Out of School and Inside the Studio: Spy Hop Records Empowers a New Generation of Musicians

If the term ‘teen musician’ makes you want to rip out your own eardrums, I understand. Or at least, I did. Listening to the over-hyped, mass-produced, cookie-cutter drivel from the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus is enough to turn even the most optimistic of music fans into jaded cynics whining about the future of the music industry.

It’s no wonder, then, that when I got a hold of a free CD sampler of local youth artists produced by a local youth record label, I was surprised. Actually, I was in disbelief. The first time I popped the CD into my stereo, I did a double take. I checked the CD and the sleeve to make sure that this was, in fact, the music of teen musicians as produced by other teens. It’s not just that the musicians themselves are talented and original, but the production quality itself is so good that I couldn’t help but wonder if some mistake had been made.

My apologies to the talented folks over at Spy Hop Records. Spy Hop Records is a youth-run record label, housed within Spy Hop Productions, responsible for invigorating and empowering youth artists from the Salt Lake City area. Some of those youth artists are the product of Spy Hop Records’ sister program, Musicology. The musical arts instructor and mentor over both programs is SLC-born musician Jeremy Chatelain. Chatelain describes Musicology as a ten-month program made up of teen musicians. “This year, I decided to make it one big project. So over the course of 10 months, these kids come in here––there’s seven of them–– and they all play different instruments. We work on writing songs and being in a band and rehearsing,” says Chatelain.

Spy Hop Productions is a local nonprofit dedicated to “empowering youth through multimedia.” Students from around the Salt Lake City area come to Spy Hop to learn various skills: how to make documentaries, make video games, run a youth radio program, etc. Students become designers, editors, audio engineers and cinematographers. Spy Hop Records and Musicology are two of Spy Hop’s newest programs, both only in their second year. Students of the Spy Hop Records program are generally recruited from other Spy Hop classes. As instructor/mentor for Spy Hop Records and Musicology, Chatelain tries to find designers, writers, audio engineers and publicists for the Spy Hop Records team. As a result, the Spy Hop Records class is the most diverse group of students at Spy Hop—hailing from high schools all over the Salt Lake valley and from all walks of life.

Essentially, the class is an actual record label experience. The students determine which local acts to sign and then offer contracts to those chosen. Then, students are faced with the difficult task of “trying to disseminate music to the public,” says Chatelain. “That class, for myself and the students is a constant learning experience … Some things we try totally fail, but some things we do totally take off. I think that’s the state of the music industry at large. They’re struggling, so we are a little micro look at their struggles––How do you sell CDs? I don’t know. We’re trying to figure it out.”

This year, Spy Hop Records has signed six different acts: Sam Burton, The Direction, Eliza Shearon, Malevolent MC, Joel Brown and Idyll Rigamarole (the Musicology band). All of the artists on the Spy Hop Records label are young people––none over 21 years old. SHR is one of just a small handful of youth-run record labels, and both students and artists at the label are proud of it.

Gabriella Huggins is a driven 16-year-old who co-manages the Spy Hop Records class with Chatelain. She speaks for most of her fellow students when she says “Spy Hop Records is such a cool thing because we’re youth, we sign youth artists for free and we give them a chance to put their art out there. That’s not an opportunity that [teens] get very often, and if we get those opportunities it’s because we’re under the control of other people, not because we have artistic freedom. Spy Hop Records gives [our artists] the freedom to do what they want to do, to make their records on their own time. We’re just there for support. We’re there to help them … We empower people.”

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