This debut episode features a conversation with Christopher Rollins, a distinguished music faculty member at Lansing Community College, who shares insights from his extensive teaching career spanning over 40 years. The discussion delves into the challenges faced by contemporary musicians, particularly regarding live performances and the impact of social media on the music industry. He also provides valuable advice for aspiring guitarists, highlighting the significance of foundational skills.

Mentioned This Episode

Website: LCC Music Audition & Ensembles

YouTube: Arada by Francisco Moreno Torroba - performed by Christopher Rollins

Website: The Avenue Cafe - April 2026 Events

Website: MSU Community Music School

Website: University of Olivet Music Program

____________________

Website: LCC Performing Arts

Welcome to Exit Stage Left: LCC Performing Arts. Your all access pass to creativity, talent and stories shaping the stage at Lansing Community College and beyond. Places, everyone. Energy up. Okay? Let's make some magic. And now, here's your host, LCC Performing Arts Coordinator and Theatre Faculty, Paige Tufford.

Hi, everyone. I would like to welcome our guest, Christopher Rollins, who is an LCC music faculty professor. Hi, Chris. Thanks for being here.

Hi, Paige. Thanks for having me.

I mean, we've seen each other on campus for years, but I have no idea how long you've taught at lcc. How long have you been here?

Good question. I think 40 years.

How long?

It's over 40.

Oh, my gosh. 40 Years.

I'm actually. I used to go to LCC and I did have a job here, and so some of that counts as that, but I think it's close to 40 years.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Where else do you teach?

You can find me at MSU's Community School of Music. I teach also at the University of Olivet and Martial Music taught there quite a bit.

Right now I'm only online with Marshall Music and I also teach at home online, too.

It sounds like you're busy.

Yeah, yeah.

At a recent meeting, you and I were talking about upcoming events and I thought that you only taught rock band, right? And then you said, oh, no, my background's in classical guitar. And I was like, what?

So that just got me really interested in your background and hearing you play. Did your love for guitar, did it start with rock and roll, or did you start with classical guitar and then go with rock and roll?

Oh, I started with like, Led Zeppelin and things like that and rock and roll, and then eventually started morphing into loving to play classical guitar. I just like the process of it all of learning and reading standard notation. I went to college.

I actually went here for a little bit through various instructors and ended up at MSU and got my degree in music for classical guitar. Our program kind of. They ended up dismantling it a little bit for guitar and ended up switching over to the jazz studies back in the day.

So it was quite a while ago.

Well, let's get to it. I want to hear you play something. So we're going to have Chris play something and then we'll start talking again.

All right. The first one I'm going to do is La Negra. This is from Antonio Larro. He's from Venezuela. A 20th century composer.

Sa. That was amazing, Chris. Thank you. What do you think is the biggest challenge for musicians today?

Good question. I really don't know. We don't have as much opportunity to get out and play like we used to. I think that's one of the biggest challenges.

There's nowhere to learn your craft on stage. You have to be almost polished before you put anything out there right away. And so I think that's the hardest thing.

But with all the younger kids, they're really good at Internet and web pages and live streaming and so on. So I'm constantly learning from these kids all the time. So it's a new thing.

The kids have to get out and learn to find an area to work within that's part of their generation right now. Because right now playing live is very difficult. And it used to be in the day that we. There were.

There were bands everywhere seven nights a week, and then it started getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

So why do you think that? Why do you think that is?

Oh, it's just the economy. DJs coming in. I'll probably. Probably somebody won't like me saying that, but that was the big thing.

And that forced a lot of people playing live music out of the clubs and just generally just having less venues to play. Back when I was in college and I was over at msu, we had so many places in East Lansing to play.

We had Small Planet, Rick's, American Cafe, countless places, and we were out playing all the time, seven days a week. If you ever get your hands on some of those old posters, those are great. That's nostalgic.

Well, that brings me to another question I had was how do you think the rise of social media platforms have affected the industry? I mean, for good or bad or.

Well, social media, it's just new and I'm not used to it. And I think with the generation now, they're trying to find places to go out and be heard and videoed.

And they have to have a full product and they have to have a complete knowledge on what they're doing. It's not like you just could not know anything about computers or video and recording. They have to know everything before they put it out there.

So there's a big learning curve from them. But for them, it's not a big deal because they've been doing it since they were little kids. And here's my new webpage.

And I know so many people that do such a great job on that, but somebody old like me is just like, I'm going kicking and screaming into that, which I shouldn't say my age on doing that, but I have A friend of mine that he does his own podcasts and does his own videos and everything like that. Yeah. So the age thing shouldn't be a matter, but it is to me.

Yeah.

Do you think that playing live is a more valuable experience or for a musician or just getting out there, you know, if it's on TikTok or Facebook or, you know, something online?

For me, getting out live and playing in front of people is a total different animal. You have to focus in different ways.

But that same aspect is when you're in front of the camera and you press the red record button and you don't freak out and do so many takes, but when you're in front of a live audience, you don't get to do a retake again, so.

Right.

So that's a difference.

But I know a lot of people doing a lot of Instagram and things like that, and just little snippets of things, and so they can choose what's best for them, and they don't have to play an entire song, which is kind of nice. You can learn to edit and get everything down and look like you know what you're doing.

Yeah, well, you. You do teach Rock Band at lcc and with COVID and all, we had to find other places for our music ensembles to perform.

And so you've been performing with Rock Band at the Avenue, and I think there was another place that you performed off campus.

Yeah, Max Bar, too.

Max Bar. So how has that changed? I mean, how do the students like that or not, or did they prefer to play in Dart?

Oh, they love. Gives them a real experience of going out and playing in front of people like they would when they're not in school anymore.

When we played at Dart in the past, it was good. It was a little kind of sterile. But when we go out and play at the Avenue or at Max Bar, and the Avenue, I must say, has been great for us.

They have lighting, mixing boards, monitors, and everything. And all their friends come out and all their parents come out, and it's like you're playing a show. It's exciting for them, and it's real.

And so I think that's one of the best things that kind of occurred with COVID I don't. I don't remember. Yeah, I think when Dart auditorium started going on, the renovations, that's when we started moving it out of there.

I think that was the best choice that I ever did for this Rock Band class. And it's a lot better. It's a lot more work for me. Because I have to go load the trucks up and unload them and come back.

I'm never, I'm not home until late at night.

Oh yeah. Well, I have been to a few of those concerts and the crowd is just.

They have so much energy and they, you know, I think that for even an actor, and I guess it's the same for a musician is you feed off of that energy that the audience is giving you and it makes a huge difference, you know?

It does. It's.

It's just everything comes into place and they do their best job when they're in front of those people and when they do go out and play, when we're in rehearsal at LCC here, we can do things over again and pick it apart and reconstruct the song. But when you're out in front of people playing, that live element is huge. They need that. They need that live element.

And that's the nice thing about lcc. We actually give you that experience of going out and playing in front of a live audience and not just on campus, but at an actual bar.

That's unusual.

It's a great experience for students. For anyone interested in pursuing classical guitar or picking up the guitar for the first time, what advice can you give them?

Well, what I like to do, I teach so many kids starting from elementary school all the way up to college. But I would say coming in through lcc, if you have a little bit experience, we can work with you.

What I try to do with the guitar program here is fill in a lot of the holes that you may have had. Most people come in from learning from YouTube or learning to play by tableture for guitar, which is not standard notation.

But for the two years you're coming in for lcc, you learn how to read standard notation and you can focus on rock and roll. The rock band class is there too.

But I try to develop the guitar program of being a cross between classical guitar and jazz studies and all the theory involved in all that.

So they can prepare to transfer maybe to a four year university and just have a great grounding for what they want to do when they get out of school here.

Wonderful. We're going to listen to Chris play one more song. Chris, take it away.

This next piece I'm going to be playing is called Odeon. This is by Ernesto Nazareth. He's a Brazilian composer.

Sa. Sam, That was again amazing.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Do you play in a local band or do you have time? I mean, do you have time?

I used to, I Missed playing with people for a while and playing solo guitar and nylon string. I would always play a lot of solo gigs, weddings and, you know, parties and things like that. Nice things, you know, suit and tie and stuff like that.

But I was playing in some low in a local band for a few years and I've chosen to kind of really more focus on my solo and classical guitar and jazz studies and so on and going out playing solo guitar. But I'm not against playing in bands either. Did it quite a bit, but now I find more enjoyment and more satisfaction with doing what I'm doing now.

So you mentioned earlier that you record, you do solo recording of some of the pieces that you play. What do you do with those recordings.

Is that I'll post them on YouTube and basically just like as a business. So if somebody's asking me what I play, they can look at my YouTube channel. I also, I do play with a duo also. Another, another gentleman, Mark Pasek.

And it's two guitars and he's got a great voice and singing and. And I just sing backups and play nylon string and he plays everything else. So we've played at local areas around here too.

Well, Chris, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you so much for having me.

We are wrapping up a little bit early. Chris, can you play one more piece before we go?

I'd love to. This is a piece that a lot of times I assign my students. It's by Francisco Torrega and the piece is called Adelita.

Amazing. Chris, thank you so much for sharing your music with us.

Thank you so much for having me.

That's a wrap for this episode of Exit Stage Left: LCC Performing Arts. We're so glad you could join us. And we hope you've enjoyed the show. To see what's taking center stage next at Lansing Community College, visit lcc.edu/showinfo. Exit Stage Left is a part of the LCC Connect Podcast Network. You can listen to this episode and others at lccconnect.com. Until next time, keep the lights bright, the cues tight, take your bow, and exit stage left.