about the NEW song. it's not an Army of Me song. My apologies if you were confused, or if you thought that Army of Me has added a class full of 4th graders to the band. here's the story of "Me and My KFC".

A couple months ago, i was asked by ASCAP to take part in an after school program for DC elementary school kids called DC SCORES. DC SCORES does a number of activities for kids, including a songwriting program. I was given the mission of getting together with a class of kids and after three days, emerging with a recorded song, that we wrote together. I'm usually up for any kind of challenge. It sounded simple enough, except for one fact. I've never worked with kids!! I honestly don't think i'd ever even talked to someone under the age of 12 before. So, going into it, I was a bit nervous.

DAY 1
So, I showed up at Aiton Elementary school late. I'm predictably late to just about everything, ask any concert promoter in the country. When I got up to the classroom, the kids were waiting. I think they were in 4th grade or so. And the teacher (thankfully she was there), introduced me as Mr. Scheuerman. And the kids said, "Good afternoon Mr. Scheuerman". I said, "Hi guys, you can call me Vince". And from there on out, I was "Mr. Vince". I introduced myself, and explained that we were gonna write a song together. I'd never done this before, so I was winging it. I decided to buy myself some time and ask the kids to introduce themselves and tell the class what their favorite song was. And I soon discovered there was a bit a of a cultural gap between the class and I. Lots of hip hop, go-go, R&B, etc. I didn't know even one of the songs that they mentioned!! I got a little more nervous. But I carried on...

"I'm going to explain the different parts of a song to you"... so I went on to explain that most songs have Verses, a Chorus/Hook, and a Bridge. And I wrote it on the board in front of the room, layed out how a typical pop song goes:

INTRO
Verse
Chorus/Hook
Verse
Chorus/Hook
Bridge
Chorus/Hook
END

Simple enough, now for an example... except for the problem with the common ground. I couldn't think of a song to use as an example... So i did the first thing that came to my head. I played an Army of Me song for them to use as an example... I figured a song with a pretty obvious chorus would be "Still Believe in You". So I started to play it for them, and when I got to the high falsetto chorus, the entire class started giggling. Again, I carried on! And by the end of the song, the giggling stopped, and i think i was starting to win them over. When I finished the song I asked, "So what was the Chorus?" And one girl raised her hand and sang back "IIIIII still believe in you". "That's right!" They got it..

Now, it's time to write a song, but what are we gonna write a song about? So I asked the kids what they would want to write a song about. And they started having some ideas. One kid raise his hand and said, "A relationship", another said, "a song about running away from home". That's right, most songs are about relationships, or life struggles. They understood what it was all about, i was impressed. But we weren't really getting anywhere as far as writing our song... then I had an idea. Let's come up with a title for the song and write from there.. So I asked the kids to think of song title ideas. The hands started going up - and I wrote them down on the board, about 9 titles...

1. Why did you leave me girl?
2. My broken heart
3....
4...
They were good titles, I could totally imagine a song with those names... And then a hand raised in the back of the room. A young man with a bright red coat on said "How about 'Me and My KFC'?". As soon as he said it, the class got a little rowdy, kids were obviously excited about this option. And the teacher started shaking her head like "Noooo, this is not a good idea". But to me, it was starting to get interesting, at the very least, this was gonna be a good story. The kids were getting excited, so I wrote it up on the board...

And not surprisingly, when we voted, as soon as i said "Me and My KFC", every hand in the room went into the air.. We've got our title - and it's gonna be a song about fried chicken! Wow.

"So, now we need a beat". And as soon as I said it, another young man spontaneously started banging out a beat on his desk with his fist. I was seriously impressed. He did his fist for the bass drum sound, and his open hand for the snare sound. Never seen that before... And then spontaneously across the room, the girl who had sung "I still believe in you", started chanting "Me and My KFC" along to the beat. We had some naturals in the room. I made up a quick guitar part to go along, and we now had a chorus.

DAY 2
I was on time that day, thank you! And the kids saw me pull up into the parking lot. "Mr. Vince, Mr. Vince!" and they ran over to my car. I guess I was making friends! They wanted to carry my guitar, and my bag and help me out, which was cool. They were great. All of my initial fear of working with the kids was gone.

We had a lot of work to do. We needed lyrics for all the verses and bridge, etc. In the car ride over to school, I had made up some verses in my head, just in case things didn't go smoothly, I would have a fallback. But we didn't end up needing that. I asked the kids to imagine a story involving their fried chicken. Where were they, what were they thinking about, etc... And one kid raised his hand, "In my room, in my groove"... alright, so I wrote it up on the board.. and line by line, we came up with verses. We designated 4 of the kids to be the "beat keepers", and they would rock the beat every time we practiced and ran through the lyrics. At a certain point, the beat keepers started going off on their own, making up another section of the song which wasn't really fitting into the verses. That ended up being our Bridge... Here were the lyrics that our kids came up with:

Me and My KFC

In my room
In my groove
Woah oh
I'll be hungry soon

Smelled some grease
Trying to get a piece
Woah oh
Take me to KFC

Me and my KFC
Me and my KFC
Me and my KFC
Sure need something to eat

Walked in the door
Got me some corn
Woah oh
A ten piece for sure

Me and my KFC

Bridge -
Need some jelly for my belly
Need some biscuits, tasty drumsticks
And some water with my order
When I got my change, i was short of a quarter
Oh that mac and cheese brought me to my knees
Give me something sweet, sure sounds good to me

All day, they were begging me to play "Still Believe in You" again. So after we had finished the lyrics, i played it again. And to my amazement, when I got to the chorus, they all started singing along. I got goosebumps.

DAY 3
Today was the day to record our song. Dennis, our beloved drummer, and recording guru, showed up to help us out. He set up a couple of microphones, and we were ready to roll. We ran through a few practice rounds, and then began doing takes of the song. We got a few good takes and that pretty much took the whole day. Our manager Chris showed up with a video camera to film it all going down, and our guitar man Brad editted together a short clip for your viewing pleasure... Nice team effort.

The Making of "ME AND MY KFC"

The kids are a trip.

V