WILTON, CT — This weekend, the Paul Green Rock Academy in Wilton will be performing a tribute to Led Zeppelin at the Trackside Teen Center.
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The decision to focus this term’s curriculum on Led Zepp was an easy one, according to the schoolmaster.
“I’ve always said Led Zeppelin is ‘Rock Music 101,'” Green said. “This past year we lost about half our Connecticut school to graduation… whenever you have a group like that, a lot of new kids, I want to keep it very ‘foundational.'”
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Green, as described by Yes frontman Jon Anderson, with whom PGRA has performed often, “is a character.” He’s also the apparent inspiration for Jack Black’s character in the Paramount film “School of Rock,” but maybe the less said about that, the better.
PGRA has its roots in the Paul Green School of Rock Music, which the teacher and record producer founded in Philadelphia in 1998. In 2002, the wildly successful venture began expanding into the Philly suburbs, then New Jersey and Delaware. Schools in California, New York, Texas and Utah followed, before Green was bought out by investors in 2009. When his non-compete expired in 2013, Paul Green Rock Academy was born, and schools followed in both Woodstock, NY, and Philadelphia. Classes meet on Sunday, and school years end with live performances.
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After some consolidation, Green open PGRA’s first home in Connecticut at the Factory Underground music studio in Norwalk in 2018. But “they became a little too busy to keep giving us their Sunday afternoons,” Green told Patch.
“So we cast a wide net, and Trackside worked out perfectly, they almost never have anything on Sundays and are more than happy to have a few shows there. It’s really a space with its heart in the right place and an incredible leadership.”
Certainly Trackside Teen Center’s motto — “To inspire people, don’t show them your superpowers, show them theirs” — was more than aligned with Green’s own mission of helping kids tap into the transformative power of rock-n-roll.
“You think a kid is ‘awkward’ and ‘weird,'” Green explained. “You put a bass guitar in their hands, and suddenly they’re a bass player, which is ‘cool.'”
This summer, the cool kids are touring with Banned From Utopia, former members of Frank Zappa’s band playing Zappa’s music. Last summer, students backed up Anderson throughout Europe on what Green called “the best tour I’ve ever been involved with.”
Rock-n-roll is a “very wide tent,” Green emphasized, but the PGRA syllabus focuses on 70s and 80s hard and prog rock. It’s within that repertoire that rock’s foundational musicianship is found, and that’s what PGRA teaches.
The summer tours often serve as the bridge between the young musicians’ high school and college lives. The average PGRA student enrolls in the school in their sophomore year, and graduates out around the same time they head off to university.
Green said he started School of Rock because he didn’t hear the level of craft in 90s music that he found in 80s albums. And that craft arose from generations of school and church musical programs that are no longer part of many children’s lives.
It’s a deep societal ill, but one easily cured, according to Green:
“Just have everybody that goes to school play an instrument in some kind of ensemble or sing in the choir,” Green said. “Everything about school now is test grades, and ‘get into college!’ so you can brag about it to your neighbor. As opposed to, ‘Hey, let’s learn a bunch of stuff!'”
Ironically, that may have been much easier in the FM radio-fueled 70s and 80s than it is today, a generation knee-deep in the streaming services. For Green, who believes his job is to not just teach a student how to play, but also what they should play, that’s a problem.
“The more that is accessible, the less people seek out weird things,” Green said. As a result, “There’s not much rock music out today. I feel like within 10 years I’m gonna be obsolete.”
The students have been practicing once a week for this weekend’s Led Zeppelin show since the end of October. Now, there fate is in the hands of the rock gods.
“There’s going to be moments of triumph, where you can’t believe that a person whose only as big as their guitar is playing that solo,” Green said. “And then there’s going to be some moments where it goes off the track, where it kind of falls apart and comes back together. I hope people clap a little harder for that.”
The Paul Green Rock Academy presents A Tribute to Led Zeppelin on March 2 at 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30) and March 3 at 4 p.m. (doors at 3:30) at Trackside Teen Center at 15 Station Road. Proceeds will go to the PGRA Scholarship Fund and to Trackside.
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