Nia Denham has a passion for music -- specifically, to help young musicians find places toperform.
For the past five years, Niahas helped young musicians in the Auburn-Opelika area find places to perform.
This year, she decided to form Amplify Auburn, a nonprofit group helping young musicians find performance venues and make music connections in the area.
Amplify Auburn is connected to Amplify OA Youth, and works with musicians younger than 18.
Nia said it's hard for young musicians to find gigs when they approach venues alone.
"If one person goes to a restaurant with no musical press kit and says, 'I want to play,' they're like, 'Oh, yeah, like that's happening,'" Nia said. "But if I can get six kids together and say, 'I can bring 50 people in,' they're thrilled to have us."
The venture began when her son, Logan Denham, formed a band with some of his friends five years ago.
"They wanted gigs, and we were like, 'Oh my God, how do you get gigs for 10-and 11- year-olds?'" Nia said. "So the first thing we realized was that we needed a sound system. We started buying different sound equipment, and then I started looking for gigs that were suitable for the kids. Then, we found them, so they started performing around Opelika and Auburn."
Since then, Nia and Logan found more young musicians who wanted gigs. As they grew older, they still wanted to perform.
Some Auburn students worked with Nia in the past, including Nathan Coker, senior in studio and fine arts.
Coker won UPC's Battle of the Bands earlier this semester.
"I worked with Nia a couple of years ago when I first started playing professionally, and she helped me get connected with Beef O' Brady's and a few other music venues in the area," Coker said. "She's very sweet and easy to work with."
While they do not work together as often as they did in past years, Coker said Nia still helps him with performances from time to time.
"We're still acquainted and she helps me out whenever she can, but it's not as frequent as in the past years, since I've started to make my own connections," Coker said. "In my personal experience, she helped connect me with different venue owners and introduced me to some solid music connections when I had first started playing music and had no idea what to do."
Nia has placed musicians at several of venues, ranging from restaurants, such as Beef O'Brady's, to bars such as Eighth and Rail, to Monarch Estates, a retirement home.
Nia said she understands people may think of the free entertainment they offer as low quality.
"These are not bad musicians. I will tell you, honestly, we do have some beginners who want a gig, but we have places that are appropriate for them, and we have students who are almost professional-level," Nia said. "We know how to place people for whatever the goal is there."
The quality of the sound equipment Amplify uses with their musicians is not lacking either, according to Nia.
"We have a huge, huge sound system," Nia said. "For example, we did the sound for Earthfest this year. They had four stages. We ran two and Spicer's ran the other two. We can provide sound comfortably for about 3,000 people."
One of the bands that worked with Nia found success in the music industry.
Jule Vera performed in a Battle of the Bands in Valley, Alabama, where a Grammy-nominated singer, Mitch Dane, judged. The singer liked one of the band's original songs and asked for the 13- and 14-year-olds to work with him. Last February, they signed a publishing contract with Sony Music, and are now touring nationwide.
"For people who think it doesn't happen or it doesn't happen where we are or anything like that, it can happen, and it does," Nia said.
Amplify also works with students who have never performed on stage.
"We can start (the student) out and let them do one song, and typically for their first song, their shoulders are pulled in and they'll look at the floor and they won't look at the audience," Nia said.
"Over the course of maybe a year, they'll expand from one song to three songs to 10 minutes and 20 minutes, then all of a sudden this person is doing a 30 minute gig, smiling and laughing and having a great time, and they have just blossomed."
Nia said it is nice to see students' self-confidence grow.
"A lot of what we do is for the people who aren't planning to be professional musicians," Nia said.
To learn more about Amplify Auburn, visit their website at amplifyOAyouth.com.
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