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Rock's new rebels
The music's the thing for the new wave of musicians, women who play guitars and drums.
By MICHAEL CANNING
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2001
In the middle of a recent rock guitar class at Mars music store, instructor Chris DeRado looked over at the only other female in the room. "Did you want to plug in?" she asked.
"Nah, it's okay," 18-year-old Kristen La Mura quietly responded, her Fender Stratocaster resting in her lap.
"You can plug in," DeRado gently insisted. "That's why I brought the cord out." She smiled and quickly bent over to plug her student's guitar into an amplifier.
La Mura then dutifully strummed out the blues scales that DeRado had earlier presented to the class. Before long La Mura was showing a boy with frosted spikes and a goatee in the seat behind her the chord progression to the Incubus song Drive. Most of the other students, all teenage boys, either chatted or played notes of their own.
Within the long, underappreciated historical arc of women in rock, was this scene a metaphorical sign of the times? Perhaps, but DeRado can report this much: about 40 percent of her approximately 100 guitar students are female, and 75 percent of those are under 20. She says the increase in ax-wielding young girls is something she has noticed only in the past year or two.
And DeRado has a theory as to why: "It's a rebellion against the images that are presented of females in the music industry. Because every time you turn on MTV, you don't see women playing guitar, or really playing anything. It's more like they're the lead singer, they're the image-maker, they're the booty girl in the hip-hop video."
Another report from the teenage trenches, where Britney and 'N Sync supposedly command the troops, is that aspiring female musicians who eschew the traditional role of lead singer or dancer and choose guitars or drums are doing so with a serious lack of social prejudices. And female role models.
"When I was growing up, it was, like, taboo," DeRado, 35, said to La Mura after the classroom had cleared out. "But you have a better chance, because it's more accepted now. It's like a novelty. Everybody wants (a female player)."
"It shouldn't matter if you're male or female," said La Mura. "I realize that there are more male guitar players, but I think it's cool when girls play guitar. I think it's good if you're different from the norm."
La Mura's 14-year-old sister, Lauren, has a similar view. She plays an instrument that has a more masculine stigma than guitar: drums. "I guess it's a little unusual, but it doesn't bother me," said the younger La Mura, who plays with her sister every day at their Drew Park home.
A fellow Mars drum student of Lauren La Mura's, 15-year-old Heather Cerlin, is equally unaffected by rock gender lines. "I just do what I like to do," she said. "I don't care what other people are going to say."
The St. Petersburg teen plays in a fledgling power trio called Hit and Run with two other Mars students, 15-year-old guitarist Lara Muniz of Wesley Chapel and 18-year-old Tampa bassist Adam Silva.
Like Cerlin and the La Muras, you won't catch Muniz fretting about her feminine credentials. "I'm just a very strong-willed person, and I've never separated myself from the guys" Muniz said during a weekly band practice session at Mars in northwest Tampa. "Because I've always had more guy friends than girl friends. So they always just thought I was cool, like, "You're one of us,' kind of thing."
But no one's yet predicting that MTV will introduce a bumper crop of young women negotiating fretboards and drum kits rather than a dance choreographer's latest moves. Especially Carla DeSantis, publisher and editor-in-chief of ROCKRGRL, a Seattle-based rock magazine that caters to women. DeSantis doesn't think the social and cultural climate has become more conducive to young girls rocking. "I think it's always dreadful," she said. "Women and girls have been playing rock music ever since there was rock music. But what happens in the media is that it focuses on two or three people, and comes to the conclusion that all girls are playing that kind of music . . . and suddenly all teenage girls want to be Britney."
But, DeSantis said, "there are pockets where these girls in Kittie, for example, were the only females on Ozzfest last year. And they're young teens."
Beyond that young Canadian metal quartet, female rock role models whose primary role isn't singing are hard to come by.
Kristen La Mura's heroes are Jimi Hendrix, Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi, and Joe Perry of Aerosmith. "I don't really know of a lot of female guitarists." Kristen's drummer sister Lauren likes Zac Hanson, former Jane's Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins, and Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker.
Heather Cerlin is inspired by drummers Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, and Carter Beauford of Dave Matthews Band, and listens to all-male bands Disturbed and Korn.
Cerlin's bandmate Lara Muniz admitted that "Unfortunately there aren't really a lot of virtuoso girls that have a lot of publicity. I was pretty much inspired by guys." Her heroes are Slash, Kirk Hammett of Metallica, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani (the last two she refered to as "the old guitar players").
Jennifer Willyoung, a 15-year-old Oldsmar drum student at A.J.'s Pro Percussion in northwest Tampa, said jazz fusion drum star Hilary Jones is "really awesome." But being a session player in a jazz-based genre means that Jones doesn't occupy any space in Willyoung's CD playstack. She more often gets inspiration from male acts Blink 182, Three Doors Down, Bouncing Souls, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Foo Fighters.
"It doesn't really matter to me," said Willyoung of her gender-imbalanced music diet. "I kind of like playing in a band with all guys," she said, referring to her punky rock band One Way Street. "Pretty much I've never played with a girl before. Not many of my (female) friends are familiar with musical instruments."
Perhaps as pervasive as teen rocker girls' lack of female role models is their lack of concern about it. None expressed dismay about their testosterone-laden music libraries.
And even DeSantis submitted that girls don't necessarily need female role models. "I mean, the Wilson sisters (of Heart) were inspired by the Beatles and Led Zeppelin," she said. "So if you're going to break ground, sometimes you're going to have to create your own role models, or be your own role model."
Girls' indiscriminant attitudes toward the gender of those they listen to, or play alongside, indicates a greater altruism for DeRado. "They don't care. It's all about the music," she said. "I think a lot of the males tend to do it because they want to get the girls, and they want to be cool. I think the females genuinely do it because they like music."
Ask any of these girls about their career aspirations and they'll support DeRado's assertion to a person. Though none of them are ready for their MTV close-ups, much less the local club stage, they want to be soon. "It would be my first choice for a job," said Kristen La Mura. "I think it would be so amazing to write music and have people be into it."
"I want to be in a band. Nothing else interests me," said Cerlin.
"I want to be famous," said Cerlin's bandmate Muniz. "I want to tour around the world."
"Seriously, it'd be just the coolest," enthused drummer Willyoung.
If these girls do indeed portend a near rock future rife with female instrumentalists, it would suit Hit and Run bassist Adam Silva just fine. "Really, all the guy musicians that I try to jam with pretty much suck."
Michael Canning can be reached at (813) 226-3408, or at canning@sptimes.com.
Attention, thwackers
Two of the small handful of touring female drum clinicians are coming to Tampa in April.
Cindy Blackman will perform at a clinic at 3 p.m. April 8 at Mars music store, 3906 W Hillsborough Ave. Admission is free. Blackman is best known as the drummer for Lenny Kravitz. But she's primarily a jazz artist who has released several of her own CDs, and has recorded with Wallace Roney, Antoine Roney and Ravi Coltrane, Rachel Z, and Jacky Terrasson.
Hilary Jones will give a master class at 6 p.m. April 24 at A.J.'s Pro Percussion, 4340 W Hillsborough Ave. Admission is $5. Drummers can bring drum sticks, and writing materials are recommended. Jones has played with Lee Ritenour, Scott Henderson and Robben Ford.
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