Aggeler helped create a small music club within the youth center. Later, serving as its director, he oversaw its rapid growth into a major program. The Music Clubhouse at the Blue Hill Boys and Girls Club in Dorchester, Massachusetts, now offers local kids a chance to learn how to play not just drums, but a wide range of other instruments as well.

Fresh, Rick Aggeler, and Christian 'C-miccs' McNeil in a studio at Berklee College of Music.

Music Clubhouse

"Just watching the energy of the kids and working with them, they were so excited to learn and play, that's what caught my attention," he says. "It all tied back to what Ms. Glick did for me. So, as much fun as I do have drumming and performing live, it's definitely more rewarding and more fun, watching these kids grow up and develop."

The music clubhouse, Aggeler says, has become a haven for local kids who can come after school hours or during summer vacation. They learn to play instruments, perform together in bands and even record their own songs in the club's studio.

Super Hero is one of the songs from the club's second album, Because of You.

"It was cool, because I got a chance to be in a studio and see what it was like to record a song," says fourteen-year-old Javon Martin, who goes by the stage name Young Fresh. Fresh joined the music clubhouse three years ago.

"It has impacted my life in a big way because I never thought I'd be doing this," he says."We now give shows. Everyone wants to interview us. I'm on the radio. I'm doing shows on different stages. People are actually starting to see me as an artist. People are always coming to me saying, 'Don't forget me, when you make it big.'"