Kaua‘i schoolchildren to collaborate with Grammy-nominated songwriting nonprofit

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the rescheduled start time of Kid Pan Alley’s free concert on Jan. 31. The concert is now set to begin at 10 a.m.

Musician Paul Reisler says school children in first through fifth grade are some of the most talented songwriters around, and he should know.

Reisler has performed in more than 3,000 concerts and written 3,000 plus compositions over the course of his decades-long career in the American folk group Trapezoid, which he co-founded.

For the past 25 years, Reisler’s musical collaborators have included students based throughout the United States. And, later this month, students at three Kaua‘i schools will get to hone their songwriting chops with him.

“I say there’s an inverse relationship between the quality of the songs and the age of the kids,” Reisler said. “Because they get more self-conscious as they get older, and they’ve also listened to a lot of bad radio.”

These students are participants in Kid Pan Alley, a nonprofit organization Reisler founded after a 1999 songwriting residency in rural Virginia. There, he co-wrote more than 50 funny, touching, goofy and gross songs with all 600 schoolchildren in the county.

Reisler found those songs had one thing in common: they were enchanting. Since 1999, Kid Pan Alley has gone on to catalog nearly 3,000 original songs written and performed with more than 65,000 U.S. schoolchildren.

The nonprofit also has recorded five studio albums featuring high-profile artists that include Amy Grant and Sissy Spacek. One such album, 2006’s “Kid Pan Alley: Nashville,” earned a Grammy Award nomination for the track “Scary Things.”

Kid Pan Alley on Friday released “I’m Hawaiian,” featuring slack-key guitarist John Keawe, on YouTube. The song was written with students at Kohala Elementary on Hawai‘i Island. It debuts Jan. 23 on all streaming services.

Accomplished artists want to record Kid Pan Alley albums because they appreciate students’ songwriting, Reisler said.

“People expect that kids are going to write songs about their cat or something like that,” Reisler said. “That’s not what they’re writing about: They’re writing very sophisticated, deep songs.”

Beginning Jan. 21, classes at St. Theresa School, Kekaha Elementary and Alakaʻi O Kauaʻi Charter School will join Kid Pan Alley. Participating classes will spend two, 1-hour songwriting sessions with Reisler before performing a concert.

A free concert open to the general public will be held at the Historic Waimea Theater at 10 a.m. on Jan. 31. The event is first come, first serve. Donations to Kid Pan Alley will be accepted.

Kid Pan Alley first visited Hawai‘i approximately 14 years ago, when Reisler visited a good friend residing on the Big Island. The nonprofit program has since regularly traveled to schools throughout the Aloha State. Kid Pan Alley also will visit Maui this year.

The Kid Pan Alley catalog includes songs about almost every subject under the sun. But Hawai‘i students’ output is notably different from that of their mainland peers.

“There’s a lot more of a sense of respect for the ancestors, for nature, so the songs tend to be gentler,” Reisler said. “More about what’s happening in their families and the beauty of nature, which I really love doing.”

Kid Pan Alley is primarily funded by grants and donations, although public schools may contribute a nominal amount to help cover costs.

Reisler thinks there are two sides to arts training in schools. He claimed the most common is recreative, in which students learn through art created by other people.

“Learn this song, learn this dance that were created by other people,” Reisler explained. “Or, learn how to copy this painting by Matisse.”

Kid Pan Alley, by contrast, offers a purely creative process.

“We walk in and we say, ‘Well, what do you want to write about today?'”

Reisler says he never knows the answer, but he can be sure it will be something wonderful.

For more information about Kid Pan Alley, visit kidpanalley.org.