Lennon education bus is still rocking

NEW YORK: Imagine a “dream machine” on wheels. It’s easy if you try. But the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is no dream. A state-of-the-art multimedia studio packed in a bus; it’s a vehicle for opening the minds of aspiring young musicians.”

Swing open the door, step inside, take three short steps into the main cabin and look around,” writes Mark Garvey in “Come Together: The Official John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Guide to Music and Video,” a recently published history of the bus by Garvey and Yoko Ono Lennon. “You’ve entered a different world. And whether you’re young or old, if you’re a person who harbours music, video-editing or any related technical aspirations, you know you’ve just walked into a candy shop.”

Garvey captures the essence of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, which has been exposing young people to opportunities within the recording industry for the past 10 years. The bus operates year-round to offer students across the country an education in song writing, audio and video recording, and the music business.

It includes a 45-foot-long recording and multimedia studio as well as a 16-foot-long trailer carrying instruments and ancillary equipment. The bus was conceived by Brian Rothschild, a former songwriter and keyboard player for the band I Am Siam, and David Sonenberg, who’s DAS Communications, manages acts including the Spin Doctors, the Black Eyed Peas and John Legend.

In their work, they received a tremendous number of unsolicited cassette tapes. The two talked about creating a song writing contest for the young who don’t have the opportunity to meet music executives and decision-makers. With Ono, they established the John Lennon Song writing Contest and used a bus to promote it. Rothschild had the idea to turn the bus into a recording studio, “like a dream machine that can stimulate people’s imaginations,” Sonenberg says.