A Rock of One's Own

I’m 31 and have held down a year-round day job for nearly a decade, but every summer I get the same pang of wanderlust. I want a summer job. The kind that doesn’t involve shirts with more than three buttons, doesn’t ask you to consider the company’s strategic plan, and doesn’t come with a cubicle or email access. As crappy as it was, I actually get nostalgic for my high school days serving up peanut buster parfaits at the DQ drive-thru. Ideally, I’d go back to my favorite summer job, landscaping, where just about every day little old lady clients said to me, “Son, won’t you come in for an iced tea?”

It’s great to travel, take a class or two, but I’ve really been missing out on that group solidarity of doing some type of purely summertime work or project. I’d been missing it, that is, until this summer.

Backtrack for a minute with me to last summer, when my girlfriend Shelly and I went up to see one of NYC’s Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls’ camper band showcases. My sister had worked as a vocals instructor, and was totally high off of her weeks working with the girls. Pretty much as soon as the camper band “The Pink Devils” (pictured) took the stage (complete with pink construction paper devil horns on their headbands), and struck the first notes of their eponymous hit, “Pink Devils are Havin’ Fun”, the entire venue was a misty-eyed mess.

We got back to D.C. changed ladies. Shelly was like, we need to have a rock camp in D.C. I was like yeah, but I can’t imagine how we’d pull it off, and went back to whatever book I was reading, run I was planning, or beer I was drinking. Luckily, there were a bunch of local ladies stoked about a potential camp, and they proceeded to put their hearts and minds into putting one together.

Up until the past month or so, Girls Rock! D.C. was something I supported by going to benefits, buying beer and snacks for the meetings hosted at my house, and wearing GR!DC t-shirts. Then I went to Europe for three weeks, and was given food, places to stay, and showed around London and Stockholm, all courtesy of the girls rock camp organizers in those cities. (Below are two songs from camper bands from Sweden’s girls rock camp (Popkollo). Froken Aste is a group of 12 year-olds, and Talibahn is a crew of 15 year-old girls.)

Just experiencing the generosity of these ladies, seeing their enthusiasm for their work with Girls Rock in their countries, was enough to put me back in that initial awe-inducing moment as audience member at Willie Mae. I couldn’t stay on the sidelines any longer.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to spend the last week working directly with the 53 amazing campers (and the last several weeks working with as many if not more volunteers) participating in the first ever GR!DC summer camp. It blows my mind that there’s this community of women all willing and able to completely build something from the ground up--from licensed nurses and counselors, cooks, roadies, video crew and sound engineers documenting the camp, artists, teachers, and writers creating and delivering original curriculum, and musicians teaching kids from all different skill backgrounds how to play their instrument, and how to play it in a band.

Honestly, I was terrified that on Monday, the ground would open up and the whole thing would sink into chaos. Then I met the girl who never played the drums before but thought she’d give it a shot, and the ten-year-old who hates Hannah Montana and loves the Indigo Girls. I talked kids through coming up with band logos, and heard this compromise from members of the band “The Six Electric Hearts”:

Camper 1: Let’s draw the sky with lightning bolts and rain.
Camper 2: Let’s have it raining girly things like purses and dresses!
Camper 3: I don’t like girly things.
Camper 4: Okay, what if we just have it raining hearts?

One camper told how she was moving away from writing pop lyrics and getting more into writing raps. “I wrote a rap about a turtle. I didn’t know how to end it so I just said ‘word’.” Another camper band describes their musical genre as "100% alternative hamster". The camp organizers put in place all the support and resources to make this thing work; the campers stepped in and made it their own.

To say that I’m excitedly awaiting this Saturday’s camper band showcase at the 9:30 Club is an understatement. These kids have worked so hard all week, put themselves on the line, and boldly taken chances that scare the heck out of me. Please, tell everyone you know to come by the show and cheer these kids on. I guarantee that you will be inspired by these young ladies. And as long as this thing keeps going, I'm pretty sure I'll have enough summer fun work to keep me satisfied.

---

Fröken Aste -- Gullberg / Kaj Paradis

---

Talibahn -- It's a Burden to Bleed