Jackson Free Press

Sneakers squeak down the length of the basketball court at the Boys & Girls Club of Central Mississippi's Capitol Street unit. On most days, the sound of a ball bouncing against a backboard isn't far behind, but on Tuesday, March 1, the students walk past the court and up the stairs to the teen center, excited to create new sounds of their own.

Framed photos of musicians such as B.B. King and Lady Gaga line the walls of a corner office that only weeks before housed the teen center's library, which moved downstairs. Now, inside is a set of speakers, a mixing board, a keyboard and a Mac computer. Leroy Jones Jr., a Jackson-native mixing engineer, producer and owner of studio Sonic Signature, stands in front of the teens, who have also come from the Sykes Road, Walker Street, Canton and Hazlehurst BGCCM locations to be a part of The Banner Studios.

"Who wants to be a millionaire?" Jones asks them. "If you want to be a millionaire, then you need to start paying attention."

While the project began to take shape when Jones joined in late 2015, Penney Ainsworth, president and chief executive officer of the BGCCM, says she has hoped for this result since she first connected with the studio's namesake, David Banner. They met just over three years ago when the renowned hip-hop artist came to Jackson for his Heal the Hood charity. Ainsworth, who has worked with the Boys & Girls Club organization for 19 years, had only been with the BGCCM for a few months at the time. Banner even gave her a tour of the Capitol Unit, where he was a member as a child.

"Sitting in this room with David, my first conversation with him was, 'I know you're a superstar. But what I want from you is your time. I mean, I need the money; this is a nonprofit, so we always need dollars, but what I want more from you than anything is your time,'" Ainsworth says.

Banner gave that time and more, she says. He donated the initial equipment that Jones used to piece together The Banner Studios and provided some of the finances to purchase the materials for Jones to make a quality studio where students can learn about the music industry. To organize the studio's curriculum, Ainsworth again turned to Jones and his Sonic Signature team, who plan to teach a new subject to about 100 students every Monday at 6 p.m. over a nine-month semester.

Jones says he is recruiting Jacksonians in the entertainment industry to educate students about different fields of expertise, including songwriting, videography, artist management and promotion, and even professionalism within the workplace. While students can anticipate making beats, writing rhymes and all the other surface activities in music, Jones says he also wants them to see that being in the spotlight isn't the only way to find success in the music industry.

"You can't be a millionaire thinking you'll just drop out of school, make a song and it's going to blow up," he says. "You've got all these other avenues behind that song that goes on and all these other professions. All you see is the rapper or the singer, but you don't know that there are probably a thousand people behind that one singer just to make it look as easy as it does."

For Jones, it's about sharing experience and opportunities. He learned many of the skills that he needed to build Sonic Signature and The Banner Studios from his father, Leroy Jones Sr., a contractor, which he says has been instrumental to his success. Not every teenager in Jackson has a figure to teach them a trade like his father did or the use of a computer with the latest equipment. The Banner Studios can offer mentorship to those students and industry-standard technology, including Pro Tools recording software and Final Cut Pro video-editing software.

"I'm not trying to say nothing crazy, but Madison doesn't need this," Jones says. "One child in Madison's got (a Mac) in their bedroom. ... They're honing their skills in their hobby time. Kids here don't have access to that. That's what it was for me—giving access to somebody who could possibly create their passion into what they want it to be in an environment where someone could actually help them."

Ron Thornton, the vice president of operations for BGCCM, says the studio lines up perfectly with what the club has always tried to accomplish—impacting youth, expanding their career prospects and growing their interests. He says that as the vice president, a position he accepted in August 2015 after 12 years with Oprah Winfrey Boys & Girls Club and two years with BGCCM, his role is to make sure the studio has what it needs to benefit students now and in the future.

"Our teen population, all across the world, is a lost population," Thornton says. "A lot of youth at after-school facilities don't have some of the tools that they're interested in. With the studio, we know that's a big interest. Now, with technology advancing by the second, we try to stay abreast of that, and the studio gives us that opportunity as a recruitment tool to get (ages) 13 and above, especially 16 to 18, into the club and off the streets."

Ainsworth says presenting resources like The Banner Studios to Jackson teens is key to helping them imagine a greater path for their futures, whether that's becoming a singer, rapper, songwriter, recording engineer, producer, manager or a music-industry role they may not yet know about.

"We want them to envision and sing and write about where they're going to," Ainsworth says. "... We tend to talk and write about—even in all my poems—our situation and our current culture. But if we start exposing them and start thinking and dreaming bigger than where we're at in our four blocks of the world, the sky's the limit."