Arts Directory

About

Thad is an entertainer, musician, teaching artist and songwriter.He enjoys giving energetic performances and workshops, sharing his humorous songs and historical ballads, demonstrating how to play a variety of instruments, and writing songs.He is inspired by musical styles ranging from traditional, folk, mountain ballads, old-time and country blues to the roaring 20’s.He plays ukulele, harmonica, guitar, washboard, bucket bass, jaw harp, limber jack and homemade folk instruments for audiences of all ages!His career and involvement as a teaching artist has focused on music and songwriting.He presents over 300 curriculum-related programs a year with individual classrooms for preschool through high school, integrating music with language arts, writing, science, geography and history.These short single classroom arts infusion sessions, provide participatory and engaging arts experiences for the general classroom, as well as music and science classrooms, with a variety of themed programs that he has developed, such as The Pumpkin Life Cycle, The Amazing Monarch Migration, Down in the Swamp, The Science of Sound, Riding the Rails, All Aboard Harmonica workshops, The Frog Life Cycle, The Little Red Reading Wagon, Exploring the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Longitude and Latitude with a Geo-Musical Attitude, and Ukulele Fun.Residencies explore a variety of topics including science, social studies, history and language arts. Since 1988, he has conducted over 300 week-long songwriting residencies mostly in South Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas, and Nebraska. The workshops provide progressive skill development with core groups for an in-depth understanding of the creative process. His interdisciplinary program combines language arts, lyric writing, composition, and performance.Students collaborate, brainstorm, research, write and revise as they create songs about local history, heritage and culture. Residencies have yielded songs, performances, publications, artwork and audio/video recordings. Successive residencies in the same school/community yield collections of work, sometimes exploring a single topic over a period of time, such as the dust bowl years or exploring the many facets of the culture of a community through its history, employment and significant events.He is also involved in making and playing homemade instruments and facilitating classroom “Bucket Bands” to explore music, performance and songwriting. The students and he often create end-of-residency skits, sets and performances to showcase and document what they’ve created.He continues to seek professional development opportunities through extensive teaching artist training with The Kennedy Center through KU Lied Center Art.teach and Nebraska Lied Center at Lincoln, Wichita Arts Partners, WolfTrap Early Learning Institute, Accessible Arts and is currently involved with several local arts organizations focusing on artist business development.He has also worked with many arts organizations statewide and local in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, North Carolina and South Carolina, WolfTrap Early Learning, Wichita Arts Partners, Kennedy Center, KU Lied Center Art.teach and Salina Arts Infusion a program of Salina Arts and Humanities.Sharing his love of music and the creative process with students and teachers during artist in education sessions has been one of the highlights of his career.