LOS ANGELES — Back in 2009, Musician Wayne Kramer of the legendary rock group MC5 started an organization called Jail Guitar Doors.
The Clash song of the same name, which told the story of Kramer’s imprisonment after he was convicted of selling drugs in 1975, inspired it.
The organization helps incarcerated individuals rehabilitate themselves through the power of music.
The focus on rehabilitation for inmates is top of mind right now in California given Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent announcement that San Quentin State Prison would undergo a historic transformation.
“We are focused on the creative process of writing songs. We have a full recording studio and a performance space, but we also have a computer lab,” Kramer said. “Anything that can be taught by a human being to another human being, we can teach there. [We] expose our young people to options that they might not have known existed.”
In 2021, Jail Guitar Doors opened up a venue called the CAPO center in Los Angeles on Fairfax and 3rd Street. CAPO stands for Community Arts Programming and Outreach and the center is dedicated to helping youth who’ve been affected by the justice system.
The center will host a benefit concert and open house this weekend featuring Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Raul Pacheco of Ozomatli. Kramer will also perform as will some of the CAPO students.
The event will be held at the CAPO Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 29.
“It celebrates Joe Guitar Doors' operations for 15 years, Kramer said. "Our instruments and our programs operate in over 200 American prisons today. So we're doing our best to try to mitigate the damage being done by some of the most misdirected, misguided policies in American domestic history.
An online auction with signed guitars, and sports items will be held until May 1.
Kramer himself spent four years in federal prison and shared his view on incarceration.
“What we know is that there is not a person serving time in America’s prisons or prisons anywhere that didn’t have something traumatic happen to them as a child,” Kramer said. “We know this. I know it in my own case. And so if we start to try to deal with those things… if we can write a song about something bad that happened, then that takes the power out of it and puts people back in touch with their own humanity.”
For more information about the benefit concert at the Capo Center, head to www.jailguitardoors.org.
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