Valerie Carricato started her music career thinking she wanted to play the trumpet, like her mom, Tracie. Tracie had other ideas. "I thought she was more rhythmically musical," Tracie said. "So, I steered her toward percussion."

Valerie hit the drums during her fifth grade year, and this month, at age 13, she played her first gig in front of a live audience. "She blew the crowd away," said Art Noble, a local drummer who has spent more than half his life performing around the country.

While Carricato wowed the crowd at a recent Thunder and Buttons jam, no one was more delighted than Noble, who has helped groom the prodigy into one of Colorado Springs finest young musicians. Carricato, like many local aspiring musicians, cut her teeth at East Library. That's right - the library. On the third Saturday of every month, Noble, bassist Mark Acord and guitarist Dale Creel provide students with knowledge and an experience that would be hard to find elsewhere.

The official name of the instructional jam is "A Music Workshop," but aspiring musicians know it as "the jam at the library."

"We like to start out with breakouts," Noble said. "Mark will take the bassists, Dale the guitarists, and me the drummers. We like to demonstrate the basics of what we're going to do that day - then we'll take them through slow blues, shuffles, rumbas and basic styles within the blues." Then the three professionals take the stage as "Yellow Dog," a band they created specifically for the jam. Once they start playing, they'll invite students to play along, ask questions and learn. It's sort of on-the-job training, where students can learn to play and communicate with other musicians, hone their solo skills and practice their live performances. The whole idea of the jam started because Noble and Acord wanted to create an outlet for kids, other than taking lessons or playing in their school bands. Then adults started hearing about the jams and began showing up to learn. "What's happened is the kids have improved, and it has made them better in their school bands,"

Noble said. "And the adults have become more comfortable to where they can play in some of the professional jams around town."

Carricato likes the library's relaxed atmosphere.

"I like getting up, playing and learning on stage," she said. "You don't have to worry about making mistakes - you just play, and each time you get more comfortable playing in front of people."

For Noble, 48, playing in front of an audience became second nature once he moved from northern California to Philadelphia.

He started playing drums at 14, performed with his high school band and then made the road his home after college at San Jose State University.

After Philadelphia came Washington D.C. Then he wound up in Nashville for 12 years before moving to Colorado Springs.

He toured with bands through all those years, playing pop, rock, country and jingles for commercials.

"It's all networking," he said. "I made a lot of connections - word of mouth gets around, and people just hire you."

He began working at Fall River Music and met Acord five years ago. It wasn't long before the pair hatched the idea of the jam - as a way of giving back to music.

At first, they held the jam in the back of the store, but a business location change forced them to look for a new venue.

Enter the East Library and an added bonus.

The jam transformed into a community concept.

"All of a sudden, we're teaching kids who were going to different schools," Noble said. "They meet, and then we have something that ties the community together."

Guitarist Zach Langston, 18, a recent Rampart graduate, met drummer Colin Bovberg, a Palmer student, at the jam.

"We were up playing on stage and felt something," Langston said. "It didn't take long for (bassist) Blake Baldwin and I to sense that Colin was the right person for our band."

The trio formed soon after and have since performed at numerous venues around town.

"That was two years ago," Langston said. "I was a pretty new player when I first started going, so I learned a lot, mostly about how to play with feeling and how to inter pret a song."

Carricato isn't far behind. She's already started lining up potential band mates.

"We've got a bass player, a sax player, a trombone and a guitar player - all people I've met at the library jam," she said. "I'm hoping to get a professional band going and maybe do that for a living - and maybe I'll teach lessons, too."

Mark Acord and Dale Creel perform regularly in town with the Channel Cats and Art Noble plays drums for the Jake Loggins Band.

For more information about the library jam, visit www.pikespeakblues.org.