Onstage at the New Bohemian — a church-turned-venue/tattoo shop in the North Side — a band called the Funktion launches into a familiar cover.
“There is a house in New Orleans / they caaallllll the rising sun.”
There are two lead singers, of notably differing heights: The taller one is dressed in black sequins and pink Doc Martins, while the smaller one looks a little like she stepped out of a Jane Fonda workout tape. Both have their hair in side ponies. As they trade off verses, the lead guitarist mugs at the audience from the background, and the floppy-haired drummer keeps the beat with stone-faced concentration. Holding it all together is a bespectacled keyboardist/singer/guitarist, who seems to still be growing into his bulky white tennis shoes.
It’s a pretty solid rendition, especially considering its being played by a group of slightly wound-up, slightly nervous 8- and 9-year-olds.
This is the dress rehearsal for Rock School Pittsburgh’s end-of-semester concert, a chance for the program’s participants, the oldest of whom are in their late teens, to show off the songs they’ve spent the past eight weeks learning. This semester’s show — set for Jergels, in Warrendale, on April 26 — is entitled “1984,” which means that most of the songs were either popular that year (“99 Red Balloons”), or have some loose theme of dystopian paranoia (“Every Breath You Take”). Some songs, like “House of the Rising Sun,” don’t really fit the theme at all: They’re just fun to play.
Rock School Pittsburgh has been around for about seven years, but founder Eric Brockschmidt has been uniting young musicians in kids’ rock since 2004. Working as a guitar teacher at a music store in Wexford, he recalls, “We were like, ‘Hey, all these kids are taking lessons — we should put them together in a band.'” That year, the kids held their final performance on the front porch of the store. “It was really loose and really wild.” The store closed not long after, but Brockschimdt, along with a handful of instructors, continued the program.
Though Rock School Pittsburgh emerged organically, the concept isn’t a new one. Paul Green started the Paul Green School of Rock Music, in Philadelphia, in the late ’90s; it later became the country’s best-known rock-camp franchise, The School of Rock. (It was also the inspiration for Richard Linklater’s 2003 film comedy School of Rock, and the subject of the 2005 documentary, Rock School.)
Many similar programs exist both locally and nationally. And while the particulars of each program vary, the concept is generally the same: Get a bunch of kids together, divvy them into bands and, with the support of their teachers, let them embrace their inner rock stars.
Some students show up to Rock School with a few music lessons under their belt, but others have no experience at all. Many students return semester after semester. Fifteen-year-old Blair Nelson, who performs at the rehearsal in spandex pants and bare feet, has been in the program for three years. As the dynamic lead singer for a group of 14- to 17-year-olds — “We don’t have a name yet, but that’s OK!” she tells the audience — she nails ambitious crowd-pleasers like Van Halen’s “Panama” and Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
“I never knew how fun it could be to be in a band,” she gushes later, noting the transformative effect of playing for an audience. “You’ve got these people who [you see at school] and they’re really quiet, and then they get up in front of people … it’s great to see. It’s a great experience all around.”
The process can be a challenge, of course. Brockschmidt compares it to trying to build something with a bag of mismatched Legos.
“Some pieces don’t necessarily fit together and you sort of have to force it,” he says. “Usually those are the best [situations], because you have people interacting who wouldn’t normally be interacting with each other. And you learn about being a human being to other people who you don’t necessarily know.”
“Real.Life.Music Camp,” a “rock-star reality camp” and branch of Mr. Small’s Theatre’s nonprofit Creative.Life.Support, shares that goal of developing the confidence of young musicians, but takes a slightly different educational approach.
Where Rock School instructors help students assemble a set of covers, Real.Life.Music Camp — which has been around for 12 years and begins on Aug. 10 — focuses on original songwriting, and learning what it takes to have a career in the music business. Campers record in Mr. Small’s professional studio, do photo shoots and put together press kits.
“The majority of students are kids who are serious about it and want to actually form bands or [become] professional musicians,” says founder Liz Berlin, who has had plenty of experience in the music world as a member of the band Rusted Root. “Maybe they discover throughout the camp that they actually want to be a tour manager, or a booking agent at a club.
“We try to open up their world in terms of what career tracks are out there, and what is actually necessary to go in those directions.”
During the winter, Creative.Life.Support also holds the We Rock Workshop, an intensive 18-week, Allegheny County-funded program for kids who are part of the foster system. Like Real.Life.Music, We Rock centers on creating original music, and ends with a performance. The current group performs its final show on May 8 at Mr. Small’s Theatre.
“It really boosts their confidence,” Berlin says of the participants. “They come in not knowing what to do, and they learn how to collaborate and learn how to express themselves. The lyrics that come out sometimes are really stunning.
“I think having a platform to express that and having techniques for expressing those things, and then actually getting to record and perform live … it kind of opens up their world a little bit.”
Like Berlin’s program, Girls Rock is a week-long day camp. Band members write their own songs, and the week ends with a performance showcase. But rather than focusing on a future career, or even an end product — important as those things may be — Girls Rock is all about personal development.
“I do not consider us a music camp,” explains program coordinator Madeleine Campbell. “It’s really an empowerment camp.” Girls Rock Pittsburgh, which is entirely volunteer-run, held its first camp in the summer of 2013. A member of the international Girls Rock Camp Alliance, Girls Rock Pittsburgh is just one of many similar camps around the world, the first of which was formed in Portland, in 2001.
“If [a] camper walks out and never touches a guitar again in her life, that’s fine. But we want her to know that she can, and she has the resources, she has people who will support her,” Campbell says. “We’re really trying to instill core life skills with music as a vehicle.”
Enrollment is limited to girls age 8-18, and all instructors are female-identifying or gender non-conforming (though Campbell notes that there are many helpful dads and other men who volunteer behind the scenes). People often ask why the program isn’t co-ed, a question which Campbell says always makes her smile a bit: The answer seems obvious. In the still male-dominated music world, it can be challenging for any woman to feel completely at home. Girls Rock provides a chance to flourish in a different kind of space.
“We want campers to see all of those roles fulfilled by someone who looks like them and feels like them and talks like them,” Campbell explains.
After forming and naming bands on the first day, much of the week is devoted to musical instruction, songwriting and practicing. There are also daily workshops on subjects ranging from the theoretical — like gender and body image, and the representation of women in media — to the practical, including recording and screen-printing (every band makes its own merch, which members sell at the final show). Local female artists also stop by for daily lunch-time performances.
For one camper, 9-year-old Tellie, the guest artists were a major highlight. “I could see the energy in her when she spoke about them,” her dad, Ryan Keene, says via email.
The other benefits were clear as well. “[Girls Rock strives] to develop in these girls a voice to express their ideas [and] opinions loud enough to be heard above the stereotypes that are so abundant in our culture,” Keene wrote. “I saw this in my own daughter. … We saw her gain confidence in her voice and beliefs. She grew strong friendships with other girls [who] supported each other and helped [to] overcome barriers they struggle with every day.”
Parents of Girls Rock participants are asked to sign an agreement saying that they will not censor their daughter for the week. “Whatever their child wants to talk about or write about, they’re not going to try to persuade them in either direction, which really adds to the idea that we’re trying to create a safe space,” Campbell says. That safety and freedom leads to some interesting artistic developments.
While working with the two guitarists of one Girls Rock band, “one of them got so frustrated with chords, she grabbed a drumstick and started rubbing it up and down the neck of the guitar,” Campbell recalls with a laugh. “I was like, ‘I feel like Thurston Moore did that decades ago,’ but [this girl had] never seen that before.”
Ultimately, the idea is to show campers that that there are no mistakes or wrong notes, which is a philosophy Campbell — as a classically trained cellist — is happy to be reminded of in her own life.
“I have a degree in music, and I’m still getting myself back in the frame of mind of like, ‘I want to play music for fun with my friends,'” she says. “Sometimes I feel almost guilty because I’ve taken so much from Girls Rock — it’s helped me, and I’m a quasi-grown person.”
Rock School’s Brockschmidt agrees that the benefits goes both ways.
“These kids have kind of an eternal hope and eternal joy and eternal love for life. Or,” he adds with a laugh, “you get these kids who have these attitudes because they don’t trust anyone. And the teachers can kind of relate to that.”
And really, isn’t that what rock ‘n’ roll is all about?
This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2015.
When is the next camp being held? My daughter is about to turn 9 and plays keyboard and want to pick up on drums. And she has a KILLER LOUD voice!!!!