South Plains College

Emma Kaufman reports from the High Plains.

Janton Morris of Muleshoe, Texas is a student and rodeo athlete at South Plains College.

He was one of the two Gary Pop Brush Memorial scholarship recipients.

The scholarship is rewarded through the Behind the Chutes 501c3 program.

They took me to my first one when I was two weeks old.

And so I kind of tell people when they ask that, that I've kind of done it my whole life.

You team rope for South Plains College.

What are you studying in school right now?

It was basically a household appliance.

She studied music at South Plains College and later Texas State and eventually heading to Nashville to chase the dream.

After years of knocking on doors, she finally got her shot with Never Again Again.

Now, the funny part, the song is about swearing you're done with somebody and then somehow ending up right back with them, which is less a country song and more a legally binding contract that nobody bothered to read.

Where'd you go?

I went to South Plains college.

Okay.

Which is?

And we were talking to some people from Nashville and we were asking about colleges to go to.

And they said, no, no, no.

The best music school to go to is South Plains College.

And it's in your backyard.

And it all proved out.

Of course, when I quit Dad's Music Store at 21, I quit the band I was in in Southern California and I went to South Plains College.

When I went out there, You know, from then on, you know, I didn't have I didn't have a lot of money because when I worked at dad's store and I played for that local band, I was rolling in it because, you know, like dad, you know, dad paid me a good wage and, you know, and I made back then about 200 bucks a week for part time.

And then, which, you know, now would be the equivalent would be $600 a week.

And then, and then I would play with that bluegrass band and I would make, sometimes I'd make $400 in a weekend.

And so that, and the equivalent of that is $1,200, right? So I, so as a teenager living at home and at 18 paying rent to my dad, a little bit of rent, it wasn't much.

um as a teenager I was I was doing really well so I saved up money went to South Plains College and then but then eventually the money runs out right because I because I just was committed after that to not working a day job and not spending my time so I spent as much of my time as I could practicing and working and learning and and uh and growing as a musician

So do you feel that kind of, um, we were talking about waypoints on the banjo.

Well, I went straight into the deep end and this Terry McBride, who is the guy that kind of pulled me out of college in Texas, I had met him down there.

I came to the States when I was 18 and started going to this amazing music school in West Texas called South Plains College.

great bluegrass program there.

Yeah.

Already had an Associate's of Applied Science in Sound Technology.

Had gone to South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, to get a degree in studio recording.

I wanted to know how to record my own music and be prepared for studio, you know.

And, uh, 'cause back in the, in the teen years and everything, we were all gonna jump on a tour bus and tour the world, right? You know, and it was-

Absolutely.

I played at South Plains.

Okay.

Okay.

So maybe not every AAU situation is like that, but, um, even my kids would tell you, my players here now would tell you that the speed and, and physicality's different.

Yeah, and I think it's just, I don't know what it is, but I guess it's, like I say, every level is a new level.

So I always joke about, I went to, so I went to Duncanville High School, and then from there I went to South Plains, and then from there I went to Texas.

So-

We played Kilgore.

We played New Mexico Military, who's over there in the White Jack with South Plains and Midland and them.

And then we played Hill, who's on the east side of Texas.

So we got three really good games in last week.

i did the traditional thing going to oklahoma state university and did business school and i got three or four years into that and just like i couldn't add the music i had a band at that time flatland grass band that doesn't have any recordings unfortunately but there's some youtube stuff still great friends to this day And I'm like, I just, I want to, I want to play music.

So I wind up leaving there and going to South Plains College in West Texas, in Leveland, Texas.

Joe Carr and Alan Mundy's kind of bluegrass program.

Bluegrass program is unfortunately no longer, but they still have a commercial music program, which is what I went down there and did.