How Ladies Rock Camp in St. Petersburg creates confident rock stars in 3 days

ST. PETERSBURG — I stood on stage under the hot white lights at Bayboro Brewing, clutching my guitar for dear life and squinting to the back of the room. There were my friends, my parents and my fiance. Plus a few hundred other people I had never met.

In just a few seconds, it would be time to start strumming. My eyes scanned a crumpled sheet of lyrics on the floor. Then I glanced over at the four other women up there with me. Fellow participants of St. Petersburg’s first Ladies Rock Camp.

Never mind the fact that many of us had little to no music experience before this, or that it was a Sunday afternoon and we all met for the first time on Thursday. Our band had a new song to share with the world. Our audience was waiting.

It was time to rock.

The start of the song

Rachael Sibilia founded Girls Rock St. Pete in 2016. The volunteer-powered nonprofit, inspired by an international movement, was designed to build confidence in young girls and gender-expansive youth. Over the course of one “power week,” campers between the ages of 8 and 17 learn to write original songs and play instruments. Finally, the camp is capped off with a daylong concert, complete with a thousand screaming fans.

“This is so much less about creating rock stars. It’s a unique space where we get to explore our best selves,” said Jesse Miller, executive director of Girls Rock St. Pete. “The music part is a Trojan Horse.”

I could have used something like this when I was a kid. In fact, I was 12 the last time I performed with gusto in front of a crowd, warbling in a terrible German accent as “Augustus Gloop’s mother” during a middle school production of “Willy Wonka Jr.” I still don’t know where that confidence came from.

Teenage me stayed up late reblogging band gossip on Tumblr and wallpapering her bedroom with photos ripped out of Alternative Press Magazine. She briefly took acoustic guitar lessons, then decided she much preferred snapping photos at concerts. It felt safer documenting the music from the sidelines, where no one was looking.

At 28, I’m now the music reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. While I love my job, I still watch videos of Stevie Nicks or Hayley Williams and think, “Dang, I wish I’d gotten to do that.”

It wasn’t until September, when I wrote a story about a mother-daughter duo who each play in their own punk rock band, that I realized it wasn’t too late. Stacey Strickland, the ferocious singer of Doll Parts, didn’t form her band until after she became a mom.

One week later, someone forwarded me a news release for the first-ever Ladies Rock Camp, run by Girls Rock St. Pete. It felt like a sign: Three and a half days long, the camp included two instrument lessons, three band practices and a concert at a real music venue.

I reached out to enroll. Then I called my mom.

How about a guitar for Christmas?

The intro: Five bands are born

Fast forward to a Thursday night in February, when 24 campers gathered for a pasta dinner under the string lights of Allendale United Methodist Church’s courtyard. These were doctors and lawyers, educators and entrepreneurs of all ages. Lots of moms. But we wouldn’t get into external labels.

Instead, we each stood up and shared our names, pronouns and feelings. Almost everyone was running on a similar cocktail of excitement and terror.

We shuffled inside the community center for our “sorting ceremony.” Photos of Joan Jett, Debbie Harry and Beyoncé peppered the walls; Vinyl records dangled from the ceiling. All anyone could focus on was the booming rendition of “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” pouring from the stage. There stood our instrument instructors, shredding before our eyes.

That was going to be us in a few days?

Miller and Sibilia lined us up in two rows facing each other. Our arms reached up to form a tunnel. One by one, they called each camper’s name and assigned an instrument: Keys, guitar, bass or drums. We took turns sprinting through the tunnel to a chorus of cheers.

Then Miller, now wearing a witch’s hat, summoned each camper to the stage, where a floating sorting hat was lowered by fishing wire onto our heads. Instead of Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, we heard our new band names.

“Gabrielle …” she said during my turn. “Welcome to the house of … Nasty Nymphs!”

We sat crisscross in front of a whiteboard and decided on the agreements of Ladies Rock Camp.

First, be unapologetic. Everyone was given a sheet of hot pink dot stickers. When we caught someone uttering an unwarranted “sorry!” we were to give them one and say, “You rock!”

We agreed to cheer each other on. To embrace our failures. To take up space and embrace the cringe.

Someone clanged the church bell outside. We clinked glasses of sparkling juice and wine, saying, “You rock. You rock. You rock.”

I sure hoped we would.

Day 1: Band practice and songwriting

During guitar class in a small classroom, five of us practiced tuning and playing power chords on matching mint-green guitars. It was so loud we could hardly hear ourselves. But in an hour, we could play “Smoke on the Water” and “Wild Thing” — or at least get pretty darn close.

After a songwriting crash course, it was time to practice with our bandmates. There was Loella Springmann on the keys. Kelly “KJ” Jackson on drums. Cat Lim on bass.

Sandra Dohnert, our other guitarist, had already recorded herself singing a snippet of a song idea. When her daughter enrolled in Girls Rock St. Pete last summer, she did the same thing. We leaned in to listen to her chorus.

Let your dreams go wilder / Let your heart fly higher

What’s your deep desire? / Set your soul on fire

We decided to take turns singing verses, but the blank pages of my notebook soon morphed into a sea of scribbles. Nothing flowed the way I wanted.

“Sorry!” I blurted out.

“You rock,” Lim said. She pressed a pink sticker onto my arm.

By the end of the day, I looked like a chicken pox patient.

Day 2: Time to scream

I returned to camp with sore fingertips and an aching back — hazards of being a fledgling guitarist. Staying up late writing lyrics had left me feeling raw. While one problem was solved, a new one emerged: how the heck was I supposed to sing this?

The scream circle came at a great time.

We started our morning with “freak aerobics,” dancing and yee-hawing as a group around the room to Shania Twain. Then the campers, still panting, formed a circle and linked hands.

All together, we screamed.

I imagined I was exorcising the self-doubting worm in my brain. Then we went around the circle one by one, bellowing, squeaking, growling, yelping. I worried I would ruin my voice, making it sound worse than it already had when I practiced on the car ride there. I leaned over and shrieked anyway.

I was still thinking about this during our music HERstory lesson.

The day before, we studied the African roots of rock ‘n’ roll. Our main subject was Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel-singing guitar goddess who inspired artists like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Eric Clapton.

On Saturday, the topic was riot grrrl, a feminist punk movement formed by bands like Bikini Kill in the Pacific Northwest. When I saw Kathleen Hanna, their fearless frontwoman, barking and thrashing and swinging herself around the stage, I thought, “Yes. This is what I want to be.”

At the band practice after an intersectional feminism workshop, I sampled different ways to throw my voice. Exaggerated up and down singing for the first few lines, and then yell-chanting out the rest. It felt GOOD.

Show your face / Take up space

It’s your fate / Don’t wait

All five bands reunited in the community center to end the day with restorative yoga. Sprawled on our backs in the dark, we inhaled citrus oil and listened to a guided meditation.

I thought about the workshop that morning, when Miller charted the gender confidence gap. Studies show girls and boys feel about the same level of self-assurance until middle school. That’s when boys are encouraged to keep being messy and loud. Girls start to cave to the pressure to be perfect and become people pleasers. Our confidence plummets. Our insecurity grows.

But the more we do things that scare us — the more we might fail — the more that resilience grows. That resilience hardens into confidence.

I thought about something a workshop leader had asked the previous morning: Would you rather be perfect or brave?

I was going to choose brave.

Day 3: Showtime at Bayboro Brewing

Two hours of final morning practice evaporated in what felt like two minutes. The Bitter Quitters and the Interludes (the rebranded Nasty Nymphs) ran through the song I don’t know how many times. We sounded legit.

We would only have an hour to get ready, then another for all five bands to sound check before the openers.

Blink and I was changing into my outfit, layering fishnet tights under a billowing black dress with matching cowboy boots. The vibe: goth Lana Del Rey.

Blink and there’s half the band streaking on sparkly eyeshadow in a humid church bathroom, dabbing sweat with paper towels.

Blink and there was the volunteer telling us that if we didn’t leave NOW, we would miss our sound check. I finished smearing on my lipstick while speeding down I-275. Touched up my eyeliner at a red light. If we only had one song, I wanted to look good for it.

By the time our band’s sound check came around, fans were already starting to enter the venue. A little girl sat in a chair right in front of the stage. I visualized Teenage Me sitting there, focusing on her as we strummed and I sang my verse.

As Jackson smashed the cymbal to end our song, I looked to my left. There was Doll Parts, the band that inspired me in the first place. They would be opening our concert. Their singer, Stacey Strickland, enveloped me in a hug as I stepped offstage.

Us campers listened to the openers from a dimly lit greenroom, gluing face gems to each other and spritzing glitter hair spray by phone flashlight.

Then Miller announced the riot grrrl battle cry: girls to the front. It was a callback to the days of male-dominated venues in the ’90s, when bands like Bikini Kill encouraged women to take the space right by the action. All of the campers crowded by the stage to support one another.

The first band stormed out, singing a line often linked to Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “I’m not fragile like a flower. I’m fragile like a bomb.”

Women who were quiet at the beginning of camp were grabbing the mic and belting, leading the whole brewery in chants. Between the screaming along and tearing up, I dabbed at my makeup after each set.

Our band huddled, arms linked, right before our turn. Dohnert’s 8-year-old introduced us to the crowd.

Suddenly we were playing to the packed room. I committed to the singing, to the shouting. Then my verse was over.

The crowd roared as we launched into the bridge. Dohnert howled wordlessly, her voice high and haunting over Springmann pounding on the keys. Jackson banged the drums behind us, crashing down extra fast every third chord change. Lim held us all together with this slinky, super cool bass line.

Three and a half minutes was nothing. All of a sudden, everyone was screaming for us. I could still feel my heartbeat in my neck, pulsing down my arms. We did it.

Cue the high-fives and camera flashes. My family waved from the crowd. Doll Parts formed a receiving line for us and Strickland leaned in for a hug.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

Coda

The last few days, I’ve been listening to our band’s recording while I drive my car and sing in the shower. When that bridge kicks in, distorted chords tripping over one another as Dohnert wails like a banshee, I get chills. We made that.

The good news is, we all want to keep playing. Ladies Rock alumni are forming a collective to keep performing each other’s songs.

We’re writing new music.

We’re trying to say sorry less.

We’re telling ourselves, at work and at home and all day long: Don’t worry about being perfect. Be brave.

I don’t know who you are reading this, but I know it’s not too late. And if you decide to rock, I’ll see you or your daughter at the next camp, cheering you on as a volunteer.

In the meantime, I’ve got to go prepare for band practice.

Learn more about Girls Rock St. Pete

Girls Rock St. Pete, a camp for girls and gender-expansive youth age 8 to 17, takes place from Monday, July 15, to Saturday, July 20, with a fundraiser concert open to the public the final day. Applications open in March. Adults, stay tuned for future Ladies Rock Camp dates. To donate, apply or learn more about Girls Rock St. Pete, visit girlsrockstpete.org.

Follow facebook.com/Grcstpete and instagram.com/grcstpete for more information.