Caged birds sing Music blossoms at Long Creek BY SAM PFEIFLE

John Johnstone is an accomplished guitarist. An instructor on the faculties of the Portland Conservatory, Bowdoin College, and Pine Tree Academy, he has performed with the Portland Symphony Orchestra and played most of the finest stages in Maine. To watch him teach today, though, I’ve got to press a button and wait for the guard to buzz me in. Even stranger, when Johnstone tells me to go grab my guitar from the car (I didn’t want to be too presumptuous), I have to push a button and wait for the guard to buzz me out.

See, we’re at the Long Creek Youth Development Center, where Johnstone has been recently giving lessons, and they don’t exactly let you walk out any time you’d like. In fact, before following him and John Stetson, an educator at LCYD who’s facilitating the lessons, I have to leave my keys and cell phone.

My guitar case is searched and the guard finds a bolt loose: "Make sure that bolt leaves with you."

The place is immaculate and I pass facilities that would have made me envious in my public-school teaching days: a beautiful gym, a brand-new library, and a computer lab where we meet some kids, outfitted with eMacs and stack amps on which one detainee is trilling Metallica riffs on his electric guitar.

It’s also almost totally sterile, too. The walls are painted concrete blocks, the floors are linoleum, a phoenix is painted at the top of one stairwell, but the place is largely devoid of anything that might convey a personality or taste. The kids, too, seem whitewashed, all wearing identical white polos.

I’m here to watch Johnstone work because I’m interested in a group calling themselves Music at Long Creek, who have organized a number of musical interactions for the kids here: In February, Sontiago, Moshe, and Bread performed separately for the girls’ and boys’ units, then returned to work with the girls further in March. Also in March, Paddy Homan, a real Irish tenor, performed for 50 kids in the Long Creek chapel, and Johnstone and pianist Gaye Pearson began giving lessons.

Then, on April 17, Johnstone performed for the kids, drawing for himself a personal commendation from Governor Baldacci, which impressed the kids greatly.

"It’s really an ad hoc group," says Susan DeWitt Wilder, who’s a driving force behind getting more music into the Youth Center. "Friends of the Youth Center already exists, so we can use them as a funding channel. At this point we’re just at the early stages. We said, ‘Let’s set up local concerts, with the hope that each concert will have a follow-up project as well.’ "

It’s not the first time local musicians have played at Long Creek. Rapper Poverty visited last year, as did pop-punkers Headstart!. In fact, when I ask Brandon, the only resident I’m actually allowed to officially talk with, which band he’d like to come visit next, he says he’d like to see Headstart! again.

This is after I’ve seen he and Johnstone work for about a half hour on an upstroke classical guitar rhythm that’s got that great Spanish/Mexican flavor to it. It’s a bit frustrating for Brandon, but Johnstone is great at slowing things down, identifying sticking points, and offering plenty of encouragement. By the end of the lesson, Brandon has a good handle on the rhythm and is working on picking out a melody that Johnstone shows him.

Johnstone also shows him how to use his pick "properly." He tells Brandon to slide it off the string at about a 45-degree angle. Then he flatpicks: "See how terrible that sounds?" Fifteen feet away, I’m showing another kid how I play bluegrass. I’m flatpicking. I make sure to play quieter.

The kid I’m playing with, not officially talking to, is probably a better guitarist than I am. He runs through a bunch of scales — pentatonic, diatonic, a couple other -tonics I don’t quite follow — then starts showing me a Hungarian scale I like a lot, real minor and melancholy like a Decembrists tune. It takes me about a minute to follow what he’s doing. He’s got great reach with his pinky, a problem for me, so I struggle a bit. He’s good about slowing things down, identifying sticking points, and offering plenty of encouragement.

Mildly embarrassed, I wow him with a bunch of G-runs that he can’t quite keep up with. But then he walks over to the piano and starts accompanying Johnstone on a classical piece he works on with another student while Brandon picks up a bass and talks with me.

"He knew how to play piano when he came here," Brandon tells me, "but everything else he’s taught himself here. He shows me a lot of stuff for the bass." He tells me that the two of them play with another kid in a Christian band, writing everything from rock to country to blues, practicing in the chapel. They’re not allowed to play instruments in the "unit," where they mostly live.

Yeah, not everything’s rosy here. Their guitars, even ones they’ve built with Stetson, are locked up when it’s not lesson time, which means they can hardly practice, and there are way more kids who want lessons than can have them. Plus, there’s still the idea with some Long Creek staff that music is a "privilege" to be taken away for bad behavior.

"Imagine," offers Stetson, "telling a kid he can’t do his homework because he’s acting up."

"It’s a time to get away from the negative kids here," says Brandon. "The program we’ve got here helps me find things I like to do."

It’s sentimental, but I’ll write it: If some of these kids had been handed guitars five years ago, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com

Musicians, or anyone else, who’d like to volunteer at Long Creek can contact current volunteer coordinator Eric Gilliam, at (207) 822-2600.