scale within the music business.

MORE TO COME IN THE NEAR FUTURE!

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE PHOTO DROP

Thank you to our local sponsors — The Bobby Stone Foundation, The City of Chattanooga, Five Wits Brewery, and The Barrelhouse Ballroom. You all individually already know how much you mean to me. Thank you for the seemingly endless support over the years!

Thank you to our national sponsors — Patron, Amphion, Focal, Fender, and Gretsch for contributing to the camp. We couldn’t do this without you!!!

Thank you to those that contributed their talents to this insane project — Matt Reiter, Tessa Voccola, Tommy Bronx, and Mook at Humanitees. You all are some of the most talented individuals in the city. It’s an honor to call you friends.

Thank you to the local musicians that took advantage of this opportunity and brought their A-Game! — Summer Dreggs, Jared White, Swayyvo, Johnny Balik, Drake Barker, Isaiah, Wallace, WayneOnABeat, IG, Jubril, Jorden Little, Mon Rovia, and Ryan Long.

Thank you to the Dynamo Team — DWhit, Wiley, and Josiah. You guys made it happen!

DAY ONE PICS — MATT REITER