Local teen wins Scholastic Contest trip to New York

Local teen wins Scholastic Contest trip to New York

Hicks rubs elbows with music legends, celebs

www.theeveningtimes.com Local West Memphis musician Cameron Hicks, whose previous accomplishments include winning the Beatles at the Ridge Talent contest in 2015, returning to Beatles at the Ridge as a featured artist at this year’s festival, and playing on the Grammy stage at the GRAMMY Museum of Mississippi, has now added Scholastic Essay Contest Winner to his list of achievements.

Cameron, 14, won a trip for his family to New York City to attend a live webcast at Scholastic Headquarters in partnership with the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. The topic of both the essay and the webcast was “The Beatles Influencing Yesterday and Today.” Celebrity guests at the webinar were Rock and Roll Forever Foundation founder and long-time member of Bruce Sprinsteen’s “E Street Band” Steven Van Zandt, Nirvana founding member and Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl, and Academy Award winner Whoopi Goldberg.

In addition to seeing all of the typical tourist sites like the Statue of Liberty, One World Trade Center, and the Empire State Building, Cameron also got to meet the celebrity guests at the webinar, getting autographs and pictures. Cameron mentioned to Dave Grohl that he also plays guitar and had won a talent show playing “Blackbird”, which prompted Dave to relay a story about playing that same song at his daughter’s talent show (while she sang) and then again at the Academy Awards in February of this year. As Whoopi was leaving the building later, she saw us standing off to the side and called out “G’bye, Cameron!”

That pretty much sums up the treatment he got all week. Everyone treated the whole family with so much personal attention, including being treated to a showing of the play “Wicked” on Broadway. It was truly the “rock star treatment.”

Special to the Evening Times