Loud ‘n’ Proud, the brainchild of Tommy McGrory, has spent the better part of a decade providing a musical outlet for youngsters.

Young students are given specialist after-school tutorials at all levels from a whole staff of experienced musicians.

From their home in School Wynd, Paisley, the music charity has offered budding young musicians a safe place to come and meet other like-minded kids and to hone and explore their interest in music.

As well as learning technical skills, pupils are also taught how to interact with others, learning how to work as a team.

Founder Tommy McGrory feels the confidence built at these sessions will benefit the children throughout their life.

He says: “That’s what we do here; we teach you how to play, we put you in a band with other kids and give you a stage to play on.

We also want to give the kids transferrable life skills and the discipline to go away, practice and learn on their own.”

While there are some similarities with the School of Rock’s method of teaching life lessons through music, Tommy insists Loud ‘n’ Proud has a far greater range of genres to sample.

“It’s not just rock music we teach here,” he added. “We’re lucky to have a lot of experienced teachers here who teach blues and jazz – it’s not just Black Sabbath.”

The idea for Loud ‘n’ Proud came to Tommy in 2001 during the half-time entertainment at a Scotland World Cup qualifier at Hampden.

Watching fans try to slam penalties past the Scotland under-16 goalkeeper to win a crate of booze, he thought; ‘I could do better than this’.

McGrory’s experience playing in marching bands as a teenager encouraged him to re-establish a Scottish Drum Corps to provide kids with an opportunity to learn brass and percussion as well as dance and visual arts.

A few years later and the former gym owner had turned a group of inquisitive youngsters into skilled musicians, spawning 13 bands including the highly acclaimed Rock Orchestra.

The 20-piece band wowed crowds at the Wickerman Festival in Dundrennan, supporting KT Tunstall and Gary Numan.

The band has also headlined Glasgow’s ABC.

Tommy added: “While Rock Orchestra is our showpiece group, we also have 12 other bands in our organisation, mostly three and four-piece outfits.”

Loud ‘n’ Proud also produced the highly successful ‘I Was There!’, a musical chronicling the life of the famous Glasgow Apollo theatre.

The show ran for three nights in the Armadillo and is set to return this April with a whole new set list of iconic rock classics.

Tommy also wants to challenge the public view of rock and roll.

“Some people think rock music is all about throwing TVs out of hotel windows, but there are bands out there like Pink Floyd and Yes that have probably never thrown a TV in the bin, never mind out of a window.

“Some songs may be about causing chaos but they’re just songs and what we’re trying to teach these kids is to try to get away from that myth.”

The work of Loud ‘n’ Proud has even led to the Paisley Philosophical Institution invititing Tommy to give a presentation to them on Thursday night at Paisley Town Hall.

The theme of his talk is ‘How Rock Makes Better Citizens’.

Tommy says: “It’s bit of a weird place for a rocker I suppose.

“I don’t think many members of the Paisley Philosophical Institution will have been to a rock show.”