The Girls Blog To Rocking: Conclusion

Jessica Hopper, author of The Girls Guide To Rocking, concludes her 12-city publicity book tour blog...

8/26 North Carolina to Nashville, Tenn. 

Nashville, though not a typical destination for most non-country tours wound up as a destination on ours because of Dorothy Dark, who is a recent first-year grad of the Southern Girls Rock Camp, one of two in Tennessee. Dorothy’s dad is a friend and one of the coolest people I know and he said, “You must come to Nashville, so we can bring Dorothy.” Dorothy had recently learned how to play “Crazy Train;” she is 10.

Getting to Nashville on time meant driving into the night and rising and shining rather early.  I woke up to Romy murmuring “Waffle House”—one of the South’s greatest chains, ranking right up with Krispy Kreme. All they have in Canada is Tim Hortons, and I have to say, after an all night drive in a van, waking up and groggily rolling into Tim Hortons is kind of unsatisfying. Waffle House has cheese grits, waitresses that will call you sweetheart and truckers smoking while they eat their bacon. Sari ordered hash browns with all eight accompanying toppings and almost puked. Definitely a 10 out of 10 as far as Waffle House experience goes.

In Nashville, we played an in-store at Grimey’s, which is probably the best record store in the South. A bunch of old timer session cats showed up and the audience was about half dudes who I imagined to be Steve Earle’s road crew; in the notices online Grimey’s called the Ghost Bees “folk”—which apparently is the sort of thing that brings out a heavy crowd in these parts. It’s funny—in Chicago—“folk” means, like, Joanna Newsom or a beardo from Brooklyn. Here it means FOLK as in Woody Guthrie or Joni Mitchell.

By the time I was done reading, it was packed and Ghost Bees had a full and attentive audience, which they slayed. The girls were really chatty, and cracked wise about their home country, insisting that the population of Canada was about 4,000 people, almost entirely vampires. They made a joke about how they weren’t folk, they were a metal band, and after one of their songs, this woman announces, “No, I totally get it. Metal. It’s very dark. Totally.” She proceeded to interrupt them with this same banter between every song for the rest of the set, like it was just her and the Ghost Bees chilling out. She deemed their last song “very Pink Floyd.” I think she might have been drunk.

After the show, we stayed with Dorothy and her family—she volunteered her room to us—I slept on the trundle bed of a purple princess bed in a purple room. 

8/27 Nashville to Champaign, Ill.

When we woke up, Sarah, Dorothy’s mom had baked us MUFFINS. We were just hanging out, doing some laundry, absorbing the comfort and baked goods when I realized I had switched the driving times for today and the following day. We didn’t have a three-hour drive; we had a five-hour drive plus a time change. And we had two loads of totally wet laundry and we were already going to be late to the show.

Romy and I raced to pick up food for the drive and get gas, Sari stayed home on laundry duty, taking everything out of the wash and laying it out on the deck—all of us running at top speed through our assigned chores. Romy laid all the wet clothes out in the back window of the car and rolled a couple shirts and socks and underwear up in the side windows, so they hung up in the sun. It looked really hobo, this curtain of girl-laundry covering the entire backseat.

We got on the road and about 70 miles later, the check engine light came on and stayed on as the car started driving a little funny.  I pulled off in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky and took it to the Ford dealership. They raised an eyebrow about me bringing a foreign made auto in but insisted, “We will always help ladies in distress.”

Two days before I left for tour, when I went to go get an oil change, the people lost my car key in the engine for about 40 minutes, and during the hubbub, they drained my oil and (apparently) didn’t refill it. Which is very bad. So we got oiled up and instructed to go to the dealership in Paducah, Ky., and that they would check it out and make sure we were ok. We got to Paducah and were told that there was no way anyone could see us today, and that whomever told us to come on in was misinformed. I wouldn’t say I pitched a fit, but I did get assertive. Twenty minutes later we were checked out and back on the road, and knew we were going to be at least an hour and a half late for the show.

I don’t want to tell you how fast we drove, but it was an unsafe speed that I do not advise anyone to drive. Nevertheless, we arrived exactly an hour and 10 minutes late, I threw the car into park, ran down the steps and onto the stage, while the girls started loading in. I was panting like a dog. The entire audience, for the first time that tour was entirely young girls with their parents, all patiently waiting, some doing their homework. The promoter bought time by having the faux-rasta sound guy do a set. These poor girls came for some positive re-enforcement and girl bands and were met with the scruffy white dude doing “No Woman, No Cry.” Their parents are saints! On a school night, no less. Kids bought the books and parents bought the CDs, so all the rushing was worth it.

Afterwards, we were standing around talking to this kind of punk/gothy 14 or 15-year old girl who was singing and playing in a band with her friend, but they needed a drummer. “You know, your dad offered to fill in until you find someone,” said her mom. The girl rolled her eyes, “My dad used to be in a band.” Her mom clarified, “Her dad used to be in the Psychedelic Furs.” Note: if your dad was in the Furs or any other classic post-punk band, even if he is a heinous embarrassment to your teenage soul, at least let him jam with you. That is my advice.

8/28 Champaign to Bloomington, Ind.

We drove slow through near-flooding conditions and took turns telling stories of our lamest boyfriends.  It was raining so hard, we only went about 20 mph because we could barely see in front of us. I wasn’t scared. This seems to happen at least once a tour. After the race from Nashville, we made sure to leave hours early, just in case. We sent a couple reminder texts to the other Canadians—Katie and the rest of the band reminding them about the time difference, how far it was from Chicago… nevertheless they were still going to be late.

The show was at Boxcar Books, which is a super cool place. We cleared out some racks and set up benches.  Got some good questions after my reading. For a college town with no rock camp, there sure are a lot of burgeoning rocker girls in Bloomington. A bunch of kids and their folks came out, and everyone packed in for Ghost Bees. Sari forgot to not sing the s-word in one of their songs and a mom bolted out mid-song with her kids in tow. Oops.  Katie and her band showed up and loaded in and played a short set—the good news is they got across the border a-ok.

8/29 Bloomington to Chicago

We drove straight through to Chicago after the show, getting in about 2 a.m. I was glad to be home but sad because it meant my constant companions, Sari and Romy, would be going home and I wouldn’t get to see them play every night.

We all slept in and I made the girls breakfast as a token of my friendship. They presented me with a little pouch Romy had sewn, filled with cool rocks they had found on tour. And then at 11:30 a.m, we went for the earliest load-in/show any of us had ever played. At 12:45 p.m., all the backline for the young girl’s bands was set up and line-checked and the first band, Fatal Attraction and their 18-person-deep crew rolled up in a little bus. The young ladies of Fatal Attraction were playing their momentous first show today, and then heading over to a festival, where two of the girls were playing another show—they are also the rhythm section of the teen boy R&B sensations, Trace.

As soon as doors opened IT WAS PACKED. Tons of kids and their parents. Little kids. Like, a flock of strollers near the stage, real family-affair style. AND. THEN. FATAL. ATTRACTION. They opened with a cover of Jennifer Hudson’s “Spotlight”—one of the girls had orientation for school, so an uncle was filling in on the keyboards, loving that we had a Wurlitzer instead of a regular keyboard for him.  I thought I was going to cry—they were so good. You never would have guessed in a million years that this was their first show. I looked around and peoples’ mouths were agape. Fatal Attraction=pure talents (and the uncle, too).

Next up was Circular Convention, from our local Girls Rock Camp. They were instrumental, and kind of surfy and Pixies-esque, tons of energy and the drummer bounces her sticks off her drums and catches them in the middle of playing. Some real proud parents and eager little sisters were GETTING DOWN. Lots of aerobic/ballet/gymnastic moves in the pit. At one point three girls were doing cartwheels and one was doing the crab walk during the Ghost Bees set. Katie’s band really had the burden of headlining—to go after Fatal Attraction and Circular Convention—not an easy task—but a lot of the parents and older rock camp girls were super into it.

And, then, that was the end. We loaded out, packed up, and went out for lunch (it was only 4 p.m.) and Katie, Maya and Carmen continued on tour—joining up with the Coco Rosie tour, and I took the Ghost Bees to the bus station, where we said sad goodbyes.

The end.

The Girls Blog to Rocking Part 2
The Girls Blog to Rocking