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It’s 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, and the Artist Mentorship Program’s Old Town drop-in center buzzes with young people seeking a creative outlet and a hot meal.
Volunteers sling bowls of pasta, and AMP executive director Will Kendall is cooking up some garlic bread. Some 20,000 meals are served from this kitchen each year, alongside 36,000 pounds of food distributed through AMP’s pantry.
The drop-in center’s front room—lined with guitars, amps and digital audio workstations—hums with community chatter. One young person plunks on the corner piano while a drum groove drifts through the walls. Another AMP employee helps someone restring a guitar. A white board is packed with weekly sign-ups for recording in AMP’s studio, which produced 1,500 sessions with youth in 2025.
With roots that date back to the ’90s, Artist Mentorship Program is a nonprofit that supports youth aged 15–25 navigating homelessness, offering all manner of arts programming as a means of helping youth get on their feet. Music is just one facet of the operation, but it’s a big facet, which is probably why AMP’s annual fundraiser is a two-night, all-ages rock-’n’-roll music festival.
AMP Music Festival takes place at Old Town’s Star Theater—which just so happens to share a wall with its drop-in center—on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11 and 12. One- and two-day tickets are available for $25 to $100.
This is not your typical gala fundraiser. On Friday night, Pacific Northwest grunge icon and drummer Matt Cameron (of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden fame) steps beyond the kit to front Is This Real?, his tribute to Portland punk royalty the Wipers. Local cowpunks and country western rockers Jenny Don’t and the Spurs will also take the stage on Friday night.
Night two is a face-melter featuring uniquely noisy local outfits Altar Girl, Grolixes and Ogre, all of whom have been named Willamette Week Best New Bands in recent years.
Ogre is a three-piece made up of two basses and a drum kit, plus an onslaught of snarling effects pedals and unleashed vocals. Ogre played last year’s festival and was eager to return. “We became acutely aware of how they champion creativity for its medicinal qualities and see the glory in outsider art,” the band wrote in an email to WW.
AMP executive director Will Kendall knows a thing or two about outsider art. He’s mentored youth through providing opportunities for DIY artistic expression since AMP’s early days.
“There’s a punk-rock edge in what we do,” Kendall said. “AMP is not waiting for the government to fix this problem. Instead, we’re going to ask you to get involved.”
With a scrappy staff of five people, AMP relies on a community of more than100 volunteers to run much of its programming, from art workshops and ceramics classes to instrument lessons. AMP’s youth frequently create their own bands, which perform at AMP’s monthly showcases in the drop-in space. The organization also takes youth to concerts; recently, a crew of young people saw Cat Power at Revolution Hall and another saw Vince Staples at Pioneer Square.
The nonprofit also hosts job training initiatives like Beat Building Academy, which guides a small cohort of youth through classes in audio production.
For Kendall, much of AMP’s beauty lies in the trusting relationships that staff and volunteers develop with young people over time. It’s a two-way street. “These kids are going to change you,” Kendall says. “They just need more opportunities to express that beauty they have in their soul.”
Before signing a lease at the Old Town drop-in center in 2023, AMP bounced between a handful of community spaces, offering arts education through partnerships with School of Rock and a slew of kindred nonprofits like p:ear and New Avenues. But AMP is soon to relocate to a much larger, more permanent space down the road in Old Town.
The nonprofit recently purchased an 11,000-square-foot building at 333 NW 5th Ave. The move represents a major spatial upgrade, giving AMP more room to grow its existing programs while opening up possibilities for new ones—including hosting live shows.
AMP hopes to convert part of the new building into an all-ages concert venue that could eventually host the AMP Music Festival, where bands on the lineup like Altar Girl—who was shaped by all-ages, DIY scenes—can continue to inspire young audiences with live music.
“We try to play as many all-ages shows as possible, and they are by far our favorite gigs,” the band wrote to WW. “Music and art helped all four of us express ourselves through tough times in our young lives; it still does today, but there’s a different kind of medicine that music provides a young person.”
SEE IT: AMP Music Festival at Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., amppdx.org/fest. 8 pm Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11 and 12. $20–$100. All ages.
