As the Hungry for Music (HFM) bus travels the country, I often think about all the friends we’ve made along the way. Music teachers in Texas; music organizations from coast to coast; people who build and repair instruments in New York; musicians abound. Wonderful people in Chicago, Houston, Memphis Louisville, Nashville and the D.C. area who run programs to help kids learn to love music.

But, there’s still no place like home. The HFM Magic Music Bus has set up shop at home the last few weeks – in Shreveport and New Orleans, Louisiana. I haven’t lived in the Bayou State since 1987, but the generosity of the people, their love of music and compassion for one another remain.

We tapped into that spirit while I was there. In the New Orleans area, we put together a team of 10 volunteers to assist in collecting, repairing and distributing instruments to local music programs. We have made friends with nearly a dozen such programs.

We kicked things off with a donation of four trumpets and four snare drums to the Preservation Hall Foundation. The donation will support their music outreach at a New Orleans youth detention center. Olivia Greene at WWOZ was an awesome social facilitator during my stay. Olivia connected us with the Sticking Up for Children Foundation and the Ellis Marsalis Center and helped us publicize the HFM benefit. She is going to continue to support HFM by volunteering her time to help with instrument donations and benefits.

HFM donated a percussion kit and two pink guitars (the guitars were courtesy of my nieces, Lyla and Meridith, in Baton Rouge) to the Sticking up for Children Foundation and seven violins to Make Music NOLA. We are looking forward to continuing to support these organizations.

We donated a Squier electric bass, an electric hollow body guitar and a trombone to the Ellis Marsalis Music Center. Ellis Marsalis was a famous high school band director in New Orleans whose sons Branford and Wynton are worldwide stars.

I got together with Derek Tabb, drummer for the Rebirth Brass Band and part of our Roots of Music project. We also met with Leslie Cooper, who runs the New Orleans Traditional Jazz Camp. I’m now kicking myself because I never spent a week as a kid at a jazz camp. Her camps are fantastic and an amazing musical educational experience for kids.

HFM had a successful kick-off benefit concert at Chickie Wah Wah on Easter night with an awesome night of music that included Paul Sanchez, Alex McMurray, Pink Slip, Lynn Drury, Chris Adkins, Graham Robinson, Daria Dzurik, and the Susan Cowsill Band. I am so grateful to Russ Broussard and Susan for their hospitality and assistance in putting together an awesome benefit.

Then, it was up to Shreveport, where I grew up, to see Greg LeGrand, who runs the ARK-LA-TEX Music and Heritage Festival. We’re working with Greg and his group on an instrument drive that will run from May 15 through the festival on the last weekend in August. We plan to work with Caddo Parish Schools in Shreveport to distribute the instruments and also several after-school programs.

I had the pleasure of connecting with a former elementary school classmate, Frank Hendrick, who is now an Assistant Principal at Caddo Middle Magnet. He is going to facilitate the school’s involvement in the instrument drive that HFM is co-sponsoring with the ARK-LA-TEX Music Heritage Festival and Shreveport Music.

I also visited the Renzi Education and Arts Center, an after-school art program, where we met with Ted Lindsay. We found out about the program from Katy Hobgood Ray, a children’s musician and director of a youth choir in the New Orleans area. Katy, who grew up in Shreveport, saw the bus parked in neighboring Algiers and sent us a message on Facebook. We got together, and she interviewed me for her website blog called Confetti Park. It’s a great story of how the HFM bus is already helping kids get musical instruments.

It’s time to move on. The quality time spent with my family and the opportunity to increase HFM’s outreach by building volunteer teams city-to-city is off to a fantastic start. There’s still plenty to do. We’ve developed a checklist of sorts of how to connect in the cities we visit and maximize the benefit to the goals of HFM, and it’s time to put it to use in Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville and beyond. I am grateful for the opportunity.

Plus, my waistline could not take much more Louisiana cooking. Wish us luck. Honk and wave if you see us on the highways. And help us help underprivileged kids get musical instruments if you can.