The Michigan Roots of the Midwest Princess: Chappell Roan’s Interlochen Instructor on the Impact of an Artist Who ‘Knocked Me Out Immediately’
The fast-rising star told Pride Source in 2023 the camp ‘literally changed my life’
For its princess, Chappell Roan, the roots to the Midwest run deep. At Michigan’s own Interlochen Arts Camp, Roan wrote the song that would help launch her career into the realm of superstardom nearly a decade later.
Artist and educator Seth Bernard was a songwriting instructor at Interlochen Arts Camp over the summer of 2014. Hiding in his small group of students was the young, not-yet-discovered Roan.
Recently, Bernard described the camp to Pride Source as a “beehive of creativity,” where attendees are free to explore the arts in a diverse, inclusive and LGBTQ-friendly environment. He said campers at Interlochen are able and encouraged to be themselves — some for the first time if they’re coming from rural or small-minded communities.
Roan, who grew up in Willard, Missouri, where “gay boys in my school who were out got terrorized, slurred, threatened,” was that camper. In fact, she told Pride Source’s editorial director Chris Azzopardi in 2023 that Interlochen “literally changed my life” for the very reasons Bernard mentions. And that was before her life would change even more dramatically.
At the beginning of August, Roan shattered a record for daytime crowd sizes at Lollapalooza and will make her awards show debut at the MTV VMAs on Sept. 11, when, in addition to performing, she could walk home with awards for Best New Artist and MTV Push Performance of the Year. She also has seven songs currently charting on the Billboard Top 100.
“I've never met creative kids before that camp, and it changed my trajectory forever,” the 26-year-old pop star told Azzopardi. “I'd never been with other songwriters before in my life that were my age. Everyone was a fucking hippie, and I'm from Trump country. I'm from a heavily church background, and this is not that. There were kids from all over the world there. It was just so inspiring.”
Roan isn’t the only star to have ties to Interlochen. Artists such as Tony-winning crooner Josh Groban and country and pop star Jewel credit Interlochen as a public art institution that shaped musical careers.
At Interlochen, Roan wrote the song “Die Young” — a song which later led to her being sought out by record labels and signed to Atlantic Records (she’s now on Island Records).
The slow-building song laced with heavy imagery describes the feeling of losing oneself, but punctuates its message with a triumphant ending reminiscent of the themes of love and joy found in Roan’s later work.
Bernard said he was instantly struck by the maturity of her songwriting. “She knocked me out immediately. The song that ended up becoming her anthem from that camp was ‘Die Young,’” he recalled. “It was a new song for her and she played it for me and it hit me in so many ways. First of all, it's a really great, powerful song and I noticed that she was writing from a very mature place.”
“Songwriting can serve you in a very personal way if you can use it as a way to alchemize some of the more difficult things that you go through or that you see in the world and write about it,” Bernard said. “And she was doing that. ‘Die Young’ was that already.”
Bernard realized then that her art had the power to profoundly impact people, himself included. “I had gone through a lot that was heavy on my heart and had more to go through ahead of me at this time of this camp in 2014,” he said. “She played the song and it hit me in all the ways, and it was also a gift for me personally and as a mentor to young people creating songs. To be able to hear someone really going deep in their craft and when they do it, it's like a blessing for the people that hear it — that was the thing I remembered most.”
Courtney Kaiser-Sandler, associate director of contemporary music and collaborative programs at Interlochen, recalled that the song didn’t just leave an impression on Bernard, but the entire camp when Roan performed it at their closing concert. “I remember her standing out — just her songwriting and her artistic lens definitely was different than others, and it was one of those things as a songwriting teacher where you're like, ‘Wow, that's super unique. Who is this person? This is really great,’” she said.
In that performance, Kaiser-Sandler said she saw Roan’s “appetite for trying to reach an audience” and that, when she performs, audience members couldn’t help but want to “jump on her idea — to be in the song with her.”
Bernard said it’s this sense of community that gives campers the leg up they need to grow as artists. “You'd see a group of singer-songwriters come together, and many of them for the first time being in the company of a dozen other singers and songwriters their age, who are very passionate and doing it at a high level,” he said. “It was an accelerator for people. It raised the bar in a way that also built community.”
But collaboration wasn’t encouraged from just students; Bernard compared his instruction to developing conversation. When he talked to students about activism and the power of the mic, conversations were often centered around their experiences. “They [2014 students] had this passion in their hearts for gay rights, for the environment, for social justice, for using music to lift up voices of marginalized people and to improve quality of life for people who are suffering,” Bernard said. “So when we had that discussion as a group, there was this energy that built and there was this feeling of possibility that grew in the group. And I felt so energized myself because I have often, at different times in my life, felt like I was sort of going against the current.”
Now, Roan uses her platform for advocacy — often featuring queer performers and giving back money to LGBTQ+ charities. At her headlining show at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit last October, she invited local drag queens to open for her and donated proceeds from every ticket sold on the entire tour to For The Gworls, a collective that connects Black transgender people with everyday living expenses and medical care.
“You never know on what scale people are going to take action,” Bernard said. “It's worth it to try to bring some of that [activism] into the space not knowing what the impact will be, but knowing that seeds have been planted.”
In the 10 years following Roan’s time at Interlochen, Bernard has been raising his now 10-year-old daughter. And in a full-circle moment, in a piece of music his daughter felt empowered to create and decided to share with him, he said he found a familiar voice. “It's very inspiring for me,” Bernard said. “It gave me goosebumps for days to make all the connections.”
“Then, to go into [Roan's] music and what she's been writing lately and to feel inspired as a songwriter, that's a very sort of distilled thing that you look for as an artist — to find inspiration through other people,” he added. “I have been able to find inspiration through my students pretty consistently through the years and I'm really grateful and honored for that. I'm looking forward to continuing to follow her and to be impacted by her music and her work as an activist.”
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